Restricted Purchases and Approved Vendors

The restricted purchases feature provides a flexible mechanism to manage vendor restrictions for purchasing items, which allows you to control vendor usage in standard purchase documents. Based on settings in the Item Card, you can choose which vendors are approved to purchase the item from, which documents have restrictions, and what level of restriction is required. The levels range from no restriction to prevention from adding the item to the designated purchase line.

In addition to adding items to a purchase line, the vendor approval settings are enforced when:

  • Creating a purchase order from a purchase quote.
  • Creating a purchase order from a blanket purchase order.
  • Releasing a purchase document.
  • Copying purchase lines.

Restricted purchases are defined via two settings in the Item Card: the Vendor Approval Code field (which opens the Item Vendor Approvals page) and the Approved checkbox in the Item Vendor Catalog. The Vendor Approval Code field is used to determine the action to take when an item is used in purchase documents for unapproved vendors and the Approved checkbox determines which vendors are approved to purchase the item from.

Once the Item Vendor Code field is filled with a restriction for an item, the restricted purchases feature is enforced, and therefore, approved vendors must be defined.

Note

This feature replaces the previous boolean-based restriction mechanism. To handle existing implementations, if at least one item exists with the old Use Only Approved Vendors field activated, a default record will be created with all actions set to Error. The code of this default record will be assigned to the Item Vendor Approval field for all items with an activated Use Only Approved Vendors field.

Item Vendor Approvals

In the Item Vendor Approvals page, you define the purchase documents that can be used with the item as well as the level of notification that can be added for vendors who are not approved. The notification levels are:

  • <blank>: All vendors are allowed for the respective purchase document type.
  • Message: A message is displayed if the vendor is not approved for the respective purchase document type. The user will need to click the OK button to close the message. This is only a warning; the item will be added to the purchase document.
  • Notification: A notification is displayed at the top of the page if the vendor is not approved for the respective purchase document type. This is only a warning; the item will be added to the purchase document.
  • Error: An error message is displayed if the vendor is not approved for the respective purchase document type and the item will not be added to the purchase document.

The Item Vendor Approvals page can be opened using the Tell Me feature or from the Vendor Approval Code field in the Replenishment FastTab of the Item Card.

To set up purchase document restrictions (Item Vendor Approval)

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Item Vendor Approvals, and then choose the related link.

  2. In the Code field, enter a unique identifier for the approval.

  3. In the Description field, enter a short description of the approval code.

  4. For each purchase document type, choose the level of notification/restriction that the user will receive when entering an unapproved vendor/item combination. If the notification is relevant for all documents, enter that in the All Documents field.

  5. Repeat steps 2-4 for all necessary purchase document restrictions.

    Examples

    • Purchase quotes can have unapproved vendors because a company is looking for a new supplier for the item. If the quote is returned with good pricing, the vendor could be changed to approved. Therefore, a code is created for Quotes using the Notification or Message option because the purchaser only needs to be alerted that the vendor is not approved when the purchase quote is created.
    • Purchase orders will always have an error if the vendor is not approved. Therefore, a code is created for Orders using the Error option. The error will be shown in the process of entering the item in the purchase order line; this includes creating the purchase order from the quote or blanket order.
    • A company doesn't allow any purchase documents to be created with unapproved vendors. Therefore, a code is created for All Documents using the Error option.

To assign purchase document restrictions to an item (Item Vendor Approval)

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Items, and then choose the related link.
  2. Locate the item that needs the vendor approval assignment.
  3. Expand the Replenishment FastTab.
  4. In the Vendor Approval Code field, choose the relevant code.

Assign Approved Vendors

Approved vendors are assigned in the Item Vendor Catalog. If an item has been set up with a vendor approval code, only the vendors assigned here will be considered as approved.

  1. In the Item Card, choose Purchases > Vendors on the Related menu.
  2. Fill in the Variant Code field if necessary.
  3. In the Vendor No. field, choose the approved vendor.
  4. Select the Approved checkbox.
  5. Repeat steps 2-4 for all approved vendors.

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