We have a compnay that has almost all materials setup as stock, however sometimes we want some of our job materials to bypass the warehouse and purchase them directly to the job (even if there is stock available). For example if we want a certain item but we require that item with a specific certificate.
What we usually do is that we select the specific part in the job and markt them as “Purchase Direct” and this works as you would expect. You get a purchase order suggestion regardless of stock and the item is puchased including the certificate which we mention in the comment section in job entry, so far so good.
However, when we release the job for picking we select all lines in the fulfillment workbench and reserve+release for picking. The wierd thing that happens here is when the item purchased direct is not yet delivered the quantity on stock gets reserverd and released for picking as well. I did not expect this to happen as that line has a linked purchase order and thus should never come from stock. And when the item gets issued there no longer is a requirement, yet there is a linked purchase order.
I don’t have the answer, but the behavior sounds like it is working as intended. Epicor is pretty flexible and I am sure there are some times when a company might want to allocate stock to a job because they want to get started even though they have the material on order. I would check and see if the Purchase Direct flag is available in the workbench and then filter that out so you don’t issue it.
Have you reported it to support yet? I would just to get an official answer from them that it is intended or a bug.
Thank you for the reponse.
I have not submitted this to support yet, to be honest, I have no idea how to contact them. This forum always seems to be at the top of google for all issues so I thought it to be the best place to start.
Regarding the possible intended behaviour, I would expect not, as that would create the possibility of ending up with orphaned purchase orders. If the job in question is completed it would no longer be possible to receive the purchase order as it would try to issue directly to a completed job. And if the job has not been completed yet, you will end up with a job with a issued qty greater than the required qty. Both situations sound like this should be prevented by design. If you want to be flexible, you still are somewhat, but you would have to change both the purchase order (change the line to stock) and the job (unselect purchase direct) which would make sense in my head.
The field “BuyIt” is not available in the fulfillment workbench (which is how the purchase direct field is called in job entry). The field “Buy to Order” is available in the workbench which is also wierd as buy to order order lines do not show up in fulfillment workbench at all. Which is actually how I would expect the jobs with the Purchase direct field selected to behave as wel.
@Mattheus , you make a good point about the job being closed, I had not thought of that angle. I still think Epicor would still say it is working as designed, but you bring up some good points. If you do submit a ticket and they say it is not a bug, it would make a good Idea to submit that I would vote for.