I am curious how others have the default buyer set up? In previous companies we used to have a buyer called default and was flagged as the system default. This way all system generated (or parts with no buyer) POs we assigned to the Default until a buyer picked up that PO and changed it to them. We had it set to a very low amount so someone could not process the PO as a Default.
The issue I am seeing now is the system default is a buyer with no limit so POs are not getting approvals. Red flag for me and I don’t think the buyers are changing the buyer name.
Do others do something similar or do you have a buyer flagged as the system default?
Default buyer has limit 0.01 to trigger PO approval for anything costing more than a penny.
Anyone needing to raise a Purchase Order is added as an authorized user to Level1 and ticked as default. As you go up the chain, there are fewer and fewer authorised users.
We found this easier to manage because we can add and remove authorised users from the buyers as and when needed. People changing roles, leaving roles etc.
So you never put a real name as the buyer? We have a similar hierarchy but the buyers represent someone specific. They aren’t generic. We want to be able to go back to someone specific. We just DMT authorized buyer changes when people come and go.
I made an actual buyer named, “New Parts”, and set that as the system default. PO limit is low and the approval person is the head of purchasing. All buyers are authorized users so they can see all the PO suggestions that come through and fix the parts as necessary.
Ian’s hierarchy should be an example in the user guide.
Exactly. That’s why the approval limit on the default buyer is low and the approval person is the boss. If the buyers forget to change it to their name for whatever reason it goes to boss for approval and he can handle it from there.
then set each part number buyer with your real person buyer unless you want a part to go to the default buyer then leave the buyer blank for this part and it should default from the parts part class buyer (ie default buyer).
POHeader.EntryPerson and changelog tracking captures the info we need if questions arise on
Who raised the PO?
Who made a change?
PO approvals
When it comes to PO approvals, you do lose the detail of who approved the PO if you only use the Date/User stamp button as it is. We trained out a process to add our initials to this and there was very little resistance as its only 2/3 letters. There’s probably something fancy I could do through app studio to add a button here but there hasn’t been a business case to justify it.
If we consider the work involved in the Purchase Order lifecycle:
PO suggestions are reviewed
Raising a purchase order
Sending the purchase order to the supplier
Tracking PO acknowledgements
Amending line quantities
Amending dates, splitting lines into multiple releases
The bulk of this day-to-day work is done by the non-senior staff. I need these employees to be able to go in and edit POs when needed, but I don’t want to give them a higher approval limit than is necessary.
We did use individual buyers for each user in the past, but it became a massive convoluted web of who was authorised for who. What happens when one buyer is promoted and given higher level of approval? Now everyone who was an authorised user has that access.
Having 1 default buyer also means we can view all of the PO suggestions and all Open POs in the Buyers Workbench in one place. We did not want constantly switch between buyers to see this info.
If your business is large enough where certain buyers are in charge of certain categories with no crossover, I would consider using default buyers for each category.
@imak, I’ve been wanting to reconfigure our buyers exactly as you’ve done, thanks for sharing your setup.
Anyone know if there are issues with this setup with multi-site?
To get the purchasing agent (a person)'s name, email address onto the PO… I suppose I could add custom fields to POHeader, assign agent email address via bpm. And to show their name instead of username. Maybe there is an easier way?
For the initialing process you use, that sounds like a simple BPM to stamp the user’s initials into the field upon approval.
Any other issues/problems having buyer groups instead of buyers being people?
