Understanding Blanket Orders

A blanket order is a sales order in which the customer agrees to purchase a quantity of an item over a specified period. The order is a guaranteed sale of the items that establishes the price, terms and conditions, and the start and end dates. You can enter the blanket order as one line with a cancel date that reflects the last day of the agreement. Then, at agreed-upon times, you create sales orders for partial quantities of the blanket order.

You create a blanket order in the same way that you enter a sales order, except that the quantity that you enter represents the entire quantity to release during the blanket order period. In the same way, the cancel date that you enter represents the last date on which the blanket order is effective.

You can either enter a sales order directly to deduct the partial quantity from the blanket order or release the blanket order. You can view the original quantity that was ordered on the blanket order, the associated released orders, and the remaining quantities.

You can set the Commitment Control processing option in the P4210 program so that the system does not commit inventory when you create blanket orders. If you set this processing option, the system ignores the Inventory Commitment Preference field.

You enter a blanket order in the same manner that you enter a regular sales order. You can use the Blankets, Create Blankets, or Update Blankets selections on the Sales Order Processing menu (G4211).

The system updates the original blanket order if changes are made to the associated sales order from the P4210 or P42101 programs. For example, if a sales order line is canceled at pick slip or ship confirm, the system does not add the canceled quantity back onto the original blanket order.