Supplier Schedules vs Discrete Purchase Orders in QAD

Posted on: April 18, 2022 | By: David Kwo | QAD Financials

Supplier Schedules

Supplier schedules in QAD give suppliers a forecast of what a company intends to buy over a certain period of time. With a one-time set up, supplier schedules allow MRP to take over and automatically generate purchase orders. Supplier schedules are intended for use with long term contractual agreements that typically require regular weekly, daily,  or even hourly deliveries.

Supplier Schedules can be used with a fixed price, but also have the capability to update dynamically from a supplier pricing table, linked to the Supplier Schedule.

Purchase Orders

Discrete purchase orders are a completely manual way of creating and planning purchase orders (POs) for materials in which users cut a single PO at a time. Discrete purchase orders are used for irregular, infrequent, or smaller dollar transactions  However, many companies do use discrete PO’s for repeated inventory purchases and this can be cumbersome/time consuming to manage, especially where projected needs change farther out in the horizon and the discrete PO’s need to be manually adjusted and communicated to suppliers.  The supplier schedule would do that automatically based on MRP.

Capabilities and Benefits of Supplier Schedules

  • Users can update these schedules directly from MRP, generating actual demand-driven data.
  • Users can send contracts via EDI for high volume repetitive purchases
    • Reduces time required to look up purchase amount and create PO
  • Set and track firm lead times
    • Advantageous when making international transactions
    • Project need for materials far into the future

There are instances in which discrete purchase orders for inventory/direct purchases are appropriate within in QAD. However, leveraging Supplier Schedules allows users to speed up and organize the purchase order process, more easily plan farther into the future, and allocate manual labor elsewhere.

Read more about supplier schedules in QAD:

Using Supplier Schedules to Reduce Purchase Order Volumes

Supplier Schedules: Planning Parameters and Their Impacts

Supplier Consignment in QAD’s Adaptive ERP

 

Next Steps

If you are interested in learning more about Supplier Schedules in QAD and/or maximizing the use of your QAD system, contact us here to find out how we can help you grow your business. You can also email us at info@loganconsulting.com or call (312) 345-8810.



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