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Automatic Release Generation

You can minimize purchase order administrative costs by automatically creating releases for both manually entered and imported requisitions.

Purchasing provides you with the features you need to satisfy the following basic needs. You should be able to:

Major Features

Flexible Sourcing Definitions

When you are defining your sourcing rules and Approved Supplier List entries, you can also define how you want your releases generated. Automatic Release automatically converts approved requisition lines to approved blanket purchase releases based on the sourcing rules and Approved Supplier List entries. Automatic Release/Review automatically converts approved requisition lines to blanket releases. Buyers can then review and modify these releases before approving them. Release Using Autocreate lets buyers use the AutoCreate Documents window to collect, review, and optionally modify requirements before creating and approving their releases. See: Autocreating Documents Overview.

You can define a different release generation method for each item and supplier. For frequently purchased items, you can set up Purchasing to automatically create and approve releases. For expensive or critical items, you can let Purchasing create the releases, while you review and approve them in a separate step. For infrequent purchases, your buyers can take more control by using the AutoCreate Documents window to combine requests.

You must set up a suggested blanket purchase agreement in the Approved Supplier List window so that Purchasing can use the price and ship-to information when it is generating releases against the agreement. See: Defining the Supplier/Item Attributes.

Generate Releases Automatically

The Create Releases process generates releases when the following criteria are met:

Note: If the release generation method in the Approved Supplier List window is Automatic Release or Automatic Release/Review, then the Create Releases process creates the release. If the release generation method is Release Using AutoCreate, then the PO Create Documents workflow tries to create the release; if it cannot, then you must use the AutoCreate Documents window to create the release.

If the release generation method is Automatic Release, the process sets the status to Approved and updates the action history. Otherwise, the process sets the status to Incomplete and updates the notifications.

Purchasing automatically creates releases for requirements entered by any source: Work in Process, Master Scheduling/MRP, Inventory Planning, purchase requisitions, or external systems.

For foreign currency blanket purchase agreements, the automatic release process uses the rate on the agreement as the default rate for the release and translates the functional unit price on the requisition into the foreign currency price. Automatically generated releases use the price retrieved by sourcing, which is price break sensitive but does not consider the quantity already released against the blanket purchase agreement.

The Create Releases process creates a release for each source blanket purchase agreement, with a release shipment for each requisition line and a release distribution for each requisition distribution. If release archiving is set to Approve, the process updates the archive table for the release, shipments, and distributions. See: Create Releases Process.

If you've set up a tax defaulting hierarchy in the Tax Defaults region of the Purchasing Options window, the appropriate tax names automatically default onto the release shipments created by the Create Release process. See: Defining Tax Defaults Options.

Variable Release Generation Frequency

You can determine how often Purchasing creates releases by using the Submit Requests window to set the Create Releases process to run automatically at any frequency you desire. You can also use the Submit Requests window to run the process manually.

Optionally, you can set the profile PO: Release During ReqImport to create releases each time you run the Requisition Import process. For example, when you implement planned orders as requisitions in the MRP Planner Workbench, you can automatically create the releases at the same time you create the requisitions. As part of the Requisition Import process, Purchasing automatically creates (and optionally approves) releases for all blanket-sourced, approved requisitions, not just those created by the Requisition Import run.

See Also

AutoCreate Documents Overview

Workflow for Creating Purchase Orders or Releases

Profile Options in Purchasing

Automatic Sourcing

Create Releases Process

Requisition Import Process

Submitting a Request


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