EDI 856 with Office Supply Vendor

Mark - the only problem with using Advanced Ship Notices is that you can't have more than one open receipt per PO so if there is a problem and the receipt can't release any other receipts (like if goods were shipped from a different location) won't get added and you might miss a receipt. You will have to monitoryour 856 error report to catch that.

When did you start processing office supplies as Lawson PO's? Most clients don't.

David, We started that several years ago and purchasing has an access database they pull in data and use to change pricing, etc so as to not create buyers messages. The pricing has always been a big deterent to the use of Lawson PO's for most clients as you said.

We are looking for ways to automate this even more with the possability of the 856. I appreciate the info on the receipt issues we might have if we went down this road.

Mark -

You might consider using e-Procurement in this instance - the pricing maintenance issue goes away as Pricing is maintained on the supplier site (catalog), not in Lawson or Access. You can incorporate the office items into your req approval (or no approval) process, run PO100 then PO120 to send the PO to the supplier. Setting 1 Req to 1 PO will allow you to get around the receipt problem David describes and then you can get your 856 from the vendor. The major office supply vendors are setup with Lawson 856 and Punchout. (Staples, OfficeMax etc.)

On the bonus side, the http:// response data from the Office Supply Vendor will contain UNSPSC classification data for reporting - so you would have a pretty robust spend reporting capability here too.

That's the way I would do it (or have done it in the past :-))

All the best,

RC.

We had punchout cut from the budget, we were trying to get some efficiencies while proceeding through this year in hopes of getting punchout next fiscal year. We are a July to June Fiscal so we have another 8 months before budgets season kicks up again.

Thanks Rob for the suggestions, it will help to put together a better ROI study for next year

Mark -

OK. Alternatively - you might use PO536 to load and manage the vendor pricing data internally in Lawson instead of Access (or put the Access pricing into Lawson this way). I see several Office Vendors support EDI 832, but most people just upload the .csv extract directly into Lawson using PO536, then run through a REQ or PO process using PO100 / PO120 and use your 856's. etc.

The PO04 record controls allow a buyer to overwrite agreement pricing (or not overwrite), so having the Pricing within Lawson and correct on the PO could really improve your first pass yield when it comes to Invoice Matching and the 856 would also speed up the process etc.

The entire vendor data import process could be managed using PFI - grab the external vendor data file and kick off the PO536 job etc. I just built a similar type PFI flow here for Invoices. It polls an external vendor FTP site, brings in data and interfaces it into Lawson using AP520 with robust error handing to automate Invoice Processing.

RC

Mark,

I apologize for changing the subject briefly. Can you tell me how to put in a request regarding a specific topic?

I have a need to process EDI832 vendor agreement price changes through PO536. I have never done this before. Is there a guide available with instructions on how to process EDI832 transactions via PO536? I am not sure just what data must be entered into the import file to effect vendor agreement price changes. My functional knowledge is limited.

I appreciate whatever information you can share on this subject.

Thank you very much,

Jim

Hi Jim -

Generally speaking - you would need to use PO560 and PO536 from the functional side to get the 832 EDI data translated into a .csv and then uploaded into your vendor agreements. There is also all the ED setup that must be completed ED02, ED10, ED502 and possibly ED40 etc.

Which vendor are you seeking to implement 832? Is your hospital using GHX?

Rob