Where Acumatica is only interested in which vendor a part is purchased from, Innovator records who the manufacturer of a part is as well as the vendor. This can be enormously useful for sourcing purposes because it gives a clear picture of the available options when parts are out of stock with one vendor - alternatives from another vendor or even manufacturer are apparent. This is also necessary when conducting supply chain auditing for the purposes of Explosive Atmosphere QA management and Conflict Minerals reporting etc.

This process details a way of retrospectively importing purchase order history from Acumatica into Innovator, and then reviewing this data to backfill gaps in the manufacturer detail.

Generating data from Acumatica

The first step is to export the data from Acumatica. For this the 'Purchase Orders by Item' inquiry is used.

Firstly check that you have the required columns displayed. This is important as not all are displayed by default and some or all of the process may fail if you don't have the data included. 

Click the column selector button top-left of the table and check that you have at least the highlighted columns included. You may want others to help with filtering the list as required for your analysis:

Finally set up any required filters to produce a dataset that is manageable to analyse in one go. Here I'm going to analyse items ordered to the 'PRODUCTS' warehouse during the month of April 2022:

Note: Innovator is only interested in stock items so ensure the 'stock item' tick-box is checked to filter out everything else.

Finally click the Excel icon to generate the Excel export file.

IMPORTANT: Once that has downloaded you will need to open it in Excel, click save and then close it again. The export from Acumatica is in a slightly non-standard format which Excel copes with but Innovator does not. 

Importing data into Innovator

From Innovator you need to create a new 'Vendor Detail Import' record. In the table of contents menu this is under 'Sourcing' > 'Conflict Minerals'. Right click and select 'Create New Vendor Detail Import'

Give your import a description and then click 'Import Excel'

Then select the file and click OK.

If there are no errors then BE PATIENT it will then appear to freeze for a while depending on how many items are in the Excel file - it could be 30 secs for 100items to a minute or more.

During this time it is:

1. Checking the vendors in Innovator and creating new ones if they are missing - this is done by checking against Acumatica's vendor ID, so if this is incorrect in Innovator it may create a duplicate vendor.
2. Looking up existing 'Vendor Parts' for the corresponding vendor and catalog number (alternate ID in Innovator) and creating new ones if not found.

Once the process is complete the list in the Items tab will be populated:

At this point the data is not saved - now is your chance to review the import and check it for errors. You can click Discard and repeat the above steps if you need to change the original data.

Note: The green '+' hexagons in the left column indicate new Vendor Parts being created where no match was found.

If you are happy with the data so far, click 'Save' before proceeding with the following steps.

Entering missing Manufacturer data

At this point all the Vendor information has been imported from Acumatica as-is. Where there was existing vendor part information, the linked manufacturer information may already be known, but in other cases there will be missing data. This can be seen in two different ways, so it's useful to split this part of the process into two:

Entering Manufacturer information for new Vendor Parts

Where the import process created new Vendor parts the 'Manufacturer Part' field will be blank.

In this case there are two options:

Link to an existing manufacturer part

Click the 'Done' button on the Vendor Detail Import screen for now, but leave it open. The links in the Items tab will now be more easy to navigate:

You can now click on the part number to go straight to the part record and check for existing manufacturer detail.

If you find a relevant manufacturer part already, copy the Manufacturer's P/N, then close the Part window.

Back on the Vendor detail import screen, double click the line of the relevant part to open the 'Vendor Part', and then click 'Edit'. Now paste the Manufacturer's part number in the Manufacturer Part box. You should get the relevant item appear in a drop down:

If that doesn't work, or there are multiple options in the drop-down, click the '...' to open the search window and do a more detailed search for the right part.

Finally click 'Done', and close the Vendor Part window.

Create a new Manufacturer Part

If you didn't find the right manufacturer part already in the system, the alternative is to create a new manufacturer part.

Sometimes the manufacturer is obvious, for example machined parts will have the same manufacturer and manufacturer P/N as the Vendor detail. You can very quickly add this detail by right-clicking on the line and going to the 'Actions' menu:

Search for the manufacturer, then double-click them, or click the green tick - if the manufacturer doesn't exist, click the grey cross top-right and see the following section for how to add one, before returning to this step.

The next dialog is already populated with the Vendor Part number - correct it if needed to the proper Manufacturer's part number if there is one and click 'save'.

Having completed this, the Manufacturer Part cell will stay blank in the 'Items' tab until refreshed by clicking the magnifying glass search icon above.

Creating a new Manufacturer

If you've searched for a manufacturer and one doesn't already exist you can create a new one. Don't forget to check for alternative or similar names for the same manufacturer to avoid creating duplicates.

From the table of contents 'Sourcing', right click on 'Manufacturers' and 'Create new Manufacturer':

Enter the name of the manufacturer as a minimum, plus any other information you have, and click 'Save'.

Other ways to determine the Manufacturer information

If the manufacturer information isn't already in the system or obvious from the information you have in front of you, then there are two convenience functions which can help you find out:

If the vendor has an online catalogue then you can access this from the 'View on web site' button on the Vendor Part screen - double click the line to open the Vendor Part screen:

If you see the following error, but you've found that the vendor does have an online catalogue, please send the URL of the online catalogue to itsupport@antech.co.uk and we can try to set it up to provide a direct link through

Another option for finding more information is the delivery note from the vendor. This can also provide additional detail.

Right click on the line and from the 'Actions' menu select 'Open Purchase Order'.

This will take you to the PO in Acumatica. Go to the 'PO History' tab and look for the paper-clip icon next to the receipts:

From here you can download the scanned receipt:

Finally, don't forget a web search with a search engine like Google can always be useful - often vendors will use manufacturer's part numbers instead of their own numbering system, so searching the vendors part number can find useful detail.

If you really cannot find any more detail, leave it blank for now.

Updating Manufacturer Parts with 'Unknown Manufacturer'

The second stage of the process is to check for parts where there is already a 'Manufacturer Part' record, but the manufacturer is 'Unknown Manufacturer'. This was done at the time of import of data from the original Filemaker database so that the vendor information that we had showed up correctly on the parts. Hopefully as this process progresses these will be all corrected.

To find out where this is the case, use the 'analysis' tab on the Vendor Detail Import screen. First of all there are a couple of things  to do to make the list easier to scan through quickly:

Click the display settings button and change 'max visible children' to 1000 and click Apply.

Then click the 'Grow' button and all the manufacturer information will be shown as a tree below each vendor part:

The links on this screen allow you to navigate straight to the different screens we've discussed in the previous steps:

You can see the first item above has 'Unknown manufacturer'.

Use the techniques described previously to determine the appropriate manufacturer name and part number. Then click the link that opens up the manufacturer part record that needs correcting.

Click 'Edit', correct the part number and Manufacturer fields as necessary and then click save.

Once you return to the 'Analysis' tab, the information won't update automatically, until you manually click the refresh icon in the tab's toolbar.

Submit for review

Once you've completed as much manufacturer information as you are able to find, you need to update the 'status' of the import data set to 'In Review'.

If the record is still in edit mode click 'Done' to save and release it.

Then click the 'promote' button, then double-click 'In Review' to submit it

Congratulations, your work here is done