ABOM/Purchasing Best Practices

Below is a list of some helpful ABOM and Purchasing reminders, tips, and tricks.

1. When working in FDM4, we recommend opening up the following functions. You will reference these to help you obtain the information you need in the purchasing process:
   • Allocated Backorder Maintenance (One for each rep and one for your assigned orders)
   • Review Customer Order
   • Review Purchase Orders
     
   • Check Stock
2. Review ALL comments and attachments before starting to work the order.
3. Check planned availability at the bottom to see if any warehouses have items coming in. If you see that we do, go to check stock to see the date and Booking PO number that they are coming in on. Leave that Booking PO# and the Expected Date in the Comments.
4. Before creating a PO make sure you check stock below for FDM4 warehouse and Sales Deck for Carroll inventory. To check EDI Vendor inventory, change the drop down to Vendor Warehouse. (If you see less than 5 in the Vendor Warehouse, do not trust that inventory is there, double check the B2B.)
5. If you or the rep want to split an order, this is when you would use the split function in ABOM. (When Splitting orders or changing warehouse, make sure that the freight is carried over to the new order.)
6. Do not split orders with artwork unless told otherwise.
7. Work from the oldest order to the newest order by Order Date or Review Date.
8. If you have any issues, make sure that you make a non-printable comment and assign a note to the order. Work your Note holds as you come across issues, or assign a note hold and get through all of the orders you can place first and then come back to these "issue" orders that have note holds. 
9. Each Monday you will run a report to identify orders that are On Booking Order with 90% or above allocation, and no decoration. (Use filters to filter columns by fill percentage of 90% or higher and Note Hold as On Booking Order and the method column as empty). Using the Split function in ABOM you will want to split what you can so we can ship what we have so far and release the new orders at 100% fill. 
10. When emailing or calling an order into a vendor, please provide them with the Purchase Order number, Shipping Address with Attention to line if necessary, and any other pertinent information. Attaching the physical Purchase order document should take care of this for you. 
11. CUSTG PO? Make sure to send this PO to the rep or customer to make sure the PO is on the customer provided goods. 
12. LAST, BUT MOST IMPORTANT - Take your time, double items, sizes, and quantities in your B2B carts before checking out. 
13. When sourcing product from multiple locations, use 2 POs max unless not possible due to inventory levels
14. If the wrong item gets ordered, don't reuse the same PO (for dropship - place a new order, for decoration follow the appropriate replacement process, here.