The Requirements screen adds together demand for any item from sales orders, sales plans (when ‘show sales plans’ is ticked) minimum stock required, and works orders (where the item is a component needed to produce another item), nets off any quantities as they become available from works or purchase orders, and shows the predicted stock position going forward.

If you hover over a cell on any item line you will see displayed the document(s) creating any demand (shown as a -ve quantity) and/ or the document(s) supplying (shown as a +ve quantity) that demand, and the cumulative quantity to that point in time.

You can create a planned works or purchase order by clicking on a cell – the application will default to a works order if the item stock record is flagged as ‘Manufactured’ else purchase order, and the Normal Batch Quantity from the stock item record.

Alternatively you can allow the application to suggest works and purchase orders based upon its internal rules by clicking on ‘show suggestions’ and then selecting these and moving to the planned orders sections (this might take some minutes as the application calculates the requirements and you may be asked to confirm that you wish to continue running this routine).

To create the planned works and purchase orders simply click on ‘create planned orders’.

Note: 1. the application cannot create purchase orders in this way if there is no default supplier set up on the stock item record;
2. purchase orders created in this way will not be automatically sent to the supplier = you are required to edit, update, and send once you have validated the order.