Usage

Generate Purchase Reminders¶

A common flow for a purchase process is the following:

A Purchase Order is created. The lines of the order have an Expected Receipt Date
The order is send to the Vendor
The company receives an order confirmation from the Vendor and the Promised Receipt Date in the Purchase Order is updated.
When to goods are not received on time, the company wants to contact the Vendor and request a new receipt date. This part of the process is where the Purchase Reminders functionality of the Apportunix Purchase Reminders functionality is valuable!

To generate the Purchase Reminders search for Create Purchase Reminders in the Tell-Me function:

This will open the following request page:

The fields Promised/Expected Receipt Date before are filled in based on the setting Remind Promised/Expected Receipt Date Formula in the Purchase Reminders Setup. In our case, the Work Date is set to 25-01-2024 and the date formula is set to -1D. Therefore, reminders will be created for all purchase order lines that have an expected receipt date on or before the 24th of January, and have not been fully received yet. When Purchase Order Lines with these conditions have been found, a Purchase Reminder will be created. A message box will appear to inform the user about the number of reminders that have been created:

Open the Purchase Reminders¶

To look up the generated document(s), search for Purchase Reminders in the Tell-Me box:

This will open the list of reminders that have not been issued yet:

You can open the reminder by clicking the Purchase Reminder No. This reminder can still be modified to your convenience: lines might be deleted or added to the reminder by using the Process action or the standard BC delete functions. On the lines there are two extra fields added.

Exclude from Purch. Reminder until Date The line will not be added to the purchase reminder document until this date is passed
Exclude from Purch. Reminder The line will not be added to the purchase reminder when this is activated

These fields are also editable on the Purchase Order. You can enter an exclude date or activate Exclude from Purch. Reminder. The available functions in the Purchase Reminder are comparable to other document pages in BC. You can add attachments, comments, navigate or print a layout that you can send to your vendor. From the Reminder Line you can navigate to the related Purchase order.

As can be seen by the example above, the layout is created to combine multiple orders on one reminder; you want to send the vendor only one document containing an overview of all the delayed order lines. Also the excluded line is not shown on the document. The flow for the Purchase Reminders documents is comparable to the Financial Reminders. Until the reminders are issued it remains a proposal, that can be modified or deleted. When the user has finalized the Purchase Reminders, the Purchase Reminder can be issued by clicking the action Process ➔ Issue.

Issuing Purchase Reminders¶

This will open the following request page:

The user has the option to print or email the document and to replace the Document Date (when desired), using the default Business Central functionality. When the processing is done, the user will be notified about the number of Issued Purchase Reminder documents that have been created. For now, it is only possible to leave the option of print open or choose Print. The option Email will be available in an next app update.

Issued Purchase Reminders¶

When Issued Purchase Reminders have been created, these can be found by searching for Issued Purchase Reminders in the Tell-Me box:

This will open the list of Issued Purchase Reminders:

In general, a Purchase Reminder should be issued, before it is send to the Vendor. Now, you wait for the Vendor to reply with a (new) Promised Receipt Date. When you open an Issued Purchase Reminder you can see the possibilities it offers:

(Header) New Promised Receipt Date: When you enter a date in this field, this field will be the default value for all the lines in the Issued Purchase Reminder. This is useful in a case where the most lines get the same date. When the user enters a date in this field, the Expected Receipt Dates in the related Purchase Orders will be updated accordingly.
(Header) New Promise Date: This date can be regarded as the Document Date of the Issued Purchase Reminders. This is the date the Vendor has send the new confirmation and can be used for reporting (and is updated in the Issued Purchase Reminder Lines as well).
(Header) New Promised Exists: When entered a New Promised Receipt Date this field will change to Yes.
(Header) Fully Promised: After entering a New Promised Receipt Date you will need to Process this new date by running the action Process New Promises, this will change the field Fully Promised to Yes and the field New Promises Exist will change back to No. This will allow you to process new dates again when necessary.

Skip reminders for already confirmed orders¶

On the (Issued) Purchase Reminder line you have the option to Exclude from Purchase Reminder - until Date, when the option is checked or the date filled in, the line will be removed when processing or printing/sending the document.

Update Vendor Order No.¶

To update the Vendor Order No. of the related Purchase Order from an Issued Purchase Reminder, you need to

Open an Issued Purchased Order
Select the line of the Issue Purchase Order of which Purchase Order you want to update the Vendor Order No.
Press Update Vendor Order No. from the action ribbon of the lines

Enter the new Vendor Order No. and press OK

The Vendor Order No. of the related Purchase Order No. has been updated

Purchase Orders¶

On the Purchase Order Line four fields are added.

Issued Reminder Lines: This will indicate how many times a reminder of the line is send to the vendor.
Promise Lines: Will indicate how many times the purchase order line has been promised by the vendor.
Exclude from Purch. Reminder until Date: The line will not be added to the purchase reminder document until this date is passed
Exclude from Purch. Reminder: The line will not be added to the purchase reminder when this is activated

Last update: August 2, 2024