How to find the late purchase orders that matter in Acumatica

What Acumatica already gives you

In Acumatica, everything you need to judge a late purchase order already exists, spread across screens built for different jobs:

• Purchase Orders (PO301000): each line carries a requested date and, once the vendor confirms, a promised date.
• Inventory Summary (IN401000): on-hand and available quantities by item and warehouse.
• Inventory Transaction History: the issues and receipts that give you a usage history.
• Generic Inquiries: the tool that joins purchase order lines, stock and usage into one exportable list.

Each one answers part of the question. None of them ranks your late orders by the stock risk behind them. A past-due purchase order list sorted by date tells you who is late, not who to call first.

The method, step by step

1. List the open lines past their promised date

Build a Generic Inquiry on purchase order lines that are not completed, with item, vendor, open quantity, requested date and promised date. Keep the lines whose promised date (or requested date, when the vendor never confirmed) is before today. Flag the lines with no promised date: their date is still your request.

2. Get stock and usage for each item

Take available quantity per item and warehouse from Inventory Summary. For usage, sum the issues over a fixed window, for example the last 12 weeks, from the inventory transaction history, keeping the transaction types that mean consumption or shipment. Use the same window for every item.

3. Compare days of cover with the real arrival date

Days of cover = available quantity / average daily usage. For each late line, take the date you now expect it, and check for another open line on the same item that arrives earlier. If cover runs out before any receipt, the line is a shortage risk.

4. Sort by days of cover, shortest first

Among the shortage risks, the item with the fewest days of cover goes to the top. That is your chase list for today. For each line, write down stock, usage, cover, the promised date and days late: when you call the vendor, you are discussing facts.

Illustrative example, not a customer result

Two lines from the same inquiry:

• Line A, hose assembly: 10 days late. 1,500 available, usage of about 25 a day: 60 days of cover. Another line arrives next week.
• Line B, motor controller: 2 days late, never confirmed by the vendor. 36 available, usage of about 12 a day: 3 days of cover. No other open line.

Sorted by days late, line A comes first. Sorted by days of cover, line B does, and line B is the one that can stop production this week.

Where the manual method breaks

• It does not scale. Checking cover item by item works for ten late lines, not for two hundred every Monday.
• Usage needs care. New, seasonal or lumpy items make a 12-week average misleading. Flag them rather than trusting the number.
• Dates are only as good as their maintenance. If vendor confirmations are not entered, the line still carries your requested date.
• Days of cover tells you when an item runs out, not which production order or customer order it affects. Linking the two still needs your planners and your bill of materials.

Questions people ask

Can I schedule the Generic Inquiry export?

Yes, inquiries can be exported to Excel, and many teams refresh the export daily. Keep the same columns every time so the comparison stays consistent.

Which date should I use when a line was partly received?

Use the promised date of the remaining quantity, and compare cover with the arrival of what is still open.

Does this work for multiple warehouses?

Yes. Compute cover per item and warehouse, and check whether stock in another warehouse could cover the gap before you call the vendor.

How WERISCO does it

WERISCO automates the data work behind these steps: it reads every open line, computes days of cover for each part and flags late or undated orders by severity, with the evidence on each line. With Acumatica, it works from inquiry exports you can pull today: available quantity by item and warehouse, and open purchase order lines. There is no WERISCO Acumatica connector today. The first supply chain audit needs only those two exports. WERISCO reads only; nothing is written back to Acumatica, and your team decides what to chase.