How do I handle daily order advice in an interbranch environment?

This document describes the daily use of order recommendations in an interbranch situation. Order recommendations are used in interbranch to combine purchase orders from individual branches into 1 order recommendation. The individual purchase orders are then closed and a total order recommendation is used to show what the branches actually want to order.

Once an order recommendation is processed, purchase orders are created at the individual branches, or a total purchase order is created at the main branch. This may vary depending on the supplier and depends on the setting 'Interbranch ordering method'. With this setting, it can be indicated whether standard ordering is done centrally or decentrally. With a central setting, when processing an order recommendation, 1 central purchase order will be created and 'Order by supplier' EDI messages will be sent back to the branches for which articles are ordered.

With a 'Decentral' setting, purchase orders are created at all individual branches when processing an order recommendation.

Of course, it is possible to deviate from this central/decentral setting for specific suppliers. In the maintenance of a supplier in the 'Interbranch' tab, it can be specified per branch that the standard interbranch ordering method should be deviated from.If, for example, 'central' is ordered by default and a different interbranch is added for a specific location at a supplier, orders for that supplier and location will be made 'Decentralized'. This results in a purchase order at that location itself.

Generating a purchase advice can be done by going to Start, Purchase Advice, Generate Purchase Advice. It is possible to generate a purchase advice for all suppliers that require products, but it is advisable to generate a purchase advice per supplier. The reason for this is that it is not possible to process a portion of a purchase advice.

Furthermore, it is important to know that the data in a purchase advice is 'Frozen'. The key figures such as the stock of a product at a location, the excess stock, number sold, etc. will not be updated within that advice after generating it!

The generated purchase advice can now be opened. It is then possible to adjust the number of pieces to be ordered per product per location in the 'Ordered quantity' column. The supplier can also be changed, provided that the product is also available from other suppliers (including interbranch suppliers). The Enter key or arrow keys can be used to jump to the next line. Once the last line is reached, RetailVista will automatically move on to the next product.

With the 'Delete' button on the above line, it is also possible to completely remove an order for this product for the specified location. The 'New line' button can also be used to add new lines, for example, to order a product (also) from an interbranch or to retrieve a previously deleted line.

If all quantities to be ordered are correct, the purchase advice can finally be processed.By performing these actions, purchase orders are created that still need to be sent. It depends on the settings described in QA310 whether the ordering is done centrally or decentrally, and therefore on which locations the purchase orders will be created.

Document QA312 describes a number of additional actions that will be used less frequently for purchase advice, but it is certainly useful to know about their existence.