Purchasing Plan

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Introduction

Create a comprehensive and organized plan to request purchases over a specified time period.

The Purchasing Plan suggests purchase orders that need to be created and by clicking a button these purchase are created automatically.
In the main section of the document the information of what needs to be planned and for which time period is entered. By clicking the process button the MRP process creates the lines in the plan with information of supply and demand:

• current stock level (supply)
• booked Purchase Orders without a goods receipt (supply)
• booked Sales Orders without a goods shipment (demand)
• completed requisitions (demand)
• safety stock (demand)
• sales forecast (demand)

The information that is listed depends on the planning method used for the product.
The MRP process balances the demand with the supply, taking into account the dates of both and based on this information suggests purchase orders to be created. The generated lines can be updated manually. Also, changes to demand and supply can be made, the current lines deleted and the plan reprocessed to see a new situation.
Once the plan is as desired, by clicking a button purchase orders are created automatically.

Header

Create and edit a purchase plan.

• Document Date: date the purchasing plan is entered
• Name: name of the purchasing plan
• Time Horizon: the number of days that are taking into account for the calculation of the purchasing plan
• Safety Lead Time: number of days that are added to the offset for the calcualtion of the planned order date of the suggested purchase order. For example the purchasing leadtime is used to indicate how long it will take for a product between being ordered and arriving in the warehouse and the safety lead time is added on for any time that it takes to put the product into stock (due to quality check or other internal processes).
• Planner: filter to select only products managed by a certain planner, as configured in the Org Specific tab of the product.
• Vendor: filter to select only products for a certain vendor as configured in the Purchasing tab of the product.
• Product: filter to select only a certain product
• Product Category: filter to select only products related to a certain product category
• Business Partner: filter to only select products ordered by a certain customer
• Business Partner Category: filter to only select business partners of a certain business partner category.
• Process Purchase Plan button: once the information is added in the main section, the lines are created by the Process Purchase Plan button. If necessary, the lines are deleted, changes are made to set ups and new lines are created by clicking the Process Purchase Plan button again.
• Create purchase order: Generates the corresponding purchase orders
• Create reservations: This button is only visible when Stock reservations feature is enabled. It reserves stock for the sales orders that are not reserved, if there is stock, and for the ones that cannot be reserved because there is not stock it creates the corresponding purchase orders and link to the sales order

Lines

Add products to be included in your plan. Each product is shown on its own line.

Only products that are set up with the Purchase checkbox selected in the product are executed by the MRP process.
Depending on the product, different transaction types may appear in the lines. All supply transactions have a positive quantity, all demand transactions have a negative quantity.

• Stock: by default appearing for the product
• Sales Forecast: the information appears if:
  • forecast is set up in the sales forecast screen
  • the forecast is defined in the planning method
  • the planned method is linked to the product
• Minimum Stock: by default appearing for the product if set up in the Safety Stock field in the product.
• Pending Purchase Order: the information appears if:
  • pending purchase order is defined in the planning method
  • the planned method is linked to the product
  • there are booked purchase orders without a related goods receipt for the product
• Pending Sales Order: the information appears if:
  • pending sales order is defined in the planning method
  • the planned method is linked to the product
  • there are booked sales orders without a related goods shipment for the product
• Suggested Purchase Order:advise generated by MRP to create a purchase order.
  • the required quantity is the quantity that is the outcome of the balance of all supply and all demand
  • the Quantity is the quantity to appear on the purchase order(s) that is created. Based on the set ups in the Product the quantity can differ from the required quantity, for example due to minimum order quantity, quantity type, etc.
  • the Planned Order Date is the date that the Purchase Order needs to be booked. This is an offset of the dates demand is required offset with the purchasing lead time set up in the product and the safety lead time in the set up in the main section of this plan. If the demand is required within the timeframe of the lead times, the date is reflected as past due to indicate that in order to get the product on time action should have been taken already and it indicates exactly how overdue the action is.

By clicking the Create Purchase Orders button, the purchase order is created, provided that all set ups were correctly entered:

• the vendor information is complete
• the product is set up with the required information in the purchasing tab
• the price for the vendor is entered in the product

Once the purchase order is created automatically, the number of the document appears in the Order Line column of the line. The created purchase order is in draft status and needs to be booked. For more information please check the Purchase Order section.

Full list of Purchasing Plan window fields and their descriptions is available in the Purchasing Plan Screen Reference.

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