Purchase Order & Inventory Transfer Automation for Epicor Prophet 21

Help P21 Determine What to Buy, Where It's Needed and How to Get It There

Purchasing inventory is only part of the challenge.

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You also need to determine what to buy, how much to buy, which location needs it and whether purchasing more inventory is even the right answer.

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Sometimes the best decision is a new purchase order.

Sometimes inventory already exists at another warehouse and should simply be transferred.

And sometimes the right approach is to buy in bulk at a central location and automatically distribute inventory after it arrives.

MindHARBOR develops purchase order and inventory transfer automation for Epicor Prophet 21 around your purchasing strategy, warehouse structure and business rules.

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From Inventory Need to the Right Action

The goal isn't simply to create POs faster.

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It's to help your purchasing team make better use of the information already available in P21 and reduce the repetitive work involved in turning those decisions into transactions.

ANALYZE → RECOMMEND → REVIEW → PURCHASE → RECEIVE → TRANSFER

A custom workflow can use P21 inventory, usage, backorder, on-order and related data to help determine what inventory is needed and where it should ultimately go.

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Start With the Information Your Buyers Already Use

Purchasing decisions rarely depend on a single number.

Depending on your business rules, a custom P21 workflow can consider information such as:

• Current quantity available by location

• Open sales orders and backorders

• Existing purchase orders and quantities already on order

• Historical usage and sales demand

• Minimum and maximum stocking levels

• Order points

• Supplier lead times and required dates

• Pack sizes, purchase UOMs and minimum order quantities

• Customer-defined usage factors or planning horizons

• Location priorities and transfer availability

The solution can bring the relevant information together and calculate or display recommended quantities for the buyer to review.

Purchase Centrally. Distribute Automatically.

For companies using a centralized purchasing model, the purchasing requirement may span several warehouses even though the supplier order is placed through one location.

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A custom workflow can consolidate those requirements into a central bulk purchase order while retaining the intended destination and quantity for each location.

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When qualifying PO lines are received, the stored allocation instructions can then be used to create the required inventory transfers.

That means a buyer can purchase efficiently in bulk without losing sight of where the inventory ultimately belongs.

Or Purchase Directly for Each Location

A central PO followed by transfers isn't always the best answer.

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If a supplier can ship directly to individual warehouses, or if the business wants to reduce unnecessary internal transfers, the workflow can instead create location-specific purchase orders.

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Selected items can be grouped by destination location and presented for final review before the applicable POs are created.

Same purchasing requirement.

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Different fulfillment strategy.

Purchase It — Or Transfer What You Already Have?

This is where the workflow can become much more useful than simply automating PO entry.

Before buying more inventory, the process can consider whether another location already has stock available.

Depending on your rules, the appropriate action might be:

• BUY DIRECT — Purchase inventory specifically for the location that needs it.

• TRANSFER — Reposition available inventory from another warehouse instead of purchasing more.

• BULK BUY — Consolidate purchasing at a central location when supplier economics or purchasing strategy favor it, then distribute inventory after receipt.

• REVIEW — Present the recommendation to a buyer before creating anything.
   

The logic can be designed around how your company wants those decisions made.

Give Buyers Recommendations — Not More Screens to Manage

Automation doesn't have to remove the buyer from the process.

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A practical first step may be to use P21 data and your purchasing rules to calculate recommended PO or transfer quantities, then allow the buyer to review and approve those recommendations before transactions are created.

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The workflow can provide a guided interface for entering purchasing criteria, reviewing eligible supplier items, examining inventory information and allocating quantities across locations.

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As confidence in the rules grows, selected processes can potentially move toward greater automation.

Start With Review. Automate What Proves Itself.

We don't have to jump from manual purchasing directly to a fully automated system. A phased approach can initially create recommendations or transactions in a review/unapproved state so your team can validate the results.

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Once the business rules have been tested and approved, qualifying scenarios can move toward greater automation.

That might eventually include automatically creating purchase orders, automatically generating transfers, or both.

Automate the repeatable decisions. Keep people involved where judgment matters.

Automate Transfers After Receiving

Purchasing isn't finished when the PO arrives. In a centralized purchasing model, received inventory may still need to be distributed among multiple warehouses.

The workflow can retain location-allocation instructions with the PO and evaluate them when qualifying lines are received.

Required transfers can then be queued and consolidated by destination where appropriate, allowing multiple received items to be included on the same transfer.

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That helps connect the entire process: Need → Purchase → Receipt → Distribution

instead of treating each step as an unrelated manual transaction.

Built Around Your Purchasing Strategy

• There isn't one correct purchasing model for every Prophet 21 customer.

• Your organization may prefer centralized purchasing.

• Another may purchase independently by warehouse.

• Some businesses may want buyers to approve every recommendation.

• Others may eventually want proven scenarios to run automatically.

MindHARBOR can design the workflow, calculations, screens and level of automation around your purchasing strategy, warehouse structure and operational requirements rather than forcing the business into a fixed purchasing model.

Want to Take the Decision Logic Further?

Once the underlying purchasing and transfer workflow is working, additional intelligence can potentially be layered into the process.

For example, a future phase could evaluate historical P21 purchasing and sales activity to identify seasonality, demand peaks, demand dips and other trends that may improve purchasing recommendations.

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Forecasts can also be compared with actual historical results before they're relied upon operationally.

Those capabilities don't need to be part of the first project.

They're simply another road available once the underlying data, workflow and business rules are solid.

You Don't Have to Automate Everything

• Maybe buyers are spending too much time manually creating repetitive POs.

• Maybe you're buying centrally but manually creating transfers after receiving.

• Maybe one warehouse is buying inventory while another already has excess stock.

• Maybe determining purchasing quantities requires jumping between too many P21 screens and spreadsheets.

• Or maybe your existing process works — it just requires too much human effort to keep it working.

• That's enough of a problem to start with.

Bring Us Your P21 Purchasing & Inventory Challenge

Show us how your team determines what to buy today, how inventory gets allocated between locations and where the repetitive work happens.

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We'll help look for opportunities to simplify the process, improve purchasing decisions and automate the transactions that make sense.