General purchase data

Before you can perform purchase procedures, you must specify general purchase data, such as an approver list for use in the purchase requisition procedure, data to track order changes and to determine the reason for the changes, criteria and criteria sets for requests for quotation, and additional cost sets.

Setting up the approver list

Before a purchase requisition can be converted to a purchase order or a request for quotation (RFQ), it must be approved by an approver that appears on the approver list.

For more information, refer to Purchase requisition approval process.

Specifying data to track order changes and determining the reason for the changes

Purchase orders can be dynamic documents, as a company’s requirements can change during the life of the order process. You can specify information that enables you to track these changes and the reasons why these changes occurred. To track the various changes to an order, change codes and acknowledgement codes are used. Although this functionality is designed to work specifically with EDI, a company without EDI functionality can also use these codes to record changes.

You can use change codes to maintain information regarding order changes that are tracked for historical purposes. You can use acknowledgement codes to manually record information concerning changes that are communicated by the purchase business partner. A purchase order acknowledgment is a message sent by the purchase business partner to the purchaser to confirm the receipt of the purchase order. This usually implies the acceptance of the order by the purchase business partner.

To maintain and track changes, take the following steps:

  1. Use the Change Reasons (tdpur0197m000) session to maintain change reasons codes, which can be assigned to a changed order or an order acknowledgement to clarify why a change is made. This information can be tracked for historical reporting.
  2. Use the Change Types (tdpur0198m000) session to define change types that indicate the kind of change of a changed purchase order or order acknowledgement. Change types can for example be, change order line, add order line, and change header data. The change types are assigned to the purchase order after the change is made on the order.
  3. Use the Purchase Order Parameters (tdpur0100m400) session to define various default change codes and change types, which are defaulted to the purchase order line in case of changes.
  4. Use the Purchase Acknowledgment Codes (tdpur0154m000) session to define purchase order acknowledgements and the destination of the codes, which can be Header, Line, or Any. The acknowledgement code includes a group of information, which appears on the purchase acknowledgment document. This code can represent the reasons for a change of a purchase order.
Specifying criteria and criteria sets for requests for quotation

If you want to compare RFQ responses from different bidders, you can set up criteria for RFQs. RFQ criteria enable you to make a better deliberation in selecting a response.

You can compare the responses based on objective and subjective criteria. Objective criteria are criteria tracked by LN, while subjective criteria are user-defined criteria. When responses are evaluated, LN considers all objective and subjective criteria that are assigned to the responses. Based on user weightings, LN places the responses in order of favouritism (rank).

If you want to use criteria to evaluate responses, specify the criteria and their ratings as follows:

  1. Specify criteria sets in the RFQ Criteria Sets (tdpur1190m000) session. A criteria set is a list of request for quotation (RFQ) criterions that can be linked to an RFQ header. The responses are evaluated based on these criteria.
  2. Specify RFQ subjective criteria in the RFQ Subjective Criteria (tdpur1191m000) session. You must only define the subjective RFQ criteria, because the objective criteria are already predefined in LN.
  3. Put together a criteria set by linking criteria to a set in the Criteria Set - Criteria (tdpur1192m000) session. In this session, you must also indicate the importance of the several criteria by assigning weights to them.

  4. In the Criteria Set - Scoring Schemes (tdpur1193m000) session, assign objective values and subjective values to the criteria of the following types:

    • Quantity
    • Delivery Time
    • Subjective

After the objective values and subjective values are specified, you must assign scoring values to them in the Criteria Set - Scoring Schemes (tdpur1193m000) session. If you do not specify a scoring scheme for objective criteria, LN uses predefined system values.

Notes
  • LN always takes into account prices when comparing responses.
  • If the concerned bidder is selected for vendor rating, LN also takes into account vendor rating when comparing responses.
Specifying additional cost sets

Additional costs can be placed on an order as extra cost (items) after the last item recorded. Several additional cost items can be assigned to an order by bringing them together in a cost set. LN can automatically apply these cost sets to purchase orders.

For more information, refer to Additional costs on purchase orders.

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