Frequently ordered item suggestions

The Frequent Items panel on a saved purchase order lists up to five items that your company and branch have ordered most often in recent purchase orders. One click starts a new line for the item. It speeds up repeat buying: you build the order header as usual, then pick the familiar items from the panel instead of searching for each one.

Overview

The panel is a widget an administrator places on the purchase order record page. When the page opens, the panel asks the server for the most frequently ordered items, then shows each one with two buttons:

• Add to order (the tick) opens the Quick Add form on the order's Lines tab with the item filled in.
• Dismiss (the cross) hides the suggestion.

The suggestions are only a starting point. Nothing is added to the order until you save the line in the Quick Add form.

The standard purchase order page does not include the panel. Until an administrator adds it (see Configuration), buyers don't see suggestions.

When to use it

• You place similar purchase orders regularly for the same company and branch, and want the usual items one click away.
• You are new to a branch and want to see what it normally buys.

For planned replenishment from stock levels, use Auto-order instead. The Frequently Ordered tab in the Product Catalogue is a separate feature with its own settings, described in Dealer ordering.

How xMatix handles it

When the panel loads, xMatix:

1. Takes the open order's Partner Account (the buying company) and Branch.
2. Finds every purchase order with the same Partner Account and Branch that was created within the lookback window. The window is the last 30 days by default, counted back from now. It uses the record's created date, not its Document Date.
3. Groups those orders' lines by Item and ignores lines that have no item.
4. Ranks the items by how many lines contain them and keeps the top five.

Points to keep in mind:

• The supplier is not considered. Orders from every supplier count, so a suggestion may be an item you normally buy from a different supplier.
• Status is not considered. Draft and cancelled orders count as well.
• The open order counts too. Its own lines are part of the window, so an item already on this order can still be suggested.
• Lines are counted, not orders or quantity. Two lines for the same item on one order count twice. A large quantity on one line counts once.
• Five is the maximum. The server never returns more than five items. When two items have the same count, which one ranks higher is not defined.

Prerequisites

• The Frequent Items panel is on your purchase order record page. Ask your administrator if you don't see it.
• The order has been saved. On an unsaved order the panel shows Save the record first to see suggestions.
• Your security profile can run the Get Frequently Ordered Items action (see Permissions).
• The page also shows the Lines tab with Quick Add. The panel needs it to open the line form.

Procedure

Step 1 — Open the purchase order

Open a saved purchase order from Procurement → Purchase Orders. The Frequent Items panel loads its suggestions when the page opens. Each row shows the item's label, or its name when it has no label.

If the panel shows No frequently ordered items found., no purchase orders for this partner account and branch were created inside the window. Build the order with Quick Add or Product Catalogue as usual.

Step 2 — Add a suggested item

Select the tick (Add to order) on a suggestion. The Quick Add form opens on the Lines tab with:

• Item — the suggested item;
• SKU — the item's default SKU, when it has one (otherwise empty);
• Quantity — 1.

The suggestion stays in the panel.

Step 3 — Complete and save the line

Change Quantity to the amount you need, and fill in or check anything else on the form. As with any Quick Add line, empty Unit Cost and Tax Group values are filled from the price list and the tax group rules. Save the line. It is added to the order, and the order totals update.

To discard the suggestion instead, close the Quick Add form without saving.

Step 4 — Dismiss suggestions you don't need

Select the cross (Dismiss) to hide a suggestion. This hides it only on your screen and only until the page is reloaded. The next time you open the order, it can appear again.

Step 5 — See more suggestions

If the panel shows fewer items than the server returned, select View More to show the rest, and Show Less to collapse the list again.

What each suggestion contains

Business rules

• Suggestions are scoped to the open order's Partner Account and Branch, and match purchase orders by their created date within the lookback window.
• Lines without an item are ignored. Ranking is by number of lines, highest first, and only the top five items are returned.
• Add to order always proposes quantity 1 and the item's default SKU. It never saves a line by itself.
• Dismiss is local to your screen and never stored.
• The panel works only when the server can be reached. In the mobile app, while offline, it shows a "not available offline" note instead of suggestions.

Example

A buyer at the Pune branch of Sunrise Retail raises a new purchase order with Partner Account Sunrise Retail and Branch Pune. In the last 30 days the company created three purchase orders for Pune:

The buyer saves the new order and the panel ranks the items:

1. Copier Paper A4 — 3 lines
2. Toner Cartridge — 2 lines
3. Stapler Pins — 1 line

The buyer selects Add to order on Copier Paper A4. Quick Add opens with Copier Paper A4, its default SKU "Box of 5 reams" and Quantity 1. The buyer changes Quantity to 10 and saves. On reload, Copier Paper A4 now has four lines, because the new order's own line counts too.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox where the Frequent Items panel is on the purchase order page:

1. Create two purchase orders for the same Partner Account and Branch. Add item A to both and item B to one.
2. Create a third order for the same partner account and branch, and save it.
3. Check the panel. Expected result: item A is listed above item B.
4. Select Add to order on item A. Expected result: Quick Add opens with item A, its default SKU and Quantity 1, and nothing is saved yet.
5. Set Quantity to 5 and save. Expected result: a new line for item A with quantity 5.
6. Dismiss item B, then reload the page. Expected result: item B is back.

