One Line Item many jobs

[tbcomputerguy]

Im doing a solution for someone and they requested that when doing a purchase order, that one line item be costed over many jobs.  ie.  they want to purchase 100ft of edging.  they have three jobs, each requiring 30 ft.  I was thinking that when on the line item, they could click a button opening a popup that would contain a portal on it.  The portal would allow them to select a job(s) to attach to the line item.  This way when they could produce a purchase order for the whole order and also produce a list of material required for each job.  Does this make sense?

[Wim Decorte]

Sure... how will you track the jobs per line item?  In its own join table?

[tbcomputerguy]

conundrum I say...good point.  And see why I'm confused. 

[ggt667]

You have to create some sort of pooling* to assign the common purchase to each purchase.

 

*pooling is a purchasing term used for purchasing not assigned to department, and for items to be distributed internally amongst projects.

 

You fill the pool( in your case 100, ) and assign from the pool each project( 30 pr project in your case. ) Which will leave you with 10 for spares or a buffer on the next purchase.

Edited October 24, 2015 by ggt667

[comment]

they requested that when doing a purchase order, that one line item be costed over many jobs

What exactly does "costed" mean in this context?

In any case, if you want to assign a line item to more than one job, the relationship is many-to-many and you will need a join table between LineItems and Jobs to hold the Quantity - there is no doubt about that.

How you build the user interface for this is a separate question - and it's difficult to answer without understanding their workfow. Looking at your idea of a button in a portal, I would be worried they might just skip it. But this may not apply to skilled users that understand the business.

[OlgerDiekstra]

Im doing a solution for someone and they requested that when doing a purchase order, that one line item be costed over many jobs.  ie.  they want to purchase 100ft of edging.  they have three jobs, each requiring 30 ft.  I was thinking that when on the line item, they could click a button opening a popup that would contain a portal on it.  The portal would allow them to select a job(s) to attach to the line item.  This way when they could produce a purchase order for the whole order and also produce a list of material required for each job.  Does this make sense?

Doesn't the job come first? Before they create purchase orders, there first needs to be one or more jobs. While creating the job, they would add lineitems with various products needed (much like an invoice). When all jobs have been entered, you can easily summarize the totals for the various products and create purchase orders. All you really need to track is for which job you've purchased what products.

When creating the purchase order, they would select all the job lineitems that need to be included.

Ie, job 1 needs 30ft edging and 4 bags mulch, job 2 needs 30ft edging and 3 bags mulch and 2 bags potting mix, job 3 needs 40ft edging and 2 bags potting mix.

Once the jobs are entered, they can use a list summary to see how much of each product is needed for all three jobs (ideally also see what is currently in stock) and from there create purchase orders for each product they need to order.

So the list would show 100ft edging, 7 bags mulch, and 4 bags potting mix. If they have 2 bags mulch in stock and 1 bag potting mix, the list would then further show 100ft edging needed, 5 bags mulch needed, and 3 bags potting mix. A button on each line could take them to a purchase order form.

Each product sits on its own line with total needed for the job, what's in stock, and what needs to be ordered.

[ggt667]

Looking at your idea of a button in a portal, I would be worried they might just skip it. But this may not apply to skilled users that understand the business.

This is quite often done as a drilldown-in-place using HTML/JS, but I never managed to do this satisfactory in FileMaker UI.

[Lee Smith]

.  Does this make sense?

Please read your Private Message I sent you yesterday.

[tbcomputerguy]

Doesn't the job come first? Before they create purchase orders, there first needs to be one or more jobs. While creating the job, they would add lineitems with various products needed (much like an invoice). When all jobs have been entered, you can easily summarize the totals for the various products and create purchase orders. All you really need to track is for which job you've purchased what products.

This is true.  what happens is that they wait until there is enough square footage of in this case roofing, before putting in the order. They save on shipping this way. I think they are trying to streamline the ordering to one P.O.  I suggested creating a separate PO for each job then at order time, have a selection screen to choose which jobs are needed to order from.  Then create the PO from those.