Here's what we've been up to this past month:
Features and Enhancements for Procurement
Features and Enhancements for the Field
Features and enhancements for Warehouse:
Features and enhancements for Integrations:
Phase codes and cost codes can be ported from a BOM to a PO or RFQ
Phase codes, cost codes, and other accounting codes can be listed per material in a BOM and also listed per line item in a PO. These were not linked previously, requiring double data entry.
Phase and cost codes are important way for many of our customers to keep track of materials spending, both within Kojo and within their ERP integration. Some ERP integrations require this data. With this enhancement, BOM users have the option of including any phase or cost codes that they have listed in the BOM into any RFQ or PO they create from it.
How it works:
From a BOM, a purchasing agent selects line items and chooses to create a new PO. She chooses to include estimated prices, phase codes, and cost codes from the BOM that will populate the item descriptions in the PO so she doesn’t have to reenter them.
Phase and cost codes listed in a BOM may come from the output of estimation software or they may be manually entered in the spreadsheet upload or within Kojo itself. This means that there are opportunities for errors that might break the rules required for successful ERP integrations if these codes are incorrect.
When phase and cost codes are ported from a BOM to a PO, they are validated against that customer’s ERP integration rules, and the purchasing agent has the opportunity to fix any errors that are found, line by line.
The end result is that no double data entry is required to create RFQs or POs when you start with a BOM!
Turn off Case Sensitivity in PO Search
In Orders in the Office product, the search bar for PO numbers was case sensitive, and we turned this off in elastic search, making it easier to find items and Purchase Orders throughout Kojo.
Check Role of User who receives requisition
Previously, the ‘default’ ordering agent on a new Requisition defaulted to the ordering agent from the last requisition they send.
However, if that person gets removed (or their permissions are changed), that person could be a BackOffice user, which shouldn’t be allowed to be set as the ordering agent
Now, Jobsite users can only send requisitions to Procurement users, not BackOffice users.
Requisition Splitting
When the office receives a requisition from the field, they have the ability to allocate materials to be purchased from a vendor or picked from the warehouse based on inventory stock availability. In this article, we’ll show you how to successfully assign materials to the correct materials source. Check out the video or read below.
How to allocate material requisitions to your warehouse
1. Select the materials from a requisition that you want to reallocate and select ‘Send to Warehouse’.
2. Select the matching warehouse item description and click continue. If the material you are trying to match is available in the warehouse but not saved in Kojo, you can create a new entry that includes the warehouse item description, how much stock is available, and the UOM.
3. Next, you’ll see multiple options when deciding how much stock to assign from the requisition to the warehouse.
Smart Allocate: Automatically assign the amount of stock that is available in the warehouse.
Full Quantity: Transfer the full quantity of the requested stock.
Manual: You can manually change the stock levels.
(Note that if you try to assign stock for a value that’s not available in the warehouse, you’ll receive an error message and will be required to update before moving forward.)
Once you’ve completed this step, press continue.
4. You’ll get a ‘congratulations’ message and will be able to click ‘Send to Warehouse’ to complete the workflow. And that’s it! That order is now available for the warehouse team to pick and send to the field.
How to allocate materials to the purchasing department
1. Select the materials you want to route to purchasing.
2. Next, select how many units you want to send to purchase. You will be able to see the number of materials in the warehouse so you can accurately make changes.
Once the changes are finished, click ‘Send to Purchase’ to complete the workflow and
send those materials to be purchased. Now the purchasing team can view this request and work with a vendor to get it fulfilled.
General Stock Job Costing
Previously, Kojo did not allow for items pulled from General Stock to be able to have cost applied and have that cost applied to a job. Kojo now allows warehouse users to apply costing to general stock through the use of an internal purchase order. A brief walkthrough of this process can be seen below:
[Vista] PO Line Item Material Codes
Previously customers after sending the PO from Kojo into Vista. The Accounts Payable team would have to add in the material codes for the PO line items.
Customers setup material codes in Vista’s Inventory module to track spend against generic items being ordered across jobs. By integrating material codes into Kojo customers can now select the material code for the line item being ordered.
Import Frequency
We import from Vista every hour the list of material codes defined in the inventory module.
Select Material Code Column on a PO Line Item
Select from a dropdown a list of material codes defined in Vista.
When Material Code is selected autofills default phase code and cost category
In vista users can configure a default phase code and cost category for a material code. We import that information for the material code and autofill the phase code and cost category columns in Kojo when a material code is selected.
Resulting PO in Vista with material column filled in
Kojo remembers the last selected material code for an Item Description
When a material code is used for a given item description. Kojo remembers the material code used and autofills the item description based on
Field Users can select material codes in mobile app when making a requisition
There’s a setting in Settings > Integrations where you can Allow field users to enter Item Codes? When this is toggled true in the mobile app when adding an item you can also select from a dropdown of item codes.
Adding Item Codes to a requisition item on Mobile
Bill of Materials
A Bill of Materials (BOM) is a list of materials and quantities that are estimated to be needed for a job. Contractors already make materials estimates in order to bid on jobs, and these estimates can be used in Kojo once the job is won to guide procurement decisions and track spending throughout the project.
Project managers and purchasing agents can view and edit the BOM and track spending. Foremen can requisition from the BOM on their mobile devices, quickly choosing from a job-specific list of planned, approved, and in-spec materials every time.
Bill of Materials is a feature that connects several different user roles at Kojo:
Project Managers
Use a job’s estimated materials to guide procurement decisions
Monitor actual materials spend against estimates
Purchasing Agents
Create bulk orders in advance for spec’ed materials
Access pricing history for every line item — see the average, latest, and lowest prices paid
Reduce miscommunications with the Field about requested materials
Foremen
Request items—quickly—from a list of approved, in-spec materials for the job
Browse planned materials by phase code or cost code
Reduce miscommunications with the Office about what’s needed
For a full breakdown of how to set up, use, and analyze your Bill of Materials within Kojo, we are happy to offer a new course in Kojo Academy: LINK