Can anyone advise the logic Epicor uses to identify the supplier on New PO Suggestions? We have a large group of parts that are using a supplier that is not only inactive in Supplier Maintenance, but the supplier is also not “approved” for the parts on any of the Supplier Price Lists. Moreover, all of those parts have been purchased before and also most recently from currently active suppliers that are approved on the Supplier Price Lists. Why is Epicor somehow choosing the one supplier that is inactive, unapproved and not the last supplier used for purchases for this group of parts?
First place I would check is the Sites tab on Part Maintenance… make sure there is not a default supplier set.
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Good thought, but we do not use the Primary Supplier feature for any parts, so that is not driving the suppliers pulled onto New PO Suggestions.
Also there is a setting in Company configuration > MRP > Skip last PO supplier.
Yes, we are using that setting – box is checked. So based on Epicor, that should mean PO Suggestions pull in an approved supplier and not necessarily the last supplier purchased from. But it is not working that way. Trying to figure out how the system is identifying what suppliers it is targeting.
Site & that checkbox are the only items I am aware of. Can you post screen shot of part/site & PO suggestion
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Sorry, Matt, but I am not sure what you are looking for. Would those screen shots help identify what logic/algorithm Epicor is using to select a supplier for PO Suggestions?
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The checkbox in company config and the supplier items (bottom two arrows) are the only place I am aware to set supplier when MRP runs
PO Sug may shed some light on the issue
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time phase as well
Screen shots below. As I indicated, we do not use the Primary Supplier function, so there are no suppliers referenced on our Part Maintenance screens. The PO Suggestion for this part is pulling from an existing Supplier Price File, but it is not approved. In fact, the supplier is inactive in our system.
Enter an expiration date on ROFA price list. Even if you have other price lists with more current Effective dates, PO suggestions will always use the oldest effective date/supplier until it’s expired. I’d set it to 10/9/2020 just to be sure.
All the items you’ve posted would say not to raise a PO suggestion against that vendor. Now making guesses as to why there is an issue - have you run a PO Suggestion regen?
Good question. Per an old knowledgebase doc. I have, this should be the Supplier selection hierarchy for PO Suggestions.
- Supplier on PartPlant (part master → Sites → Detail sheet)
- Supplier for the most recent PO for this part.
- Supplier Price break with latest effective dates)
— If multiple suppliers with the same effective dates…
— Supplier with lowest VendorNum will be used
(e.g. effective dates are the same for VendNums 2, 4 and 6
then VendNum 2 will be used)
TBD if this is still accurate and/or whether one of the steps above is not verifying whether suppliers are active/approved?
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We regenerate Suggestions every night, and it continues to come up with the same puzzling supplier assignments.
I realize we can expire or even delete the Supplier Price Lists that are pulling wrong and that will eliminate the problem. But we shouldn’t have to, right? The question remains, what logic is being used to identify a supplier in a Suggestion? How can we know Epicor is pulling the right suppliers consistently?
Have you tried opening a case with Epicor?
They should at least be able to verify how supplier selection is “supposed” to work, and let you know if any bugs have been reported.
On a good day, support might even be able to help with some troubleshooting.