Yes, I opened a case with Epicor. No luck figuring this out yet. The tech I am dealing with doesn’t seem to have any idea how this is supposed to work. That’s why I figured I would try the User Help Forum.
Jackie
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Yeah, support is a place to start but can be hit & miss.
Wonder if it might be possible to build a BAQ based on the supplier selection hierarchy above? i.e. pull suppliers that “should” apply to your part numbers and then compare those to the actual suppliers on your suggestions?
Also, would be curious if the Purchase Adviser might give any clues on parts where you are seeing issues?
Someone knows how it works there… I just wish we could get connected with them quicker.
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I have never looked at the logs with “Generate Suggestions,” but does it, by any chance, walk you though the logic of how it picks a supplier?
Jackie,
Take a look at the MRP Technical Reference Guide (page 220 of the 2021.1 version) and it explains the logic in the Logic/Algorithms section and it also gives an example.
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Where could I find the Technical Reference Guide?
Thank you!
The Technical Reference Guide isn’t really helpful. It only says for our instance, “4. If the Purchasing Supplier field is blank, either use the Supplier value on the last purchase order or the
Supplier value on the supplier price list.” There is no indication of how the system chooses a supplier if there are multiple Supplier Price Lists for a part. It also doesn’t really say inactive suppliers or suppliers without approved Supplier Price Lists are excluded, but I would sure have thought that would make sense?!
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It will use the supplier price list with the earliest effective date that hasn’t expired.
I have seen PO suggestions for inactive vendors before. Why makes no sense but there you go. I would remove that part from the Supplier Price list and see if that makes a difference.
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There you go Matt. @Facebraith what happens if you remove that part from the supplier price list even if it is inactive?
We haven’t yet tried to add an expiration date or delete the Supplier Price File record. This issue impacts hundreds of parts that were returned to our inventory upon termination of a distributor relationship, so it will take a little work to modify all those records. But this is a bigger concern than one supplier. In all practicality, Epicor PO Suggestions should ignore suppliers marked inactive and suppliers with no approved Price List parts. How can we know it is selecting the desired suppliers for any new purchases?
I just came across this same situation with a client. I had done the “logical” (in my mind) steps that others did - Inactivate the Supplier, un-Approved the Supplier, deleted them as an Approved Supplier, etc. But then I tried the 2 suggestions above; add an Expiration Date to the Supplier Price List and/or delete the Supplier Price List I found the following results. Adding an Expiration Date did not affect the PO Suggestion but deleting the Supplier Price List for that part did work. THAT is the logic that PO Suggestions is using.
In my opinion, since you can’t enter a manual PO for an un-Approved Supplier that, in and of itself, should be the same criteria that disallows PO Suggestions from generating. IMO this is a flaw/bug.
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