When you negotiate quantities and delivery terms with a vendor on a purchase order in Business Central, every change is stored as an archived heading line. This gives you a full history of the back-and-forth on each individual order line.
You can open the archived heading lines on any purchase order line to see how many times the line has been changed. A line might have one archived heading line if it was changed once, or three if you negotiated several times.
The history shows both your requested quantity and the vendor’s confirmed quantity for each step. It also records when the vendor rejected a request, so you can see exactly where an agreement broke down.
Tracking purchase order negotiations in Business Central
When you work back and forth with a vendor on a purchase order, Business Central keeps track of the changes for you. For each line you have handled, there is a set of archived heading lines that document the negotiation.
On a purchase order with several lines, you can see at a glance how much negotiation each line went through. Three of the lines in this example have a single archived heading line each. The last line has three archived heading lines, which means line number 40,000 went through more back-and-forth with the vendor than the others.
Reading the negotiation history on a purchase order line
If you go down and look at the heading lines on the line, you can follow the full sequence of requests and confirmations on the quantity. Here is how one negotiation played out:
- You requested 12 units. The vendor confirmed 11.
- You accepted 11, then requested 10. The vendor confirmed 10.
- You then changed your mind and requested 8 instead. The vendor rejected that request.
The full story on this line is straightforward to read once you know where to look. You asked for 12, the vendor confirmed 11, and you accepted it. You then asked for 10, and the vendor agreed. When you asked for 8, the vendor said no and rejected the request.
Because the request for 8 was rejected and the rest was accepted, the requested quantity on the line is now 10. The archived heading lines let you reconstruct every step that led to that result.
Q&A
Where can I see the negotiation history for a purchase order line in Business Central?
Open the archived heading lines on the relevant purchase order line. Each line you have handled has its own set of archived heading lines that record the requests, confirmations, and rejections exchanged with the vendor.
How do I know how many times a purchase order line has been changed?
Look at the number of archived heading lines on the line. A line with one archived heading line was changed once. A line with three archived heading lines went through three rounds of negotiation with the vendor.
What happens to the requested quantity when a vendor rejects a change?
The requested quantity stays at the last accepted value. If you requested 10 and the vendor confirmed it, then later requested 8 and the vendor rejected it, the requested quantity on the line remains 10.