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Procurement

Procurement in MatStream runs on the same entities as engineering. A material requirement, a purchase order and its lines are all governed entities with their own categories, lifecycles, properties and permissions — so demand, ordering and receipt form one traceable chain instead of three spreadsheets.

This page covers the buyer's workflow. For the stock quantities behind it, see Stock management.

The chain

Engineering item  →  Material Requirement  →  Purchase Order line  →  Receipt  →  Stock
   (Explorer)          (demand, no stock)      (on order)            (on hand)

Each step is linked to the one before it, so any purchase order line can be traced back to the requirement that justified it, and from there to the item and project that caused the demand.

Link What it bonds
Requirement source The requirement line → the project occurrence that generated it
Fulfilment link The purchase-order line → the requirement line it fulfils

Raising a requirement

A Material Requirement records that something is needed: this quantity, by this date, for this project. Raising one moves nothing in stock and writes no ledger entry.

Requirements are normally raised automatically. Attach the Create Material Requirement automation to a lifecycle transition — typically the one that moves an item to Ready for Procurement — and releasing an item raises a requirement against its owning project, linked back to the item that caused it.

The owning project is found by walking up the folder tree from the item, so one automation configuration serves every project in the workspace.

Do not create requirement lines by hand

Requirement and order-line categories are hidden from the New dialog deliberately. A line created by hand has no matching links or ledger entries, so its quantities read zero and the stock picture is wrong.

Reading a requirement line

Every requirement tracks three quantities against what was asked for:

Quantity Meaning
Required Qty What is needed
Reserved Qty Covered from existing stock
Ordered Qty Covered by a purchase order
Open Qty Required − Reserved − Ordered — what still needs sourcing

Open Qty is the buyer's working number. A requirement is finished when it reaches zero, no matter how it got there: four needed can be two reserved from the shelf and two bought, and the line is then complete.

Covering a requirement from stock

  1. Open the requirement line, or select it in the buyer's working list.
  2. Choose Reserve from stock.
  3. Pick the location to reserve from and the quantity.
  4. Apply.

The reservation writes an MR Reservation movement to the ledger and raises Reserved Qty. Reserved stock stays on hand but is no longer available — see Stock management for how the two differ.

Existing reservations for an item can be reviewed and released again from the item's Stock tab.

Raising purchase orders

Select one or more requirement lines and choose Create purchase order. The dialog shows what you selected and how it will be grouped.

One purchase order is created per vendor. Selecting twenty requirements across six vendors produces six orders, each covering its own lines.

Option Effect
Merge identical items into one order line The same item appearing on several requirements becomes one order line. Quantities are summed and the earliest required date is kept. Each requirement is still tracked separately, so coverage stays per requirement.

When the dialog finishes it reports three things:

  • Created — each order number, with its line count and how many requirements it covers.
  • Skipped — requirements that could not be ordered, each with its reason. A skipped line never blocks the rest of the order.
  • Warnings — anything worth knowing that did not stop the order.

Requirements that were covered move to Ordered, and their Ordered Qty rises.

How the vendor is chosen

Two vendor properties are in play, and they mean different things:

Property Where it lives Meaning
Preferred Vendor The requirement, inherited from the item definition The demand side's preference — who we would like to buy this from
Vendor The purchase order Who was actually ordered from

MatStream resolves the vendor by walking the chain: the requirement line's own value first, then the occurrence that sourced it, then the library definition. A requirement with no vendor anywhere in that chain is reported in Skipped and left for you to deal with — it never blocks the other lines.

Receiving

  1. Open the purchase order and choose Receive purchase order lines.
  2. Set Receive into — the stock location the goods are arriving at.
  3. Enter the received quantity per line.
  4. Receive.

Receipt posts a PO Receipt movement, moving quantity from On Order to On Hand at the receiving location, and settles the ordered quantity on the originating requirement. Partial receipts are supported: receive what arrived and the rest stays outstanding.

Cancelling an order

A whole order or named lines of it can be cancelled.

  • A cancelled order is kept, never deleted — it may already have been sent to the vendor.
  • The order moves to Cancelled.
  • Requirements that the cancelled lines were covering return to Requested, with their Ordered Qty released, so they reappear as open demand.
  • Lines that have already received goods, or that have nothing outstanding, are reported as skipped rather than failing the whole call.

On Order quantities

The On Order figure is maintained by two lifecycle automations rather than by the order screens directly:

Automation When it runs
PO: Add to On Order A purchase-order line enters Ordered — adds the ordered quantity to On Order
PO: Release from On Order A line leaves Ordered — releases the On Order quantity again

If On Order never moves in your workspace, check that both automations are attached to the purchase-order lifecycle transitions and that their settings are complete — an automation with missing required settings is marked with a warning triangle in the transition's Automations tab.

Required vendor documents

Buying an item often means chasing paperwork as well as goods. A library item can declare the documents its vendor must supply — general arrangement drawings, technical datasheets, IOM manuals, material certificates, inspection and test plans, FAT reports, pressure test certificates, declarations of conformity, recommended spare parts lists.

  • On the library item, these are requirement templates: they define what is needed, not the files themselves.
  • When the item is placed in a project — and again when procurement freezes the item revision — the project occurrence receives its own document rows from those templates.
  • Each row has its own lifecycle: Required → Submitted → Accepted, so the state of vendor documentation is visible per project.

Vendor files belong to the occurrence, never the library item

The library row is a template shared by every project that uses the item. Uploading a vendor's certificate onto it would attach one project's paperwork to every other project using that part.

Permissions

Procurement is gated the same way as everything else: by group membership on lifecycle transitions. The Setup Wizard's Engineering Project configuration seeds a Purchasing group for exactly this purpose.

Restrict the transitions that raise requirements, place orders and receive goods to the groups that should perform them. A transition with no permission rows is open to everyone.

API reference

Method Endpoint Description
POST /api/wid/{wid}/purchase-orders/from-requirements Create purchase orders from selected requirement lines, one per vendor
POST /api/wid/{wid}/purchase-orders/receive Receive lines into a stock location
POST /api/wid/{wid}/purchase-orders/cancel Cancel a whole order or named lines
POST /api/wid/{wid}/stock/reservations Reserve stock against a requirement
POST /api/wid/{wid}/stock/reservations/release Release a reservation
GET /api/wid/{wid}/stock/reservations/by-item/{itemEntityId} Existing reservations for an item

Setting up procurement

  1. Apply the Engineering Project template in the Setup Wizard — it seeds the material requirement, purchase order, stock and required vendor document categories with their lifecycles.
  2. Attach Create Material Requirement to the engineering transition that signals an item is ready to buy, and complete its settings (target category, project category, lifecycle).
  3. Attach PO: Add to On Order and PO: Release from On Order to the purchase-order lifecycle transitions.
  4. Create your stock locations, and confirm buyers can reach the receiving location.
  5. Set Preferred Vendor on library items so requirements inherit a vendor instead of being skipped.