I Firmed My Purchase Orders and the Schedule Did Not Move

Firming a buy item from the MRP worklist raises a purchase order in draft, and draft supplies the scheduler nothing, which is why a plan can be full of firmed orders and completely unchanged. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, the requisition is a to-do for the buyer rather than a commitment, and it takes two more steps to reach the schedule: open it, then re-run. Both are quick, and neither is optional.

This post explains what firming actually produces, which statuses the scheduler believes, the second half nobody expects, and the two other reasons a bar can stay put. It sits under the EDGEBIC planning guide and follows reading MRP action messages.

What Firming a Buy Item Produces

On the MRP Worklist, a planned order whose make-or-buy column reads Buy becomes a purchase order when you firm it.

What arrives is a draft purchase order with a requisition-style number, carrying one line for the planned quantity. Its promised date is set to the planned order's due date, and the supplier and unit cost come from the product's preferred source when one is recorded. With no preferred source recorded, the line arrives with the supplier blank and a note saying so, which is better than naming a plausible vendor and having a real order go out unread.

Every one of those fields is a placeholder waiting for a buyer. That is the design.

Why Draft Is the Right Default

It reads as an obstacle the first time. It is a guard, and it protects two different things.

Draft supplies nothing, so firming cannot raise projected stock on material nobody has ordered. If firming produced open supply directly, a planning run would be able to lift a projected balance out of a shortage on the strength of a decision no buyer had made. The plan would look solved and the plant would be no better off.

The promised date on a requisition is not a promise. It is the plan's due date, which is when the material is needed, not when a supplier has said it will arrive. Those two numbers agree only by luck. Letting an unconfirmed date into the schedule puts a figure on the Gantt that looks exactly as authoritative as a real commitment while being nobody's word.

So the requisition sits in the buyer's queue until a person confirms the vendor, the price and, above all, the date. The moment somebody opens it, a human has taken responsibility for that promise. This is the same reasoning behind why the promised date matters more than the order date.

Which Statuses the Scheduler Believes

Two of five statuses feed the plan. If you raise an order, set promised dates on its lines, run the schedule and see no peg anywhere, the status is nearly always the reason.

Note that the Include closed option on the purchasing screen controls the list, not the plan. Ticking it brings received and canceled orders back into view; it does not make them supply anything.

The Second Half: Nothing Moves Until You Re-Schedule

Even with the status corrected, one step remains, and it accounts for the rest of the "nothing happened" cases.

Purchasing edits change what the scheduler will believe, not what it has already committed. Saving an order as open puts its remaining quantities on the inbound supply timeline and onto the Scheduled Receipts report immediately. It does not touch a single bar on the Gantt.

Bars move when you run Schedule + Re-Schedule from Drive Schedule. At that run, jobs short of the material peg to the newly open lines, their material rows stretch to the promised dates, their first operations move, and the amber markers appear.

So the complete sequence is: firm, open, save, re-run. Three of those four are on the purchasing screen and one is on the schedule screen, which is exactly why the last one gets forgotten.

A Worked Fix

Eight requisitions have been firmed from the worklist and the plan looks unchanged.

1. Open the purchasing screen and find the eight draft orders.
2. For each, confirm the supplier and unit cost. Where the preferred source filled them in, check them rather than assume them. Where the line came through blank, fill it in.
3. Replace the promised date. The planned due date is when the material is needed. Put in what the supplier has actually confirmed, using their lead days only as a starting point.
4. Set the status to open and save.
5. Run Schedule and Re-Schedule once, after all eight, not after each one.
6. Read the result. Jobs short of those materials now carry amber waiting-on markers naming the orders, and their dates reflect the promises rather than an assumption.

Doing the whole batch before the single schedule run saves seven runs and gives you one coherent picture to review rather than eight partial ones.

Two Other Reasons a Bar Stays Put

If the status is open, the promise is real and you have re-run, two possibilities remain and both are usually correct behavior.

The promise lands on or before the need date. A promise that arrives before the job needs the material is counted as supply that will simply be available, not as something to wait for. No peg forms, no marker is drawn, and the job schedules on capacity alone. Check the material row's own end date; if it ends where you expect, the plan has already accounted for the supply.

The job has already started. A job with logged actuals is never re-netted or re-pegged, because its material draw is history rather than a plan. Purchasing changes will not move it, and should not. If a started job is genuinely short, the lever is expediting the delivery.

If neither of those fits, the fuller diagnosis is in my job will not start and I cannot see why, which covers the case where nothing at all covers the shortfall.

The Habit That Prevents the Call

One line in a routine removes almost all of this: set the status to open the moment the order goes out.

Draft is a drawer, not a plan. A requisition that lives in draft for a week is a week the schedule spends assuming material nobody has ordered, and because an uncovered shortfall draws no marker, nothing on the board will tell you. Pairing that habit with a pre-publish read of the Scheduled Receipts report closes the loop, because that report shows only what the scheduler believes, so a draft you forgot to open is conspicuous by its absence from it.