Part Item Entry - Fill Vendor Field?

[Rod Storm]

There are a couple design flaws I'd like to address and hopefully get some feedback. I'm using version 7.1.7 of Manager SE.

When preparing estimates and pricing the parts from a specific vendor, it would be very helpful if the "vendor" category for each part would automatically populate. As it is now, the "vendor" option is always left blank. Frequently, we provide estimates for customers who are not prepared to move forward with the recommendations, but will return weeks later for the service. When we try to order the parts, we need to select each vendor that we use and HOPE that we are picking the right one when ordering parts. If the "vendor" field were to automatically be populated when the part was selected and put onto the estimate, it would save us quite a bit of time.

Thoughts?

[timbre4]

Welcome to the forum and thanks for your post. We have found it is better to submit multiple items as separate posts so that they fit into existing categories and folks can tell by the title what each post is about. Your question about tech assignment is under SE 7.x Scheduler.

I believe you're referring to the Vendor NAME (Category is another field) filling in immediately during lookup / price check. The original logic was not to fill the Vendor name field until a parts order was placed. This behavior may vary slightly depending on which catalog is in use. We have read comments by shops who would prefer the Vendor names fill in early for the same reasons you mention and it is recorded in the Enhancement Requests list. http://managerforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1876

[ricmorin]

Thumb for this idea. When you are dealing with 20 or more electronic vendors, it gets real hard to remember line codes from each. Fill in Vendor at price check.

[Johnny5]

Question:
If the Vendor name is filled in after the part is looked up and transferred, if the user opts to make an inventory record of that part, should the Vendor name be written to the inventory record as well?

If the part is transferred to inventory and a different vendor is already recorded, should the software update the inventory with the new vendor?

Should this feature be user selectable, meaning some users may not want it to work that way, others may?

[ricmorin]

If the Vendor name is filled in after the part is looked up and transferred, if the user opts to make an inventory record of that part, should the Vendor name be written to the inventory record as well?

IMO, yes. Often we get the same parts from different vendors, but they use different line codes. There's always an option to change it later.

If the part is transferred to inventory and a different vendor is already recorded, should the software update the inventory with the new vendor?

IMO, no. There are likely reasons to set a certain vendor to a certain part that goes beyond the current transaction, HOWEVER, allowing the 'new' vendor/part to fill an empty vendor 2 or vendor 3 field on an existing record would be very cool.

Should this feature be user selectable, meaning some users may not want it to work that way, others may?

Probably. It seems that some users just dip their toes in the program and others are up to their eyeballs.