How to find the late purchase orders that matter in Sage
Purchase order lines tell you which orders are late. Stock enquiries tell you whether that hurts. How to put the two together in Sage X3 or Sage 200.
What Sage already gives you
In Sage X3 and Sage 200, everything you need to judge a late purchase order already exists, spread across the purchasing and stock modules:
- Purchase order lines: each open line carries an expected or due date, and the quantity still to receive.
- Stock enquiries: on-hand, allocated and on-order quantities for an item, by warehouse or site.
- Stock movement history: the issues and receipts that give you a usage history.
- Reports and exports to Excel: the usual way to put these lists side by side, in either product.
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.
Screen and report names differ between Sage X3 and Sage 200, and between versions. The method below only needs three things that both hold: open purchase order lines with dates, stock by item, and a movement history.
The method, step by step
1. List the open lines past their due date
Export open purchase order lines with item, supplier, quantity outstanding and due date. Keep the lines whose due date is before today. If your team records supplier confirmations, use the latest confirmed date and flag the lines never confirmed.
2. Get stock and usage for each item
Take free stock per item and warehouse. For usage, sum issues over a fixed window, for example the last 12 weeks, from the stock movement history: issues to production and despatches to customers. Use the same window for every item.
3. Compare days of cover with the real arrival date
Days of cover = free stock / 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 due date and days late: when you call the supplier, you are discussing facts.
Illustrative example, not a customer result
Two lines from the same export:
- Line A, cardboard cartons: 8 days late. 12,000 in free stock, usage of about 300 a day: 40 days of cover. Another line arrives next week.
- Line B, control valve: 2 days late, never confirmed. 15 in free stock, usage of about 5 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 supplier confirmations are not entered, the line still carries the original due date.
- Days of cover tells you when an item runs out, not which works order or sales order it affects. Linking the two still needs your planners and your bill of materials.
Questions people ask
Does this work in both Sage X3 and Sage 200?
Yes. The screens differ, but both hold open purchase order lines with dates, stock by item and a movement history, which is all the method needs.
Can I use a read-only database view instead of exports?
Yes, if your team or partner can provide one. WERISCO can read a structured export or a read-only view; either way nothing is written back to Sage.
What about multiple warehouses or sites?
Compute cover per item and warehouse, and check whether another warehouse could cover the gap before you call the supplier.
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 Sage X3 or Sage 200, it works from scheduled exports or a read-only database view: free stock by item and warehouse, and open purchase order lines. There is no WERISCO Sage connector today; see the Sage integration page. The first supply chain audit needs only those two exports. WERISCO reads only; nothing is written back to Sage, and your team decides what to chase.
One supply-chain shock, decoded in numbers, and what a data-driven plant does about it.
