In order entry, a user is able to enter Part/Rev and Description which don’t exist in part master. This non existing part in master causes invoicing/billing issues. I have several questions on the part and customer part entries for a sales order line:
(1) Why does Epicor allow a user to input a non existing part?
(2) For an existing part in master, there is a description for each part already. What the description entry in a sales order line is used for?
(3) What the Customer part is used for?
(1) There are many organizations that don’t require a Part Master record for everything they sell. It may be a one-off item that you’ll never make again, it may be a configured item, or any number of other reasons. (2) When a part number exists in the Part Master, it is required to have a description. If you create a Sales Order Line for a non-existing part, you are required to enter a Description on the Sales Order Line. That description, whether you type it in or it comes from the Part Master, appears on the Sales Order Acknowledgement, Packing Slip, and AR Invoice. (3) If your customer has their own part number that cross-references to yours, you can show that by entering their cross-reference part number in the Customer Part field.
When you’re in the Order Entry program on the Lines tab, if you click inside the Customer Part field and then go to Help > Field Help you’ll get a good description of how that field is used. You can do that with any of the fields on the form.
Our company has a BPM that doesn’t allow an order to be closed until the part exists. We allow the part to be entered, then wait for the part to be entered in Parts.
Looks like I mis-remembered which area the check was done, it’s done when the order is created from an opportunity/quote. So it would be before invoicing. For this pre-proccessing BPM we just set the button value to the quote number, then did custom code:
Thanks!! Unfortunately we don’t use the quoting module yet. I’m going to see if I can convert that use invoicing though. Do you push a button to run the code and process the quote?
as @MLamkin said, companies that want to disallow this FEATURE of Epicor will typically create a BPM to prohibit it. If you are getting an error during shipping/invoicing when using a Part On The Fly (POTF) that does not exist in the part master, then you should report it to Tech Support.
Just a warning? You could check that in a Preprocessing Method Directive attached to Update. That will check when they save the Order. (no extra button required). What we do instead is use an Order Deal Sheet (embedded dashboard) which shows all the data and highlights in Red, the part numbers that don’t exist in Parts. That way they know which ones will reject eventually, if not fixed. (usually the people entering the parts are not the same ones that use them on orders)
