Setting up planned orders

On the Vendor Portal Planned Orders page, vendors can review planned orders generated during your latest planner run for the items they supply.

You can also allow vendors to confirm planned orders online, which converts them to purchase orders or purchase order requisitions in your system. Vendors can firm PLNs for one item at a time.

Note: If non-zero dock-to-stock days exist for an item, the PLN due date displayed on the portal is different from the due date displayed on the back office Planning Detail form. The due date on the portal is reduced by the dock-to-stock days before being displayed on the portal. The portal PLN firming process does not reduce the date any further. What is seen on the portal is the same as when the PO requisition line or PO line is created.

To set up planned orders:

  1. Open the Purchasing Parameters form.
  2. Specify a portal PO and/or PO requisition prefix. These prefixes are used when a vendor creates a purchase order or purchase order requisition by firming a planned order on the portal.
  3. Open the Planning Parameters form.
  4. Select Check PO Requisitions, so the PO requisition line quantity created from PLNs firmed on the portal is considered as incoming receipt. This ensures that the APS/MRP process does not create another PLN during subsequent runs for this requirement.
  5. On one of these forms, set the Allow to Firm PLNs option:
    • Use the Vendors or Multi-Site Vendors form to set this option by vendor. This allows the vendor to firm planned orders for all of their contracted items displayed on the portal.
    • Use the Vendor Contracts form to set this option by item. This allows the vendor to firm planned orders for only the items you specify.
  6. On the same form, specify this information:
    Firm PLN Target
    Indicate whether planned orders should be firmed to purchase order requisition lines or purchase order lines. PO requisition lines must be approved in the back office. PO lines can be created without approval. Notifications are sent throughout the process.

    See the section about setting up event notifications.

    Firmed PO Line Status
    If you selected PO lines as the target, indicate whether the created PO line should be set to a status of Planned or Ordered.
    Replenishment PO
    Optionally, you can select a replenishment PO, so that any firmed planned orders are attached to this replenishment PO. If you specify a replenishment PO at the vendor and/or item level, the planned order firming process may not use it if the pending planned order count would push the PO line numbers to exceed the limit for that PO. In this case, a new PO is created, and it uses the portal PO prefix defined on the Purchasing Parameters form.
  7. Specify these settings to allow portal users to receive PO and PO requisition reports as attachments:
    • On the Intranets form, for the intranet associated with the back office site linked to the portal, specify SMTP settings and select Send Email Notification.
    • On the Users form, make sure portal users have an email address associated with their user accounts.
    • On the Report Options form, add a record for portal users. You can add these records manually, or a record will be added automatically the first time a portal user confirms a planned order.

      These fields must be specified and all other fields must be blank:

      • User: The back office user ID assigned to the portal user.
      • Output Format: Acrobat Format
      • Email Notification: Yes
      • Attach Report: Yes
      • Auto-View: No