HOMEBUILDER:  PURCHASE ORDERS FOR EXTRAS

In this article:

Overview | What a POE Is | Before You Begin | How POEs Fit the Process | Step 1: Release the Selection Package | Step 2: Review the Planning Lines | Step 3: Release the Choices for POE | Step 4: Create the POEs | Where to Find POEs | The POE Card and List | Field Definitions for POE | Actions on a POE | Adding a Line to a POE | POE Statuses | Printing and Sending | Setup That Affects POEs | Troubleshooting 

Overview

 

How a POE Differs From a Purchase Order

Invoices for this work still arrive through the normal purchasing route, matched against the Job Planning Lines that the Selection Package created. The POE is what makes sure the work is actually done and done correctly; it is not what pays for it.

 

Before You Begin

POEs are the last step of the Upgrades and Extras cycle, so everything that cycle depends on must already be in place. See the setup list at the top of INTRODUCTION: UPGRADES AND EXTRAS IN HOMEBUILDER.

Specifically for POEs:

• A POE No. Series must be set on the HomeBuilder Setup page. Without it, no POE can be created. This is a one-time implementation step and is the single most common reason a first attempt at Create POEs fails.
• The Lot Selection Package must be Released. The Release for POE action is disabled at every earlier status. See Step 1 below.
• Every planning line to be sent must carry a Vendor No. A line with no vendor cannot be released for POE, because there is no document for it to go on.
• Vendor Contracts should be in place for the phase. POEs group by vendor *and* Vendor Contract, and a blank contract is treated as a group of its own.

 

How POEs Fit the Process

The purchaser's decisions travel through four stages before they reach a trade, and each stage answers a different question.

The steps below walk through the last three.

 

Step 1: Release the Selection Package

POEs are created from planning lines, and planning lines do not exist until the Lot Selection Package is released.

On the Lot Selection Package, run Release. This requires the functional permission CAN RELEASE SELECTION and is typically done by the operations manager. Among other things, the action creates a Job Planning Line for every choice in the package.

For what else Release does, and for the statuses that precede it, see HOMEBUILDER: LOT SELECTION PACKAGES.

 

Step 2: Review the Planning Lines

Open Work Planning from the Lot Selection Package. The Package Work Planning page opens, showing the package's Phase, Lot, Model and package number in its caption.

The page has two grids:

• The upper grid lists the Lot Selection Choices (what the purchaser chose).
• The lower grid, Choice Planning Lines, lists the planning lines behind whichever choice is selected above (who supplies it, in what quantity, at what cost).

Selecting a choice in the upper grid refreshes the lower grid to match. A single choice can have several planning lines: a Bundle such as a fireplace breaks down into framing, gas fitting, electrical and the unit itself, each with its own vendor.

This is the working page for the operations manager. Before releasing anything, review and where necessary correct:

• Quantity and Unit Cost on each planning line.
• Vendor No. and Vendor Contract No., which determine which POE the line lands on.
• Additional planning lines, added with Add Planning Line on the lower grid, for work a choice implies but the item structure does not carry.

Reading the Colors

The upper grid is color-coded, and the colors are the quickest way to see where a package has got to:

   

Step 3: Release the Choices for POE

Select the choices that are ready to go to the trades and run Release for POE.

The action marks both the choice and its planning lines as released for POE, and the selected lines change colour. It is enabled only while the Selection Package status is Released.

What the System Checks

For each selected choice that is not a Customer Fee, the system verifies two things before it changes anything:

1. The choice has planning lines. If it has none, the action stops with "Lot Selection Choice (Reference No. X) does not have Planning Lines to be released for POEs." This usually means the choice was added after the package was released, so no planning line was ever created for it.
2. Every one of those planning lines has a Vendor No. If any is blank, the action stops with "Please specify Vendor in Planning Lines for Lot Selection Choice (Reference No. X)." Fill in the vendor on the lower grid and run the action again.

Both checks run across the whole selection before any line is changed, so a failure leaves nothing half-released.

What Changes After Release

Releasing a choice for POE freezes it:

• The Choice Planning Lines grid becomes read-only for that choice.
• Add Planning Line is disabled for that choice.

This is deliberate. Once a choice is queued to go to a trade, its quantities and costs should not drift.

Un-release for POE

Un-release for POE reverses the action, returning the choice and its planning lines to an editable state.

It works only while no POE has been issued for the choice. If one has, the action stops with "Cannot un-release Lot Selection Choice (Reference No. X) for POE, there are POEs issued for it." To make a change at that point, delete the POE first (see Deleting a POE below) which releases its planning lines and lets you un-release the choice.

 

Step 4: Create the POEs

With the choices released, run Create POEs on the Package Work Planning page.

Which Lines Are Picked Up

The action does not take everything in the package. A planning line is included only if all of the following are true:

• It is an Item line.
• Its Designation is Single Item or Component. A Bundle's own line is not sent; its components are, each to its own vendor.
• It is flagged as a Color Chart line.
• It is Released for POE.
• It is not already on a POE.

That last condition is what makes the action safe to run repeatedly. Release a few more choices, run Create POEs again, and only the new lines are picked up, the existing POEs will remain untouched.

