A PO user has joined a purchasing co-operative. Their PO's get sent to the co-op, and the co-op groups together the PO's from their members and forwards them to the various suppliers. The material and the invoice arrives from the various suppliers.

What's the best way to handle this in PO? They could issue the PO to the co-op and then when the material arrives change the vendor to the actual one, but that's a lot of work and the co-op is not really a vendor.

I would like the various suppliers to be the vendor, but for the PO to use the co-op's contact info.

Thanks

Steve

Steve:

"I would like the various suppliers to be the vendor, but for the PO to use the co-op's contact info."

That would be my preference also. Unfortunately there is no good way to do this in Adagio. We need to be able to default the Bill to/Ship to or Pickup Code to the vendor profile.

Depending upon what you are already using them for set up either a Bill-to or Pickup code to include the co-op details.

The best option is to either manually add one of these codes to each PO or default one in the template and remember to take it out on any PO not for the co-op.

Hi Steve,

What you appear to be looking for is Buying Group processing within Adagio. For yourself and all other resellers, we already have a proven solution.

We're assuming that the PO's arrive at the Co-op for the Various Suppliers from your client, and presumably even though the invoice comes from the supplier, your client will pay the Co-op for their invoice from the supplier. Most Co-ops or buying groups work like that. The supplier offers volume purchasing but they ship to various locations but get paid from the Co-op. Sort of like what Softrak had previously with DBP's and resellers acted as the buying group for the DBP's and themselves.

So you create your PO to the actual vendor as you have indicated but email to the co-op. The Co-op will make the Purchase Order up from all their co-op members and submit to the various vendor suppliers for the suppliers to drop ship to the co-op members. This is fairly simple. Use the Co-op Email address for the vendor's email address.

When the invoices come in, the users will match the PO's, and receipts and invoices, and post the invoices to the Payables under the vendor's account as normal. No changing of vendors or taking the long way home.

But then you use our Link2Systems' Link2Points as your buying group solution. We have buying groups using this solution for years. You set up all of the vendors that are part of the co-op buying group (one time), and process the posted vendor transactions in Link2Points. This will show you just the selected invoices under every co-op participating vendor (buying group), and allow you to transfer from the actual vendor to the co-op as the payment vendor. There are lots of options to select and transfer invoices to the buying group vendor. The solution creates offsetting batches in Adagio AP, that pays off the actual vendor and creates a transfer invoice under the co-op vendor in AP. Again very simple to use.

Then the users simply pay the co-op vendor with stub that lists all of the orginal vendor invoice details with original vendor name and invoice number showing amounts as payable to the co-op vendor.

Link2Points is used for a lot of credit card payments but the concept is that Visa or MasterCard or Amex is simply a buying group for all of the vendors that accept Visa or MasterCard or Amex. No different than building products, or office supplies, or co-op purchasing groups.

Link2Points lists for $2500 plus $500 annual maintenance. Installation, configuration and training is about 3 hours when done remotely. You can see details under http://www.link2systems.com/link-to-points. We can install remotely for you at your client(s).

Let us know if you need any more details. It's a sweet and proven solution for clients with buying groups, using Adagio as a distribution solution.

Best,
Brian

Hi Steve,

Just for clarification, Link2 Points is actually $1,800 plus $300/year annual maintenance. Installation, configuration and training costs are in addition to that price and are billed hourly. As Brian mentioned above it normally takes about 3 hours.

Lauren