Hi,
I wonder if other user work with PO’s for non-production related materials (in fact “costs”), like office supplies, cantine supplies, small tooling etc…
Do you create individual parts in Epicor and if so what pricing method is used?
I’m searching for a simple method…
Thanks!
Hi Mark,
We utilize the purchase to Other option on the PO for all non-production related costs. We have set up part classes which point to the appropriate expense account on the GL for these items (Office supplies, cutting tools, etc…). When entering a PO for any of these items choose the Other PO type, enter the part number as a Part On the Fly and select the appropriate Part Class. When these items are received the “costs” go directly to the expense account tied the the Part Class.
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When the Other PO type is selected simply type the desired part number and description in the Part fields. This allows for flexibility when ordering different products or services.
If it is something we purchased regularly we will create a part master partnum for it and enter in a primary supplier and a supplier price list.
If we want to manually track inventory and expense everything upon receipt we use the Other PO type as others have mentioned.
If we want epicor to track inventory and set a min and have PO suggestions run and notify a buyer to place a normal PO to stock then we do misc issue to relieve inventory. This is good because we only expense it as we use it.
Some expensive consumables we don’t want to expense immediately, and also want to control inventory.
Some inexpensive consumables we don’t care to count and track usage, so we just use the toilet paper method. “Tell someone we are getting low before we run out”
Opinion time: (Yes I have one)…
I have seen this done many ways, but the smoothest way to purchase repetitive supplies (things that you buy over and over again) is to create a specific part number for each supply. Optionally mark those items as Non-Quantity bearing so that inventory is not kept on hand. Assign a Part Class to that item that defines the GL account (Expense) that the item should be charged to…
- Part is Purchased - no need to enter a GL account… part number defines it
- Part is Received - GL is hit for the expense. Inventory is not retained because it is non-qty bearing
- Part purchase history is automatically retained by the system, showing how often you purchase “pencils”.
CONTROVERSIAL OPTION:
jump into the Way-Back machine… one day, my company ran out of a certain “supply” that literally shut down our operation. I get a call from the President of the company… “How can we make sure we never run out again?”. I suggested that we “Keep stock on hand” in the system of all office supplies, but put them into a special category. We can even set a Min/Max/Safety stock level against them. We can Cycle Count them. Hey… we can even charge the individual departments that Consume the supplies if we want. DISCLAIMER… these are still “Supplies” and should be EXPENSED upon receipt… but you can still keep track of the quantity on hand and their theoretical “value” for transferring the expense… So the way we did this, we created an expense account for the STOCKROOM SUPPLIES, and purchased all repetitive supplies to that account. As the supplies were consumed, they were “issued” to the department that needed them, moving the expense from STOCK to ENGINEERING dept. (if there was a cycle count adjustment, the stockroom was charged). As they were issued, MRP would see the qty on hand below min/safety and would suggest to the buyer to purchase more. We ended up with about 150 new part numbers for all the regular supplies we purchased… all the part numbers started with a prefix of “MD-” and MD-001 part number description was “Toilet Paper” ( https://www.mdtissue.com/) since it was the offending supply that we ran out of. We never ran out of toilet paper again… we never again had a mass exodus of the shop at break time because there was no toilet paper.
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Is a part on the fly always non qty bearing?