Quick reference

• The panel appears only on saved purchase orders, and only after an administrator adds it.
• Suggestions come from your company's purchase orders for the same branch, created in the last 30 days by default.
• Any supplier and any status count, including this order.
• Ranking is by number of lines, top five only.
• The tick opens Quick Add with Quantity 1 and the default SKU. Save the line yourself.
• The cross hides a suggestion until you reload.
• No suggestions? No orders for this partner account and branch in the window.

Permissions

• Seeing the panel depends only on the page layout.
• Loading suggestions runs the server action Get Frequently Ordered Items on Purchase Order. The shipped Standard User and System Admin profiles have the grant. Other profiles need it added on the profile's Actions tab (see Security profiles). Without it, the panel shows an error in red instead of suggestions. There is no administrator bypass: the grant is needed even for administrators.
• Adding a line uses Quick Add on the purchase order lines. It follows the user's create access to Purchase Order Line and the Quick Add action on the Lines list.

Configuration

Add the panel to the purchase order page

1. Go to Setup → Design Studio → Entities, open Purchase Order, and open the record page layout (the default view layout) on the Experience → Layouts tab. See Design a form layout for the designer basics.
2. In the component palette, find Frequent Items among the entity components. It is offered only on Purchase Order layouts.
3. Drop it on the page. A side column on the first tab, beside the Lines list, works well.
4. Keep the Lines list with its Quick Add button on the same page. Add to order opens that list's Quick Add form. Without the list, the tick does nothing.
5. Save the layout. Saving replaces the whole layout body, so reload any other open designer tab first.

To offer suggestions in the mobile app, add the same component to the purchase order's mobile layout.

Panel settings

The server returns at most five items, so a Max Visible Items above 5 has no effect. The ranking rule, the partner account and branch scope, and the quantity of 1 on Add to order are fixed and can't be configured.

Common problems

The panel says "No frequently ordered items found."

No purchase orders with this order's Partner Account and Branch were created inside the lookback window. Orders for another branch don't count. Increase Lookback Days on the layout, or build the order manually.

An item we buy every week isn't suggested

The item may be ordered under a different partner account or branch, or the orders may be older than the window by created date (a back-dated Document Date doesn't help). Also, five other items may have more lines.

The panel suggests an item that's already on this order

The open order's own lines count, so items already on it can rank. Dismiss the suggestion, or change the quantity on the existing line instead of adding a second line.

The panel shows an error instead of suggestions

The most common cause is a missing grant for Get Frequently Ordered Items on the user's security profile. Add it on the profile's Actions tab. In the mobile app, the panel also can't load while offline.

Selecting the tick does nothing

The page has no Lines list with Quick Add for purchase order lines. Add the list back to the layout.

The panel says "Save the record first to see suggestions."

The order hasn't been saved yet. Save the header, then open the order again.

Common questions

Does the panel look at the supplier on the order?

No. Suggestions are built from every purchase order with the same Partner Account (your buying company) and Branch, whatever the Supplier Account. If you buy the same item from several suppliers, or different items from different suppliers, all of them feed the same ranking. Check that a suggested item is something this supplier actually sells before you add it. The panel can't be narrowed to one supplier, so on orders where the supplier matters most, treat the list as a reminder of what the branch buys rather than a supplier catalogue.

Why does Add to order always use quantity 1?

The panel proposes the item, not the amount. It deliberately opens the Quick Add form with quantity 1 so you enter the amount for this order. The total quantity ordered in the window is calculated but not used or shown. Change Quantity before you save the line. If you close the form without saving, nothing is added, and the suggestion stays in the panel for another try.

Can I make the suggestions look further back?

Yes, if your administrator changes Lookback Days on the panel in the purchase order layout. The setting applies to everyone who uses that layout. A longer window gives more stable suggestions but reacts more slowly to changes in what the branch buys. The window always counts back from today by the date each purchase order was created, so back-dating an order's Document Date doesn't move it into or out of the window.

Is this the same as the Frequently Ordered tab in the Product Catalogue?

No. The Frequently Ordered tab in the Product Catalogue (and in Take Order in field sales) is a separate feature with its own look-back, ranking and size settings. The Frequent Items panel described here is fixed to five items, ranked by line count, and scoped to the purchase order's partner account and branch. See Dealer ordering for the catalogue tab.

Related topics

• Purchase orders
• Auto-order: rules-based purchase suggestions
• Dealer ordering
• Design a form layout
• Security profiles
• Purchase Order reference
• xMatix Procurement overview
• Item — entity reference