Sometimes a Vendor may Invoice a product at a different price than they have contracted with you. In these cases, the system can warn you that a contract violation has occurred. Setting up a contract price for a Vendor item is simple, and once set, the system will automatically validate it when Invoices are entered and highlight violations during a check run.
Setup
Vendor contract prices are set on Vendor Item records and can be done individually or mass imported.
Individual Vendor Item update
- Go to the Vendor Item list (Operations - Inventory - Vendor Items in left hand navigation), and click the row of the item you want to update to open the Vendor Item form
- Populate the fields associated with the contract and save the record. Contract Price fields described below:
- Contract Price - The price of the vendor contract (should be based on Purchase U of M on this record)
- Contract Expiration - The expiration date of the contract. Price Validation will only occur on Invoices that have an Invoice Date within the contract period
- Acceptable Variance % - A percentage that is an acceptable variance that you don't consider a contract violation
Mass Vendor Item update
Vendor items can be mass updated by importing a .csv file (usually saved from Excel). This can be an Excel sheet made from scratch or one exported from the system.
- To export Vendor Items, go to the Vendor Items list (Operations - Inventory - Vendor Items in left hand navigation), and click the Excel icon in the upper right-hand corner above the list. This will export a .csv file that can be opened with Excel.
- In Excel (either the exported file or creating a file from scratch) enter the vendor contract price fields and then save the file as .csv
- To import, go to Administration - Import in the top main ribbon, and select Option = Vendor Item and Type = Update Existing. Click Upload file and browse to your .csv file. Click 'Next' and map the columns in your sheet to the columns in the system. Click 'Next' and then 'Import'.
Contract Violation on AP Invoice
When entering an AP Invoice, Vendor Item contract prices will be verified and a contract violation will be identified if the following is true:
- Each Amount on row of Invoice is different from the Contract Price on the Vendor Item by more than the Acceptable Variance % and the Date on the Invoice is less than the Contract Expiration date on the Vendor Item
If a contract violation is identified, the following will show (see screenshots below):
- An alert pops up at top of the Invoice that the transaction contains items outside of acceptable variance. Specific rows that are in violation will be highlighted
- Hovering (make sure not to click) over the Vendor Item on that row will display a comment of what the Contract Price and Acceptable Variance % are to show why the row is in violation
- To view the Vendor Item details and / or change the Vendor Item contract values, click the Vendor Item link on the row and it will open the record
Contract Violation on Check Run
Invoices with contract violations will be highlighted on the Check Run screen to alert users who may not wish to pay invoices that violate the contract. Hovering over the Invoice on the check run will also have a comment pop up listing the items that violate the contract.