PO suggestions
PO suggestions are Epicor’s list of what to buy, when and how much. They’re built from time-phased supply and demand, and buyers review them before converting them to purchase orders. If the suggestions are stale or wrong, buyers stop trusting them and go back to spreadsheets, so a reliable scheduled run is worth setting up carefully.
Where suggestions come from
Section titled “Where suggestions come from”Generate Suggestions (Material Management > Purchase Management > General Operations > Generate Suggestions) looks at:
- Material requirements on jobs (direct job material and job subcontract operations)
- Inventory requirements: minimum on-hand, safety stock and reorder points against time-phased supply
- Requisitions sent to purchasing (these are kept, not rebuilt)
- Unlinked buy-to-order sales order releases
- Purchase contract schedules, if you include contract parts
For lead time it uses the part’s (or site’s) purchase lead time, falling back to the lead time on the primary supplier’s price list.
Process MRP can also create PO suggestions as part of its run. If MRP runs nightly, you may not need a separate Generate Suggestions run; if purchasing wants fresh suggestions more often than MRP runs, you do.
Recommended settings for a scheduled run
Section titled “Recommended settings for a scheduled run”| Setting | Suggested value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Processing option | Regenerative | Rebuilds all time-phased suggestions, so nothing stale survives. Net change is faster but can leave old suggestions behind |
| Allow Historical Dates | Selected | Lets suggestions for late demand keep their real (past) due dates, so buyers can see how late they are, instead of being pushed to today |
| Include Contract PO Parts | Selected if you use purchase contracts | Otherwise parts on active contracts are skipped |
| Logging level | Suggestions, overwrite | A readable log of what was created, replaced each run |
| Process date | Dynamic, today | So a recurring run always uses the current date |
| Number of processes | 2 or 3 | Parallel processing speeds up large runs. Cloud tenants are capped |
| Schedule | Daily, early morning, Recurring | Buyers start the day with fresh suggestions |
Only one Generate Suggestions run can happen at a time, so don’t schedule it to overlap MRP.
Run scheduled tasks under a dedicated service user rather than a person’s login, so they keep running when people leave or change passwords.
Working the suggestions
Section titled “Working the suggestions”- New PO Suggestions shows suggestions for new POs, filtered by buyer, site and cut-off date. Buyers review quantity, supplier and dates, mark lines Reviewed, and generate POs, RFQs or supplier forecasts from the selected lines.
- Change PO Suggestions shows suggested changes to existing POs: expedite, delay, increase, reduce or cancel.
- Buyer Workbench brings suggestions, RFQs and open POs together in one place for a buyer.
The buyer on a suggestion comes from the part (or part class). Suggestions with no buyer are easy to miss, so make sure every purchased part has one. See Buyers and suppliers.
When suggestions stop after an upgrade
Section titled “When suggestions stop after an upgrade”Symptom: after an Epicor upgrade, the recurring Generate Suggestions task no longer runs, or errors immediately, and suggestions go stale.
Cause: the scheduled task records from the old version don’t match the new one.
Fix: delete the recurring task and create it again with the same settings. If the task can’t be
deleted from System Monitor, Epicor Support has a data fix that removes the orphaned system task
records (FX_Del_SysTaskTables). Recreate the schedule afterwards.
Prevention: keep a record of every recurring task’s settings (screenshots are fine) so they can be recreated quickly after each upgrade.