Purchase Demand Overview
What does Purchase Demand do?
Purchase Demand connects customer orders with the material you plan to purchase from outside vendors. It gives you visibility in both directions:
From an order: Where are we getting this item?
From a purchase: Which customer orders is this material intended for? A customer order can be supplied by one vendor or several vendors. A single vendor Purchase Order can also contain material for several different customer orders. Purchase Demand keeps those relationships visible without requiring the Sales Order and Purchase Order to be one-to-one. The relationship is informational. It helps you plan and follow purchasing; it does not reserve inventory when the PO is received.
What problem does it solve?
When material is purchased specifically for customer orders, the same information often has to be followed in several places: customer orders, vendor decisions, Master POs, Purchase Orders, incoming quantities and changes. The original problem this workflow was designed around was that changes had to be entered or understood in several different areas, making it difficult to know whether the sales side and purchasing side still agreed. The goal was for those layers to remain connected instead. Purchase Demand gives you one view of those relationships so you can quickly answer questions such as:
- What still needs to be bought?
- Which vendor are we planning to buy it from?
- Is it already on a PO or Master PO?
- Which customer orders are tied to a PO?
- Did we buy more than the current customer demand?
- Which customer orders are affected if a PO is late or short?
Who needs it?
Purchase Demand is most useful when your business sells material that will be purchased from outside vendors rather than supplied entirely from your own inventory or production. It is especially useful when: customer orders contain items from several vendors, several customer orders are combined onto one vendor PO, you decide on the vendor before you are ready to create the PO, or you use Master Purchase Orders and release material onto individual POs later. For simple one-vendor orders, you can still create a PO directly from the order. For more complex purchasing, Purchase Demand provides the line-by-line relationship.
How it works
Purchase Demand starts with customer demand. That demand comes from either a Sales Order or a Master Order shipment. Each order line can then be in one or more purchasing states: Unplanned → Vendor Planned → On MPO / On PO It does not have to move through every stage. For example, you can assign an order directly to an existing PO without creating a vendor plan first. The main quantities you will see are: Ordered — what the customer still requires On PO — quantity linked to Purchase Orders On MPO — quantity linked to Master Purchase Orders Planned — vendor selected, but not yet on a PO/MPO Unplanned — purchasing decision still needed Unassigned on PO — open PO quantity not currently connected to customer demand Over-linked — more purchasing supply is linked than the order currently requires. The coverage bar shows the same relationship visually.
Working with Purchase Demand
1. Purchase Demand screen
Open: Purchasing → Purchase Demand This is the central purchasing view. The By Item view groups together demand for the same item. Expand an item to see the individual customer orders and shipment dates behind that total. The Order Lines view shows the individual customer requirements directly. The screen also shows purchasing queues so you can work from what needs attention rather than searching every order. The main queues are: To Buy — quantity still unplanned Vendor Planned — vendor selected but not yet placed on a PO On MPO — assigned to a Master PO but not yet released Late — purchasing will arrive after the order needs it, or the requirement is overdue Over-linked — more supply is linked than the order currently needs Unassigned on POs — purchased quantity not tied to customer orders All — overall view. A practical place to begin is To Buy.
2. Working from a customer order
On a Sales Order or Master Order shipment, the Vendor column shows the current purchasing relationship. If one vendor is supplying the line, the vendor name is shown. If several vendors are involved, it shows Multiple. Click the Vendor field, or open Purchase Links, to see how the line is being covered. From here you can either: assign some or all of the quantity to an existing PO or MPO, plan the quantity with a vendor, or leave it Unplanned until a purchasing decision is made. One order line can be split across several supply sources. The implemented workflow supports a line being partly on different POs, an MPO and vendor plans at the same time.
3. Planning with a vendor
Sometimes you know where you intend to buy the material, but you are not ready to create the actual PO yet. Use the Vendors view in Purchase Links. Enter a Plan Qty and, if needed, adjust the Plan Cost. The quantity moves from Unplanned to Planned. This lets the purchasing process happen naturally:
We need it → we know who will supply it → later we decide which PO/load it belongs on. When items are added to an order through Add from Vendor Items, eGrow can also create or increase that vendor plan automatically because the vendor decision has already been made.
4. Assigning an order to a PO or MPO
In the order line's Purchase Links drawer, open Open POs. Enter the quantity beside the PO or MPO you want to use. You are telling eGrow:
“This quantity on this purchase is intended to cover this customer order.” If an eligible PO already contains the item but does not have enough unassigned quantity, eGrow can offer to increase the PO quantity while making the assignment. A PO that already has received quantity cannot be raised this way because received material is already stock.
5. Working from the Purchase Order
The relationship also works in reverse. From a PO or MPO line, open Linked Orders. You can see: how much was ordered from the vendor, how much is already linked to customer orders, and how much remains Unassigned. For example:
Ordered 60
Linked to Orders 42
Unassigned 18 The 18 may be used for another customer order later or simply remain stock purchased intentionally. Use All Open Orders for This Item to see other customer demand that could use the PO quantity. From the PO side, Purchase Demand does not automatically raise the PO. Since you are already working with the purchase, increase the PO line itself first if more quantity is needed.
6. Turning plans into actual purchases
When you are ready to purchase, open or create the vendor PO and use Add from Order. The screen shows what is still available to buy from that vendor. The important relationship is:
To Buy = this vendor's Planned quantity + Unplanned quantity Plans belonging to other vendors are shown separately as Planned Other and are not taken away from those vendors. When quantity is added to the PO, eGrow uses that vendor's existing plan first, then uses any remaining unplanned quantity. This means you do not have to re-enter the purchasing decision when the plan becomes a real PO.
7. Master Purchase Orders
A Master Purchase Order can be used when purchasing is committed to a vendor but the actual POs or loads will be created later. The relationship becomes: Customer Order → MPO → PO When quantity is released from the MPO to a regular PO, the customer-order relationships move with the released supply. This allows you to hold a larger purchasing commitment with a vendor while still knowing which customer orders ultimately depend on it.
When things change
Customer orders and vendor purchases rarely remain exactly as they were originally entered. Quantities may change, material may move between shipments, orders may be split or back-ordered, or a vendor may ship short. Purchase Demand keeps those relationships synchronized where possible. If customer demand moves, the related purchasing links can move with it. If customer demand is reduced, vendor plans can be reduced automatically, because they are still purchasing intentions. Actual PO/MPO links are left in place so eGrow does not silently change a firm purchase. If those purchases now exceed the customer requirement, the line is shown as Over-linked for review. A simple way to remember this is:
Plans can adjust with demand. Firm purchases require a purchasing decision.
Relational connections
The important idea behind Purchase Demand is that the documents remain separate but connected. A Sales Order represents customer demand. A Vendor Plan represents purchasing intention. A Master Purchase Order represents vendor commitment that may be released later. A Purchase Order represents the actual purchase. Purchase Demand holds the relationship between them. That is what makes it possible for: one customer order → several vendors several customer orders → one PO one order line → several POs/MPOs/plans one PO → customer demand + extra stock without losing visibility into why something was purchased.
Viewing what changed
Use View Log when you want to understand how a relationship changed. The log records changes such as: Added, Raised, Lowered, Removed, Moved In and Moved Out along with the quantity, reason, user and whether the change was entered directly or happened automatically because of another document action. The underlying link history is specifically designed to record these relationship changes as orders and purchases move through their lifecycle.
The simplest way to think about it
The customer order tells you what is needed.
Purchasing tells you where it will come from.
Purchase Demand keeps the relationship between the two visible. For everyday use: See what needs buying → decide where it will come from → place the purchase → review what changed or needs attention.