Purchase orders in Manu Online are used to procure materials and other items from suppliers. While they resemble sales orders in appearance, there is a fundamental difference in data entry. Manu Online’s real-time planning system, known as MRP, determines the materials needed to fulfill demand from sales orders and open production work orders.
This planning system is most effective when real-time data is accurate, but it is not mandatory to follow. As a buyer, you have flexibility—you can adjust order quantities, modify delivery dates based on supplier availability, or make other changes as needed. Various factors influence planning calculations to align with real-world manufacturing needs, including preferred suppliers, preferred item manufacturers, package sizing, and economic order quantities.
The most benefit is received from Manu Online when purchase items are "added" in bulk to purchase orders instead of being "entered" one by one.
Create a purchase order
Go to the Purchase menu and press Create a New Purchase Order
A new, empty purchase order is created.
There is the option to either enter the supplier or start entering lines.
Select the supplier
Click the [...] next to the supplier and choose a supplier from the list by clicking the arrow in the Select column. Optionally filter the list to find the correct supplier. It is also possible to create a new supplier from here if your use has the rights to create partners. After selecting a supplier you are returned to the purchase order screen.
Add lines from planning
In this case let's use the Add lines button to see what the is being planned for this supplier.
In this walk through, we have not set up the relationships between items and OEM manufacturer part numbers or the relationship between OEM manufacturers and suppliers, so no planning is shown. Delete the name of the supplier (Supplier01) from the Supplier short name, and press Retrieve, so it is not filtered for items mapped to this supplier and it will display all planned purchasing.
Note that demand is divided by the source of the demand. This can be from a sales order line or a top level work order, or both. If the same items are selected from this list, by default they will be combined onto one line of the purchase order.
Use other filters such as required date or project to optimise your purchasing to best fit your operations.
Select the lines (or select all from the top checkbox) and press Save to add them to the purchase order.
Enter pricing information (there are settings to control how this can be made automatically).
The order is now at a minimum level ready to be activated. More details can be seen from other tabs. Data such as payment terms is inherited from the partner card but can be adjusted here by going to the Header tab.
Activating the order
Press Activate to activate the order. There will be confirmation prompt.
Activation will do the following:
- Check the order for the minimum data integrity.
- Allocate the next PO number.
- Fill in today as the order date, if not specified
- Update the planning so that this demand is being fulfilled.
- Change the status to Active
Open the PO report or send it to the supplier
Send the purchase order to the supplier. As with the sales order, check the envelope box top right and then choose the Purchase order.
The supplier's email will be prefilled by default if it is available from the partner card.
Receipt notification
It is possible to set a "Receipt notification". This will trigger an alert to this email when the items are received by your warehouse staff.