Step 1 - Create a Procurement Report
Before moving to the Procurement section, it is useful to create a procurement report to see exactly how much of each resource you need in your project and also to be able to easily generate quote requests to send out to suppliers.
In order to create a procurement report, go to the Resources module and then go to Columns in the Action Tab on the right. Under General make sure that the Base Allowable and the Effective Allowable columns are switched off, and under Measurement Columns, the Bill Qty measurement has only Quantity switched on.
This should give you the following report, which you can then save as your procurement report:
The reason why we wanted to create this report first, is because it is useful to be able to know exactly how much of each resource you will need for the project.
Another advantage is that you can easily filter this report for the resources you want to get quotes on and download it to an Excel spreadsheet to send out to your suppliers as a quotation request:
In the example above, I just typed PVC into the filter box, but another way of making it easy to filter is to use Tags. For example, I have created a roofing material tag, which means I can easily filter for my roofing materials:
This I can then drop to an Excel sheet and send to my roofing materials suppliers to request quotes from them.
Next topic: Step 2 - Create a Supplier Database