- What is an Approved Purchasing List?
- Creating an APL Record
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Parent Account: Publishing APL to a Child Account
- Opening an Existing APL Record
- Importing an Excel® File of Preferred Vendor Products to an APL Record
- Editing Properties of an APL Record
- Parent Account: Unpublishing an APL from a Child Account
What is an Approved Purchasing List (APL)
See the separate topic What is an Approved Purchasing List (APL)?.
Creating an APL Record
First Steps
- Select Procurement > Approved Purchasing Lists. The Approved Purchasing Lists screen appears.
- Click the Create List button. The Create New/Edit List slide-out panel appears (screenshot below).
Note: If the Create List button is not available, it indicates your account does not have the ability to create its own APL records because an APL is published and managed by your parent account.
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Enter or select the properties of the APL:
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Purchasing List Name - enter the name of the APL:
- If you only have one vendor, then it is recommended to name the APL "Preferred Products" plus the menu cycle. For example "Preferred Products FW 2022".
- If you are using more than one vendor, or if you are a parent account and have multiple distribution centers (DC's) you are managing vendor products on behalf of your child accounts, then it is recommended to name the APL after the vendor DC name and its ID (e.g., "Central 077")
- Vendors - select the vendors that the list is associated with in your MealSuite account. Note that it is recommended to select all vendors. Also note that this setting does not import any vendor product list from the selected vendors.
- Business Lines (available if your account supports multiple business lines) - select the business line(s) that the APL is associated with.
- Effective Date - select the date the APL becomes active (generally will be the same date the associated menu becomes active).
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Purchasing List Name - enter the name of the APL:
- Proceed to the next step: Creating a Locked APL or a Priority APL?
Creating a Locked APL or a Priority APL?
An APL is ideal for a parent account to control what vendor products their child accounts can purchase. When a parent account publishes an APL to a child account, they have the option of setting the APL as a Locked List or a Priority List.
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Locked List - the item-product selection logic will only select a product for the food item if that product is on the APL. If the product is not on the APL, then the system returns a No Matching Vendor Product label for the food item on the Vendor Product Selection screen.
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Priority List - the item-product selection logic will attempt to select a product on the APL. But if the logic does not allow for a product on the APL to be selected, then the logic will continue to select a product outside of the APL so as not to return a No Matching Vendor Product label.
Note: If you are a facility account creating an APL for your own account's use, then select the Priority List option.
Click Save
- Click the Save button to apply your changes. The newly-created APL record is listed onscreen.
- Your next steps are to populate the APL with vendor products; see the instructions below: Importing an Excel® File of Preferred Vendor Products to an APL Record.
Parent Account: Publishing APL to a Child Account
An APL is ideal for a parent account to control what vendor products their child accounts can purchase. In addition, when a corporate account is managing vendor products via a DC review unit (i.e., a faux account set up in MealSuite that represents the DC), they will need to publish that APL to the DC review unit.
To publish an APL to a child account or DC review unit, complete the following steps:
- Open the APL record that you want to publish to a child account.
- In the Publish to Accounts section, click your corporate account name to expand the section with a list of your child accounts.
- Select the check box of each account you want to publish the APL to.
About Child Accounts with APL Published from Parent Account
When a child account is using an APL published from their parent account, note the following:
- The child account will not have the ability to add products to or remove products from the APL.
- The child account will not have the ability to create their own APLs.
- The child account will not have the ability to edit the properties of the APL published from the parent account.
- If the APL is a locked APL, the vendor product list associated with the vendor of that APL is hidden from the Vendors screen (Procurement > Vendors & Products) in the child account.
Opening an Existing APL Record
To open an existing APL record, complete the following steps:
- Select Procurement > Approved Purchasing Lists. The Approved Purchasing Lists screen appears.
- An APL owned by your account presents with the gear icon. Click the gear icon and select Edit (first screenshot below). The Create New/Edit List slide-out panel appears (second screenshot below) for you to make edits to the properties.
Importing an Excel® File of Preferred Vendor Products to an APL Record
- Generating an Excel® File of Vendor Products
- Excel File Requirements
- Importing the Excel File and Mapping Fields
Generating an Excel® File of Vendor Products
The Excel file of preferred vendor products for import into an APL can be provided by your vendor.
