I would like some clarification on how PO Dates are intended to be used within Epicor. We have been traditionally setting a Due Date on a PO and then sending this off to the supplier for confirmation. We would set this Due Date based on PO suggested need by date. (Can be problematic if you allow for historical dates to be used when the MRP runs). Either way, we would receive an expected delivery date from the supplier and use that as the Promise Date. We would manually also adjust the Due Date to match the initial confirmed date from the supplier since that is when we expect the line/release to actually arrive.
Does the MRP/Time-Phase Inquiry look at PO Due Dates to understand when something is arriving and ignore the Promise Date field altogether?
In other words, if you failed to adjust the Due Date to reflect reality of when something should be expected to arrive, would this impact MRP’s understanding/misguide MRP?
Yes. Its very frustrating because what is even the point of the promise date field if you have to update the due date anyway? I don’t understand the thought process.
Promise date is a glorified CONFIRMED box. Does nothing outside of telling you that the supplier has given you a date.
Due date is always the field you need to update. If you’ve asked for the PO to deliver on the 10th, but the supplier says 11th, always update the Due date otherwise it will mess with MRP, Time Phase etc.
It’s one of those situations where it clear that person who designed the promise date/due date rule has clearly never worked a day in supply chain. You cannot measure supplier lead times since every PO is now arriving “on time” because we’re forced to update the due date.
If your business needs to measure supplier performance such as OTIF, lead times etc, I’d recommend adding a UD field to POHeader and asking your buyers to use this to record their original requested due date.
Most customers use three dates to manage suppliers: the date you want it, the date the supplier says you can have it, and when you get it. Ideally, you should monitor the date the supplier says you can have it, versus the date you get it.
Epicor doesn’t help with this; the due date is used by MRP to determine availability, and should be maintained, however to change it, you have to unaprove, change and re-approve the PO, which is time consuming.
A common customisation is to store the first promise date in a UD field, and then store the last date the releases was closed and use this to measure supplier performance.
Along side this an updatebale dashboard (with some code to handle the unreleased etc) to allow the management of the due date.
So, my understanding is there is no way around having to Unapprove your PO to make a Due Date update to reflect when something is expected to arrive (Keeping your MRP current), leaving you to re-approve it later. And essentially, the Promise Date field is not used at all by Epicor. It’s merely just a date to show when the supplier promised to deliver?
I feel like I should make an Epicor idea to allow changing of Due Dates without needing to unapprove/re-approve your PO. Thoughts? Who would vote for that?
