A client is setting up PO to work with Inventory.

They purchase the same item from two different vendors at different times at two different costs. When entering a new PO, they want the default cost to be the last cost for that vendor.

So say they bought item A at $10.00 from Vendor X, then later at $11.00 from Vendor Y, and now they want to buy from Vendor X again. They want $10.00 to appear as the default cost.

I know there is something about using Alternate Price Lists that might be useful, but I have been fooling around with it and can't get it to work right.

Can somebody explain how to do this?

Another issue: They have standard instructions that they put on a PO to explain to the vendor what to do with each item prior to shipping it. They have been using the four lines of additional comments on the item master, and then recalling those comments into the PO. It works well. The problem is that when they purchase the same item from a different vendor, the instructions are different (for the same item). They have to override the original instructions, and that is subject to user error. Is there a better way to handle this?

Steve

Steve:

I've never used it but there is a feature in PO called Contract pricing. This feature should allow you to maintain pricing by vendor. You might want to check with SOftrak to see if this feature will survive the transition to their PO replacement.

You should be able to use Alternative price lists. I've used this to maintain costs in US Dollars for my Canadian based multi-currency clients, but then this is only a single price list for all vendors. There is an option in PO Company Profile Interface Options Tab called 'Use IC alternative price lists'. In Payables you can assign price lists to vendors (hopefully this is not a multi-currency only option).

I'm not aware of any way to make the item specific instructions variable by vendor.

Hi Doug

Thanks for the reply. I tested the Alternate Price List functionality and it didn't work for me. I wonder if anyone (including Softrak) has tested it out. For one thing, the Alternate Price List screen doesn't have a most recent cost field, only a field called "markup cost". Or am I missing something?

Softrak - is the Contract pricing functionality that Doug mentions a possibility?

Steve

Hi, Steve,

The Contract Pricing function allows sites to set time sensitive pricing by vendor. You can assign an expiry date to it and also link it to an event budget. It's sort of like Special Prices in OE. It should probably survive the transaction.

The 'Use IC alternative price lists' is not restricted to MultiCurrency datasets.