When you are working with purchase requisitions the purchasing department you might want to control which vendors people in the organization can purchase from so that you can take advantage of negotiated discounts or favorable trade terms. In AX2012 in the purchasing policy you have a policy that you can use to enforce the selection of vendors which is called the category policy rule. This has four options.

Allow only vendors that are preferred for this category.

Allow only vendors that are preferred or approved for this category

Do not allow vendor selection in this category

Allow all vendors

Their titles indicate what they would allowed but what is maybe not obvious is the behavior and how they are setup. The vendors that are assigned to the procurement categories is where the list is maintained and a preferred or approved status is provided there.

It’s important to keep in mind the behavior of this policy and the different between category lines and item lines. As well the difference in the effect on the purchase requisition and the purchase order as the purchasing policy is for category lines on purchase requisitions. It would be nice if the experience was consistent on the purchase order as well but in large organization most users won’t create purchase orders they will use the requisition and it will be up to the procurement team to create the order and find the appropriate supplier.

Another difference is the approved list which is setup on the item and the approved list which is setup on the procurement category. While they have the same labelling they behave differently.

You can see the effect of the policy and these behaviors in the video.

Cheers

Lachlan