Challenge:

It is not uncommon for an organization to want to estimate purchasing / spend requirements for an upcoming period of time. This can be achieved in Mainsaver by effective use of queries and reports.

Methodology:

Many times organizations want to know an estimated dollar amount of upcoming spending for the upcoming month or period of time. This can be achieved by utilizing 3 functions in Mainsaver Purchasing.

(1) Required Date or Promised Date on the PO,
(2) Building a query against open purchase orders,
(3) Use of the PO Backlog Report. Details of setting this up are below.

(1) Using the Required or Promised Date field.
Either the Required Date field or Promised Date field can be used for this exercise. In this example we will use the promised date field. On all newly created PO’s, be sure to enter the date that the vendor has promised delivery.

(2) Build a query on the Purchase Order table view to display all open purchase orders with a promise date less than a specified date. An example of this type query is given below. Note, this query may need to be modified if you are NOT diligent about closing POs that have been received/invoiced.

Running the query in the PO table view should result in all open Purchase Orders with a promised date less than the date specified.

(3) Run the Purchase Order Backlog Report.
On the PO ribbon menu, select the Purchase Order Backlog from the “Lists” menu drop down. Since items run out of the Lists menu are applied only to those displayed in the table view, a list of undelivered line items will be displayed for purchase orders expected by the Promised Date. Outstanding quantity and costs will be displayed for each line item, with a grand total of expected costs at the bottom of the report.

Benefit:

Mainsaver Users can estimate the amount of PO spend expected through a future date.