Purchase Order Schedules→Feed Batcher→Purchase Order Receipt

Owned by Amanda Thomas
Aug 11, 2021
6 min read

Introduction

Purchase Orders can be scheduled for any number of days, weeks, or months out in an order system. These scheduled records, when approaching time to produce and ship, will need to be batched and sent to a feed mill as their workload. The feed mill will produce these scheduled orders, report back to the order system, and the order system will create Purchase Order Receipts.

The mill will always attempt to produce the scheduled orders as specified, but extenuating circumstances (ingredient shortages or changes, changes to operating schedule, etc) may cause the scheduled orders to be produced with different units, dates, or even ingredients(?). For this reason, when the feed batcher posts back its results, we will need to reconcile them with the schedule, and these changes will be what ends up in the PO receipt.

There may also be instances of a batch run that needs to become a PO receipt that was never created from a PO schedule record. We will need to account for this when the batcher posts back, especially if we want all PO receipts to be created through one point of integration.  



Create Purchase Order Scheduled (ERP)

Purchasing→Purchase Order→Selected PO Line Detail

The purchase order line detail includes a list where we can create future scheduled deliveries. These are the records we will be leveraging to send to the feed batcher.

To create these records, you will need to have created a purchase order with at least one PO line. To add the records, select the PO line, navigate to this detail grid, and enter your scheduled items accordingly.

Create Schedule Batches

Feed Mill→PO Schedule to Receipt→New Batches

From this screen, we can manually create batches. Users will enter Divisions, as well as start and end dates. All three fields are required. When the user clicks "Accept", a batch record is created, containing all PO schedules that match the criteria. Records cannot be deleted from this batch or moved to another one.

Batch dates are inclusive. The start date-time is for the zero hours of the first day, and the end date-time is for the last second of the last day.

There is no restriction on creating batches with overlapping dates. This allows us to create exceptional batches for scheduled records that might not have existed when a previous batch was created for the same time frame. Users will receive a warning when their batch will coincide with an existing one

Once we successfully submit the parameters, Connect will create a batch form that includes PO delivery schedules that match the wizard criteria

The creation process will search for purchase order delivery schedules that

  • Have not been added to other batches

  • Have not been previously associated with a receipt

  • Are active, not canceled

  • Have a delivery date within the wizard date range

  • Belong to a purchase order whose division matches the wizard criteria

The creation process will create Connect staging record (PurchaseOrderSchedule_Stage) for each ERP PO delivery schedule.  It will then display the results in the Purchase Order Schedule batch form (see image on the right)

The batch form has a banded grid with four bands, each of which displays fields affected by each of the batch workflow steps:

  • Initial data: information retrieved directly from the PO delivery schedule, the PO, and the PO line.

  • Send: Records when information is sent to Repete

  • Received: Records when results were returned from Repete as well as adjustments to the initial request

  • Committed: Records when records are committed back to ERP and a receipt was created

In addition to standard maintenance features such as delete and close, the batch form includes four ribbon bar buttons that execute each distinct step in the batch workflow.   These steps will be described further below in more detail, but they are

  • Update from Source: an optional step that will refresh the batch data if any of its corresponding ERP data were altered since the batch was created. 

  • Send: sends the selected stage records to Repete for processing

  • Receive searches for updates in Repete to the send requests from the previous step and updates the stage record results.  Completion of this step indicates that the actual delivery has occurred and the product was delivered

  • Commit: Once the feed has been delivered and the process updates the batch accordingly, it can now submit the results back to ERP to create PO receipts for them.  This step creates a record in three tables:

    • invrecvr: receiver

    • Inventory: inventory table

    • InvAudit: required for calculating inventory balance

    • xrefPODelivery: an association table that links the scheduled delivery to the inventory



Feed Mill→PO Schedule to Receipt→View Existing

When batches are created manually, or through scheduling, we can review them on this screen. Enter search criteria to filter results. The latest batches will appear at the top. Select and click "Load", or double-click a batch to view it in detail.

Right-click a batch and select the context menu option "Delete Batch" to delete the batch.



Send to Feed Batcher

Send the selected stage record to Repete for processing.





Receive Production from Batcher

Searches for updates in Repete to the send requests from the previous step and updates the stage record results.  Completion of this step indicates that the actual delivery has occurred and the product was delivered.





Create Purchase Order Receipt

Once the feed has been delivered and the process updates the batch accordingly, it can now submit the results back to ERP to create PO receipts.  This step creates a record in three tables:

  • invrecvr: receiver

  • Inventory: inventory table

  • InvAudit: required for calculating inventory balance

  • xrefPODelivery: an association table that links the scheduled delivery to the inventory

PO Receiver in ERP created from CONNECT

Configuration and Security

This has its own security that you can enable for your users.





Scheduling and Automation

To Automate, you can create scheduled Tasks for each section and set the Day/Time interval you want each piece to process.