Requisitions and Purchase Orders

We're on 9.04.507A SQL, hopefully going up to 9.05.701 (or 702 if it really happens) in the next couple of months.

My VP/Engineering asked why, if he has to approve a requisition, does he then ALSO have to approve the PO that the requisition generates? I told him why (because PO Suggestions can and will lump both requisitions and normal demand items onto a single PO), but he countered that since we rarely if ever actually do that in practice, can I create a method so that any PO created via the requisition process be automatically approved (assuming it's within HIS purchasing authority)?

Shucks, I thought, that shouldn't be too tough.

In Epicor, when a requisition is approved it gets entered into PO Suggestions. So far so good. The Req number travels with it to that point. Once the buyer selects the suggestion for processing (by checking the "Buy" checkbox) and runs Generate, a PO is magically created. Since the ReqNum and ReqLine info are stored in the PO Release, it would seem obvious that a Data Directive on the PORelease table should pick it up.

Nope. Data Directive BPMs on both the POHeader and PODetail tables will fire when a PO is generated via suggestion, but NOT on the PORelease table.

Well then, what about a data directive on the ReqDetail table, for when it is updated with the newly generated PO number? Same story. For some reason the update of that table isn't done in a "visible" manner either.

Closest I've come yet is the Req.GetByID BO... which fires (among other times) when the PO Entry form is loaded... so when a buyer creates a PO from a req and then goes to print the PO, I can trap that and get the PO "approved" via BPM when she loads the form.

Can anybody think of a better way?

Ernie Lowell
Diba Industries