The Consolidate Requests feature enables purchase orders to be raised to meet product requests.

Product requests primarily arise from stock and price records being flagged as Enable RTP.

Product requests can also arise from: the inclusion of Text type items on a sales order; in-house requests for products being entered using the Request to Purchase function; the replenishment of stock to minimum or maximum stock levels as defined in the stock record.

The Consolidate Requests wizard brings all these purchase requests together, so that they can be combined as appropriate and purchase orders raised for the required quantities. You retain control over which orders to raise, when to raise them, for what quantity and from which Supplier.

You should be aware that Settlement Discounts are excluded from the calculation of VAT on Purchase Order and Credit Note detail lines, Requests, and Consolidated Requests so that VAT is correctly calculated when payment is made. See VAT on Settlement Discounts.

Back to back ordering is initiated by a tick being placed in the BTB tick-box on the detail line of a sales order.

The BTB tick-box is available for:

If you are using the Works Order module, assembly type stock items that are usually manufactured will have the BTB option available as a drop-down menu option.

Ticking the BTB tick-box, or selecting BTB for an assembly item, will create a product request that can be converted to a purchase order using the Consolidate Requests wizard.

When you notice that stock, or non-stock items, need re-ordering, you can create a request to purchase for these products. This is done using the Request to Purchase function opened from Purchase Requests.

You only have to enter a description of the product and the quantity required when you create the request; the request then acts as a reminder to re-stock.

If they are available, the stock code, price and supplier details can be entered when the request to purchase is created.

However, purchase requests can be entered in outline, e.g. Hard wearing fabric for seat covers, so that the best stock item, supplier and price can be added when the requests are converted to purchase orders using the Consolidate Requests feature .

Requests created using the Request to Purchase function can be found and edited in the Purchase Requests batch. This batch is only used for editing or deleting purchase requests, no processing is carried out. All the processing is carried out by the Consolidate Requests wizard.

Product requests can be created to replenish stock to minimum or maximum stock levels as defined in the Stock record; this is part of the Consolidate Requests wizard. Stock levels are examined and product requests are created to bring stock levels to the selected level.

Requests to purchase stock can be created from the Works Order Control window for components and assemblies. The requests can then be converted to purchase orders from the Consolidate Requests wizard.

Purchase Requests can be printed from the All Orders Transaction report.

The Consolidate Requests wizard is opened from the Transactions menu.

The wizard will help you to select the requests that are to be converted to purchase orders. These requests can be grouped together enabling you to create larger orders, possibly taking advantage of better prices for bulk ordering.

User Budget

Purchase orders created using the Consolidate Requests function are processed from the purchase order batch in the same way as purchase orders entered directly from the Purchase Order input window.

See Orders/ Deliver Orders/Invoice Orders.

When processing from the batch, you can select to display Orders Waiting (BTB/RTP) to locate orders created using the Consolidate Requests wizard.

The Orders Waiting function can be used to see the sales orders for which the purchase order has been created.

Once stock has been received, you can use the Customer information on the Orders Waiting window to contact the Customer by telephone or to send a Goods in Stock letter.

Allocation or delivery of stock to the Customer, can be activated from this window.

Enable RTP can be selected on Stock records and SOP and POP Price records.

If ticked, Sales Order Detail lines for the Stock or Price item, will display the BTB tick-box.

If the BTB option is ticked, it flags the detail line as a "back-to-back" order item and a request to purchase will be created.

The request to purchase can be converted to a purchase order, or be included as part of a larger purchase order, on the Consolidate Requests window.

Minimum and Maximum Stock Levels can be entered for any stock record.

These levels can be used to create a request to purchase to bring the stock level to the minimum or maximum.

These requests will be marked as STK.

This functionality is found on the Consolidate Requests Selection window and can only be used with stock records that have minimum and maximum level.

When entering Purchase Orders, the system will calculate and print a Required by Date using the normal or urgent lead times entered in your system settings. See Purchase Order Options.

Lead times for individual suppliers can be entered on the Terms window of the Supplier record. If the Supplier's record contains a lead time, this will be used to calculate the required by date in place of the delivery times set in System Control.

See Purchase Order Options for delivery lead times and Purchase Control settings.

There is a System option to suppress the printing of purchase orders when creating them from the consolidate requests wizard - see Documents.

There are Security Profile settings to Enable or Disable the following options available within the Consolidate Requests wizard.