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Facility Account: Recommended Steps with Procurement

Kevin U
  • Updated

About Working in Procurement as a Facility Account

The Procurement module in MealSuite is a powerful and comprehensive feature set that allows you to manage vendor products in your facility account. This article provides a high-level overview of the procurement functionality and the recommended steps to follow when working in procurement as a facility account. 

Add Vendor and Distribution Center (DC) to Your Account

Within your facility account, the vendor and the distribution centre (DC) you order from needs to be added. 

Adding an Interface-Enabled Vendor and DC

An interface-enabled vendor in the system allows for the automatic import of an account-specific electronic order guide (eOG). Instructions to submit an eOG activation request for a vendor are covered in the following articles: 

Adding a Non-Interfaced Vendor and DC

There are two types of non-interfaced vendors that can be added to your account:

  • System vendor - a vendor and its DCs that exist in the system and can be selected by a facility account.* With a system vendor, its products are also maintained in the system, meaning they will be verified and linked to their appropriate food items (i.e., ingredient or prepared food). Note that a system vendor is also referred to as a "managed vendor". 

    *Depending on facility account permissions from the facility's corporate account, the facility account may not have the ability to select a system vendor. 
     
  • Account-specific vendor - a vendor and its DCs that are manually created by your account. Because the vendor is specific to your account, any products added by your account will only be specific to your account, and as such you will have to request that the products be verified and linked to the appropriate food items (i.e., ingredient or prepared food) in the system (see Suggesting a Vendor Product be Linked to a Food Item). Note that an account-specific vendor is also referred to as "user-maintained vendor". 

Instructions to add a non-interfaced vendor and DC to an account via the above options are here: Facility Account: Adding a Non-Interfaced Vendor and DC to Your Account. 

The Vendor Product List

Vendor Product List with Interfaced Vendor

If the vendor is an interfaced vendor, then the vendor product list will be initially imported from the import interface. The vendor product list that is loaded to the account will be specific to the DC the facility orders from. Subsequent updates to the vendor product list will occur via the import interface. 

Vendor Product List with non-Interfaced Vendor

If the vendor is a non-interfaced vendor, then the vendor product list must be uploaded manually via an import of an Excel® file, such as an order guide. Subsequent updates to the vendor product list will occur manually via fresh imports of the file.

If the parent account has added the vendor and DC to its account, then the parent account can be responsible for maintaining the vendor product list for the child account by publishing the list to the child account. A facility account must consult with its parent account to determine if the parent or the child account will be maintaining the vendor product list. 

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In addition, as a facility account, there is also the ability add individual products and edit existing products. 

Understand and Review Vendor Products Selected for Food Items

In the MealSuite system, a food item (i.e., an ingredient or prepared food used in a recipe) is linked with one or more verified vendor products. A verified vendor product is one that matches the food item. 

From a food item's verified vendor products, one will be selected to be used for that food item via the system product-item selection logic. The product that is selected determines the nutrient data and price for the food item. 

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Identify and Troubleshoot Cost per Serving Discrepancies 

From your list of vendor products selected for food items, it is recommended to perform quality assurance (QA) on the cost per serving. A cost per serving discrepancy will be obvious, such as in the example below where the apple sauce is $3.09 for a 100 gram serving:

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Instructions to identify and troubleshoot cost per serving discrepancies are here: Identifying and Troubleshooting Cost per Serving Issues (via the Vendor Product Selection Screen).

Editing Vendor Product Selections for Food Items

From a food item's verified vendor products, one will be selected for use for that food item via the system product-item selection logic. The logic can be manually adjusted via the following methods:

Favouring a Verified Vendor Product for a Food Item

Favouring a verified vendor product for a food item is a manual function that a facility account can use to select that product for the food item.

Instructions to favour a verified vendor product for a food item are here: Favouring a Verified Vendor Product (Facility Accounts Only).

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Utilize Approved Purchasing List (APL) to Select Verified Vendor Products for Food Items

An approved purchasing list (APL) contains vendor products from a distribution centre (DC) that are preferred to be selected for food items. 

From a food item's verified vendor products, the system will first look to select a favoured vendor product for the food item. If there is no favoured vendor product, then the system will look to select a vendor product for the food item if the vendor product is on an APL.

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A facility account has the ability to create an APL. However, an APL can also be owned and maintained by your parent account to control what vendor products its child accounts can purchase. It will be necessary for both accounts to understand the APL ownership role in order to effectively utilize the APL to select vendor products for food items. 

If you as the facility account have ownership of an APL, then the following articles are available to update vendor product selections for food items via the APL:

Favouring a Non-Verified Vendor Product (i.e., "Soft Link")

As a facility account, it is possible to select a vendor product for a food item when that vendor product is already linked to another food item. This is known as a "soft link" between the vendor product and the new food item because the vendor product is not verified for the new food item.

When you create a soft link, the price of the vendor product will update the costing on recipes and menus, but the nutrient data of that vendor product will not be used. 

Using soft links may be required for a recipe ingredient that does not match exactly a product that you have. For example, the recipe states to use low sodium bacon; however your facility does not purchase low sodium bacon and instead uses regular bacon. While MealSuite recommends updating the recipe with your available ingredient (i.e., regular bacon), this may not always be feasible. Therefore you can "soft link" the regular bacon vendor product to the low sodium bacon food item for your costing purposes. 

Instructions to favour a non-verified vendor product are here: Facility Accounts: Favouring a Non-Verified Vendor Product ("Soft Link")

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Resolving a "No Matching Vendor Product" Label for a Food Item 

If a food item on the Vendor Product Selection screen has a No Matching Vendor Product label (screenshot below), see the following article for resolution options: Resolving a Food Item with the "No Matching Vendor Product" Label.

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Generate Cost Analysis Report for Menu

You can generate cost analysis reports for your menu based off the vendor products selected for the menu food items. Two types of reports are available: