Sage 100

End user is asking if there's a way to use the LAST cost as the cost in Purchase Order. Their items are predominately Average Cost so the average cost is populating. I see that DSD offers PO-1129 but that's $1,630 just to change the default cost. Hoping that I'm overlooking something. I'm sure scripting could be used but at this point I'm hoping that there's a feature that I missed.

Vendor Price Level Maintenance....

Doesn't that default to standard cost?

It's called Standard Cost, but it means more like Override. SO it could be an export/import thing out of CI_Item and into that file. Calling it Standard Cost is a REALLY bad decision on Sage's part.

Standard Sage uses the Vendor's Last Cost as the default cost for new Purchase Orders. If you order the same item from multiple suppliers and want them to use the item's last cost (no matter who it was bought from), I'd use scripting.

I've done this before however if last cost changes then the end user is doing a perpetual VI -- or am I misunderstanding? This seems like it's one step better than telling them to look it up and override

When I looked on the sage site it went through and talked about item cost hierarchy - In the Purchase Order Module only, the hierarchy begins with: Vendor Price Levels For Standard and Average cost items in Purchase Order Entry, Receipt of Goods Entry, Return of Goods Entry (no purchase order specified), Material Requisition Issue Entry (one-step) and material requisitions entered in Purchase Order Entry, the cost hierarchy specified below for Standard or Average valuation method is followed. For LIFO/FIFO/Lot/Serial cost items, Vendor Last Cost is used If the Vendor Last Cost is zero, or no vendor is assigned to the item, then the Item Last Cost is used. If the Item Last Cost is zero, then the cost hierarchy specified below for each valuation method is followed. In the Auto Generate Orders Selection window, when selecting 'Update Unit Cost With': Standard Default or Last Unit Cost - the Primary Vendor's last cost is used. Standard Unit Cost - the item's standard cost is used. Average Unit Cost - the item's average cost is used. If any of the costs are zero for the above selections, the unit cost used follows the cost hierarchy based on the valuation methods listed below. Standard Valuation - The standard cost from the Inventory master file is used. If the standard cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the last cost. If the last cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the warehouse average cost. If the warehouse average cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the item average cost. Average Valuation - The warehouse average cost from the Inventory master file is used. If the warehouse average cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the item average cost. If the item average cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the last cost. If the last cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the standard cost.

Unless I'm misreading the above (please correct if so): Average Valuation - The warehouse average cost from the Inventory master file is used. If the warehouse average cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the item average cost. If the item average cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the last cost. If the last cost is zero, the unit cost defaults to the standard cost.

We have encountered this before. We used scripting along with a UDF in CI_Item. The UDF is a place to store the last purchase cost for the primary vendor. A script in Receipt of Invoice populates this UDF if the PO Vendor matches the CI_Item primary vendor. A script in PO Entry populates the PO Unit Cost if the line is new and the PO Vendor matches the CI_Item primary vendor. This won't solve every customer's want but it's working well for the customer who requested it.

Robert and Doug - Regarding using scripting to override costing, that in itself may get overridden. Ex: In PO Return of Goods Entry, the original PO Unit Cost is retrieved. You can manually or via script change that in the Entry screen to Last Cost but when you print the Return of Goods Register an Avg Cost item gets its cost overridden by its warehouse Avg Cost and gets updated that way. It actually follows the hierarchy Wayne mentioned above. So you need a mod for that. I just quoted that mod for someone 2 weeks ago. It's the same as the DSD price Wayne. I haven't looked at PO Receipt of Goods Register program but it may override using the same Avg Cost hierarchy.

So where did this end? I have a client asking for the exact same thing. They want the new PO to be the last cost.....

The customer just purchased (or asked me to purchase) PO-1129. In my testing for an AVERAGE cost item - the default cost is AVERAGE (note that this varies by valuation). I was not able to find a way to default to the last cost without scripting or enhancement. I do think you can do this with scripting or some fancy VI work combined with vendor price level however I question whether the manual effort would be cheaper than the enhancement ($1,630 and $535 second+ year maintenance). In my case I'd rather purchase an enhancement and rely on the third party to maintain/fix bugs.

Mmm - Deborah Nelson??? I think this would be a great enhancement but.........

@WayneSchulz Am I to understand that PO-1129 did NOT allow you to use Last Cost during PO Entry for an average cost item? Reading the installations docs, it appears to allow user to set which cost to use, regardless of valuation method. What did you end up doing to make this work?

In short, I'm not sure if I ever got it worked out.

Customer bought it. Then whoever made decision never used/implemented and can't remember why they bought .... sigh

@MarkKotyla I think (from memory) that the enhancement did work as designed but the customer ultimately wasn't sure **why** they ever wanted last cost on PO. I think a lot of the discussion in the thread above was about alternatives (including scripting) and I decided that by the time it got scripted, tested and the customer changed their mind 4 times (and was billed for changes) the $1630 we paid DSD was probably about the same they would pay to script (with changes). From memory, I believe the PO-1129 worked exactly as described and we got the last cost on PO. I think scripting is great when the customer has provided a rock solid list of functionality they require. However, most customers have ADD and they can't give you an initial specification rather they expect someone to create an enhancement and then continuously tweak it until the customer decides what they want. In the case where there is a specification they generally want you to create it (at no cost) for them and read their mind, etc... TL;DR: Though expensive I went with PO-1129 and believe it worked exactly as described.