JD Edwards Procurement

The Procurement Management module supports the acquisition of goods and services required by the enterprise, either for internal use, manufacturing and assembly, or re-sale to customers. A variety of transactions including quotes, blanket orders, internal requisitions and supplier purchase orders are supported.

Purchase orders can be sent to suppliers using a variety of methods, including EDI, e-mail, FAX and (yes, people still do it!) hard copies via snail mail.

In addition to inventory purchasing, the JD Edwards Procurement Management system also supports purchasing for non-inventory, service/expenditures and sub-contract purchasing.

The key features and functions of the Procurement Management module include:

Order Entry / Generation

The primary reason for a purchase order is to satisfy demand that is internal to the organization or has been generated by a 3rd party; typically a customer. By far, the most common method of getting a purchase order into the system is direct entry. For this purpose, on-line screens can be configured in a variety of formats appropriate to your company or industry.

However, the system also supports the automatic creation of purchase orders when using a planning program such as MRP for manufactured items or DRP for purchased parts. You can also set up the "PO Generator" to suggest replenishment orders based on historical demand.

Approval Processing

Depending on the size of the purchase (and the size of your organization) you may optionally set up Approval Processing. This allows a "pending" order to be routed through the organization to one or more individuals who have different levels of dollar-limit authority. Orders can be either approved and sent to the supplier or rejected and returned to the originator for further explanation and/or modification.

It is also possible to set up Approval Processing for internal requisitions before a purchase order is ever created. In these cases, an approved requisition can be used to automatically generate a firm purchase order for your supplier.

Order Printing / Transmission

Of course, once that purchase order is approved, you need to get it to the supplier so that the order can be fulfilled! Depending on the size of your organization (and the supplier's) a variety of options exist for getting the approved purchase order to your supplier.

Receipt Processing

When the supplier's shipment arrives, you will want to process a receipt against the open purchase order to bring the product into inventory. Depending on your A/P Department's voucher matching policies, you can also enter "receipts" for non-inventory purchases if need be.

Blanket Orders

Don't feel like entering a new purchase order every time a demand exists? For repetitively purchased items, JD Edwards supports blanket order processing. You can set up a blanket order with a supplier to cover future purchases for specific items and then generate or "release" firm purchase orders as needed.

The blanket order does the rest! It will keep track of the time period for which the order is in force and the quantity of items on the blanket order. It will also automatically revert to the "non-blanket order" price once you've exhausted the blanket order quantity. If the terms of the blanket order allow some overage on the total quantity purchased, you can even set up "tolerance checking" to enforce how much of an overage the system will allow!

Quotes (RFQs)

Quotes or "RFQs" are another means of bringing some additional efficiency to the purchasing process. It's the "three bids" process, with lots of bells and whistles. You can:

Supplier Management

JD Edwards' Procurement Management system does more than just help you to manage purchase orders and receipts. A variety of user-defined tools exist to help you measure supplier performance in the areas of cost, quality and timeliness of deliveries. You can set this up as an on-line inquiry for your own use, or as a report to have ready when that supplier comes to call!

This is brief review of the components and processes associated with the JDE Procurement module. For more information, a 5-day course taught by JDEtips is recommended.

Learn more about JD Edwards Procurement:

JDEtips University Procurement Course Description
Training Manual Table of Contents and Training Manual Sample Chapter.