Sales order and job date relationship

Kinetic ERP
1

We use Kinetic 2025.2 and have some questions on date relationships.

My understanding is When MRP creates an unfirm job from a Sales Order, it uses the “need by” date to populate the job’s “required by” date and the scheduling engine then backwards schedules from there taking go to account production standards, move/queue times etc.

Is this correct?

We have some saying it’s the ship by date on the Sales order that MRP uses to create the unfirm job required by date.

I’ve always been told that need by date drives demand and ship by is more of an internal date for

2

The ship by date drives demand dates and planning calculations. It will be used as the initial required by date on make direct jobs.

The need by is for reference purposes only.

8 Likes
3

And also, there is a Promise Date that was added to sales orders recently. That’s for reference only as well.

And MRP only uses the Ship By Date on the Release(s) for planning. It does not use the Ship By Date on the Sales Order Header or Line except as defaults when creating new releases.

3 Likes
4

Need By date does have some functionality beyond reference. It represents the date the item is intended to arrive at its destination.

It interacts with the Delivery Days and Periodicity settings on the Customer and Ship To Demand level. Entering in a Need By date will automatically set the Ship By based on these settings.

7 Likes
5

The original design (going back to the very amoebic beginnings of Epicor) is that when you receive a Sales Order, your customer tells you the date that THEY need it by. THAT is what “Need By” date is for. From there, you determine how long it takes you go ship it there once you’ve made it, subtract that number of days from the Need By date and you get the Ship By date. This is all on the Sales Order Header page before you even create any lines or releases.

Now you create a line with a part number. By default, the Need By and Ship By dates flow down to that line from the header. You can change them if you wish (maybe there are multiple lines with different need by and ship by dates). When you click SAVE on a line, it automatically creates Release 1 and flows down the Need By and Ship By dates from the line. Again, you can change them.

Since all production and other palaver needs to be completed before something can be shipped, MRP uses the Ship By date as the completion date for production.

The process is designed to flow from upper level (SO Header) all the way down to Production (Job).

6 Likes