Best Cost Check in Purchase Order Entry

Purchase Order Entry (POE) provides many checks to the database to ensure that you purchase items from your vendors using the best cost available. These checks, when set, effect any purchase order created from any of the following:

The system uses three control maintenance records to ensure the cost check takes place to best suit your company needs.

Best Cost Check Through All Matrix Cells
Enable Best Cost Check In Purchase Order Entry
Auto Open Multiple Vendor Matrix Cell

For complete descriptions, see POE Best Cost Check and POE General control maintenance record details.

Note: Best Cost Check is disabled on direct orders.

Best Cost Example

Your vendor provides a discount, based on a contract, for 2" copper fittings and lets you buy them at a net cost of $.25 each. The normal cost of these fittings is $.30 each. The 2" copper fittings also are part of the COPFIT buy line. The vendor also offers a .85 multiplier, or discount, when buying any product in the COPFIT buy line. This makes the 2" copper fittings $.21 each.

By default, the system checks and uses the product-specific vendor contract first, called a buy matrix. If a buy matrix is not established for a particular vendor and product, then the system checks for an effective buy matrix for that vendor and a buy line in which the product may reside. However, if a product-specific buy matrix is established, the system uses that cost regardless of what is set at the vendor-group level.

For this reason, Eclipse has developed control maintenance records to provide the purchasing agent with the lowest possible cost for purchasing products from vendor contracts. In addition, when the parameters are set, the system can display all of the available contracts, their costs, and their contract numbers from which to select. The agent can select from this list or can override the current contract price with another effective cost in a buy matrix.

How Eclipse Determines the Best Cost in POE

The following matrix describes how each control maintenance record affects the POE being created.

If Best Cost Check Through All Matrix Cells is set to...	..and Enable Best Cost Check In Purchase Order Entry is set to...	Then...
YES	YES	the lowest cost is used within the standard hierarchy of pricing. vendor, product-specific vendor, group-specific
YES	NO	the lowest cost available is used, regardless of matrix-type.
NO	YES	the lowest cost is used within the standard hierarchy of pricing. vendor, product-specific vendor, group-specific
NO	NO	standard pricing is used.

The final control maintenance record, Auto Open Multiple Vendor Matrix Cells, determines if the Vendor Matrix Cell Selection screen displays when more than one contract cost is available. If the control maintenance record is set to No, then the purchase agent must use the Pricing / Matrix hot keys to display the screen and change the selection.