How Lines are Grouped

Lines are sorted and grouped by Vendor No. and Vendor Contract No., and one POE is created for each distinct combination.

Each POE is also stamped with context where the system can establish it unambiguously:

• Job No. (the Lot) is filled in only if every line in the run belongs to the same Lot.
• Selection Package No. is filled in only if every line belongs to the same Selection Package.

Run from the Work Planning page of a single package, both are always filled in. They are left blank when a broader selection spanning several lots or packages is processed, so that a POE is never labelled as belonging to one lot when it covers several.

Before It Runs

Every line is validated first. The action stops, without creating anything, if any line is missing a Phase Code, a Lot Code, a House Area Code, or a Vendor No. The message names the offending planning line.

The action finishes by reporting how many documents it produced.

   

Where to Find POEs

POEs can be reached from wherever the question is being asked:

 

The POE Card and List

The POE list shows the documents; the POE Card shows one document and its lines.

   

   

Field Definitions

Header

Lines

 

Actions on a POE

• Add new line
  • Available on the Card while the POE is Open.
  • Adds a line to the document and creates a matching Job Planning Line for the Lot, so the added work reaches the budget as well as the trade. See Adding a Line to a POE below for the required fields and what can go wrong.
• Release
  
  • Available from both the List and the Card; can be run against several documents at once from the list, the normal way to issue a phase's worth of POEs together.
  • Advances the status from Open to Released.
  • Grayed out until the POE has a Phase Code, a Vendor No. and a Vendor Contract No. A POE created by Create POEs always has them; one created manually may not.
• Print
  
  • Available from both the List and the Card.
  • Prints the POE with unit costs and line amounts, for the trade that is being paid those amounts.
• Print No Costs
  • Available from both the List and the Card.
  • Prints the POE showing the work, items, variants and quantities, with no money on the page. It is for anyone who needs to know what is being installed but has no business seeing what it costs.
• Send by Email
  
  • Available from both the List and the Card; several POEs can be selected in the list and sent in one action, each going to its own vendor. This is the normal way to issue a phase's worth of documents once the planning is done.
  • Emails the with-costs version of the POE to the address on the Vendor Card.
• Send by Email No Costs
  
  • Available from both the List and the Card.
  • Emails the no-costs version of the POE to the address on the Vendor Card.
• Sent Emails
  
  • Available from both the List and the Card.
  • Shows the email history for the document, what was sent, to whom, and when. The record to check when a vendor says a POE never arrived

 

Adding a Line to a POE

Work sometimes only becomes apparent after the POE exists, a trade points out that the upgraded tub needs a reinforced floor, or a site super finds the gas line needs a longer run than planned. Add new line puts that work on the existing document instead of starting a second one.

Run Add new line on the POE Card while the status is Open. Specify Phase Code, Lot Code, Item No., Variant Code (where the item has variants), House Area Code and Quantity, then confirm.

   

The system creates both a POE Line and a Job Planning Line for the Lot. The added work therefore reaches the trade and the budget together, rather than appearing on a document nobody has costed.

What Can Go Wrong

 

POE Statuses

A POE has three statuses.

Accepted is the one status the builder does not set. It is stamped, with the date, when the vendor opens the POE in the Vendor Portal and accepts it, which is why it is worth publishing POEs to the portal even for trades who also receive them by email: it is the only status that reflects something the vendor did rather than something the builder did.

Re-open returns a POE to Open from either Released or Accepted, and clears all three stamps.

Deleting a POE

A POE can be deleted only while its status is Open. Deleting it removes its lines and clears the POE No. and POE Line No. from the planning lines it was built from, which returns those lines to the pool that Create POEs draws on. The choices can then be un-released, corrected, and released again.

 

Printing and Sending

With or Without Costs

Every print and email action comes in two forms, and choosing between them is a commercial decision, not a formatting one.

• With costs — shows the unit costs and line amounts. Use it for the trade that is being paid these amounts.
• No costs — shows the work, the items, the variants and the quantities, with no money on the page. Use it for anyone who needs to know what is being installed but has no business seeing what it costs: a site super, a purchaser's own inspector, or a trade quoting work adjacent to someone else's.

   

The Four Layouts

Four report layouts ship with the system:

Which layout the Print and Send actions use is controlled centrally through Report Selections, under the usages SEHB POE and SEHB POE No Costs. Set this once during implementation.

Notes on the Printed Document

Two settings decide what a trade actually reads.

• Show Note to Vendor, on the Lot Selection Choice, determines whether that choice's Color Chart Note is printed on the POE. It is set from the Model Item and cannot be changed by a décor designer, the intent being that internal notes stay internal by default.
• Print Component Descr. in POE, on the HomeBuilder Setup page, determines whether the component descriptions of a Bundle are printed alongside the Bundle. Turn it on where trades need to see what the bundle contains; leave it off for a cleaner document.

Sending

Send by Email sends the document to the email address on the Vendor Card. Several POEs can be selected in the list and sent in one action, each going to its own vendor. This is the normal way to issue a phase's worth of documents once the planning is done.

Sent Emails shows what was actually sent for a document and when, which is the record to check when a trade says they never received it.

 

Setup That Affects POEs

 

Troubleshooting