Receiving Price/Sales Catalog Information thru EDI

Receiving Price/Sales Catalog Information thru EDI

Your supplier can send you the latest price/sales catalog information and responses to requests for quotation through the Purchasing Documents Open Interface. The Purchasing Documents Open Interface processes catalog data in the Oracle Applications interface tables to ensure that it is valid before importing it into Purchasing. One way to import catalog data into the Purchasing Documents Open Interface, and finally into Purchasing, is through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). EDI programs import the catalog information into Purchasing directly as blanket purchase agreement lines or catalog quotations, whichever you choose. You can also choose to have the programs automatically populate the item master and/or apply sourcing rules to the imported item information. If you import price/sales catalog information as blanket purchase agreement lines, you can also specify release generation methods. You can import new documents, replace existing documents entirely, or update existing documents.

The catalog information is sent by the supplier in the form of a "flat file." Your supplier can send you flat files with any of three kinds of action codes: Original, Replace, or Update. An Original file is one in which all the catalog information is new to your system. A Replace file replaces already-created blanket purchase agreement lines or catalog quotations with new documents containing new price/sales catalog information. (The Purchasing Documents Open Interface program replaces the old documents by invalidating their effectivity dates; then it creates new documents with the new price/sales catalog information and the old effectivity dates.) An Update file updates existing blanket purchase agreement and catalog quotation lines without replacing the documents entirely. It updates the unit Price, item Description, unit of measure (UOM), Price Breaks, Expiration Date, and the supplier URL descriptive flexfield if you use one.

Note: An Update submission does not update the UOM on an agreement line for which an open release exists. Instead, it uses the Expiration Date field to expire the line on the agreement, and creates a new line with the updated UOM, which will be used on future releases.

The Purchasing Documents Open Interface also imports price breaks. In an updated price/sales catalog, if the supplier updates an item's price, the Purchasing Documents Open Interface deletes the item's price breaks since they are no longer current with the new price. If the supplier sends new price breaks for an existing line, the current price breaks are deleted and the new price breaks sent by the supplier are created.

The Purchasing Documents Open Interface supports the Oracle e-Commerce Gateway transmissions of the price/sales catalogs (ANSI X12 832 or EDIFACT PRICAT) and responses to RFQs (ANSI X12 843 or EDIFACT QUOTES).

For e-Commerce Gateway to distinguish between Original, Replace, and Update action codes, you need to set up code-conversion categories and values in e-Commerce Gateway. See: Defining Code Conversion Categories. See: Defining Code Conversion Values.

Other setup includes making sure that default category sets are set up appropriately for both Purchasing and Inventory, setting Purchasing profile options, and allowing updating of the item master if you want to update the item description in the item master as well as on the blanket purchase agreement or quotation. For complete instructions on setup requirements, see the Oracle Manufacturing, Distribution, Sales and Service Open Interfaces Manual.

How Sourcing Works

When you import price/sales catalog information into Purchasing, you have the option of choosing Yes or No in the Create Sourcing Rules field in the Parameters window to enable Purchasing to create sourcing rules out of the supplier, item, and document information that the supplier sends.

Original and Replacement Price/Sales Catalogs

If you choose Yes to create sourcing rules in an original or replacement price/sales catalog, Purchasing checks if a sourcing rule is assigned to the item at the item level and does the following:

If no sourcing rules exist for the item, Purchasing generates a sourcing rule automatically, allocating 100 percent to the supplier importing the information.

If a sourcing rule exists for the item, Purchasing compares the effectivity dates of the incoming document with those of the existing sourcing rule for the item. To ensure that only one sourcing rule is used for the item, Purchasing does the following:

If the effectivity dates of the incoming document are the same as the existing sourcing rule's effectivity dates, Purchasing checks to see if the supplier is in the sourcing rule. If not, Purchasing adds the supplier to the existing sourcing rule with an allocation of 0 percent. Later, you can query the sourcing rule and define your own percentage splits between suppliers.

If the effectivity dates of the incoming document are different than the existing sourcing rule's effectivity dates, but are within or overlap the existing effectivity dates, then a new sourcing rule is not created, so as not to conflict with the existing sourcing rule.

If the effectivity dates of the incoming document do not overlap the existing sourcing rule's effectivity dates, Purchasing updates the item's sourcing rule with the new effectivity dates, adding the supplier at an allocation of 100 percent.

Purchasing checks for an Approved Supplier List entry for the item and supplier/site combination. If an entry exists, Purchasing adds the document to the entry. If an entry does not exist, Purchasing creates a new entry with the new source document.

Updated Price/Sales Catalogs

If you choose Yes to create sourcing rules in an Update submission, new sourcing information is created (as described above) only if the Update submission results in a new line being created.