Another means is to export the vendor products currently selected for your food items. To do so, see Generating and Exporting Vendor Product Selection List (aka Buying Preferences)
Note: Products contained in the file for the APL must be based off the vendor product list in your account. In other words, for each product on an APL, its corresponding vendor product must exist in your account. If a vendor product is on an APL but it has no corresponding vendor product in your account (see Viewing a Vendor Product List) then that vendor product can't be be considered a preferred product by the system because there is no actual vendor product in your account.
Once the Excel file is generated, you can open it and make adjustments by removing products you do not wish to purchase and adding new products you will be purchasing.
Note: If as a parent account you have a child account creating its own APL, and you would like your child account's APL to initially reflect your preferred products, then you can export an Excel@ file of your currently-selected vendor products to use as the file to populate the child account's APL.
Excel File Requirements
The requirements of the Excel file to be loaded into an APL record are documented below.
Note: The MealSuite system will not perform any formatting or apply any logic to the imported data. The data from the file will be imported and displayed “as is”.
File Must Be in .xlxs Format - The file must be in .xlxs format (per screenshot below).
Required Fields - The file must contain at least the following columns with populated data:
- Product ID
- Vendor (if Vendor column does not exist, then add it, and for each cell enter the vendor name).
No Leading Spaces in Product ID Cells - Ensure there are no leading spaces in the product ID/vendor item number cells.
Importing the Excel File and Mapping Fields
To import the Excel file containing the approved purchasing list data to the APL Record.
- Select Procurement > Approved Purchasing lists. The Approved Purchasing List screen appears.
- Click the APL record that you want to import a file for. The APL screen specific to the selected APL appears. Note: If an APL record does not exist, then create one; to do so see Creating an APL Record (above).
- Click the Import button. The Import Products slide-out panel appears.
- Click Browse to navigate to and select the purchasing list.
- If importing the list for the first time, then it does not matter if Add to Purchase List or Replace Current Products is selected. If importing the list when an existing list has been imported, then you have the option to replace the existing list by selecting the Replace Current Products option or adding to the existing guide by selecting the Replace Current Products option. It is recommended to select the Replace Current Products option to remove any obsolete products that may exist in your MealSuite account.
- Click the Upload File button. The Map and Import section appears.
Mapping the Fields
- When you import the file, you may be required to map certain column names in the file to the appropriate MealSuite fields via the Map and Import table (screenshot below). For example, you will map “Item Number” from the file to the “Product ID “ field in MealSuite.
The left side of the table in the Column Header for CSV column displays the column names in the Excel file (screenshot below). The right side of the table contains Map To drop-down fields from which you can select the appropriate MealSuite fields to map to. You have the option of not mapping a column name by selecting Do Not Map This Field. However, at a minimum the following MealSuite fields need to be mapped to from their corresponding column name in the Excel file:
- Product ID
- Description
- Vendor
Note: The MealSuite system will automatically attempt to select the appropriate Map To field.
- When you finish selecting the Map To fields, click the Import button to apply your changes. The Import Confirmation slide-out panel appears to validate the records being mapped.
- Any invalid data that is detected from the validation process is listed, meaning the affected product rows from the file will not be imported. If so, you can cancel the import process by clicking the Cancel Product Import button and open the file to readjust the affected rows, or you can click the Reconfigure Product Import button to return to the mapping (step 1 above) to readjust the mapping.
- To begin the import process after the validation is completed, click the Confirm Product Import button.
- When the import process is complete, a success message appears.
- Click the Return to Product List link to close the slide-out panel and return to the Approved Purchasing Lists screen, where the APLs are listed.
Editing Properties of an APL Record
If your account owns the APL (i.e., created the APL), then you can edit the properties of the APL. To do so, complete the following steps:
- Open the APL record.
- Make edit to the properties as needed.
- Click the Save button to apply your changes.
Parent Account: Unpublishing an APL from a Child Account
If you are a parent account who published an APL to a child account (as per above steps), then it may be required to unpublish the APL from the child account, such as what would be required if the child account needs to create its own APL. To unpublish an APL from a child account, complete the following steps:
- Open the APL record that you want to unpublish from a child account.
- In the Publish to Account section, click your corporate account name to expand the section with a list of your child accounts.
- Clear the check box of the account you want to unpublish the APL from.
- Click the Save button to apply your changes.