The blankets tab in the Place Orders screen (step 2) shows any blanket PO's that are currently open and available for your selected line. All blanket PO's can be viewed in the Blanket Purchase Orders Screen.
When an item has open blanket PO's available for it, StockIQ will look to see if it can make any planning modifications for that item due to the presence of the blanket. If blankets are found, they will be noted, and shown in the "Blankets" tab:
The item shown below has one BPO open with quantity available on it. Placing this PO line would be issuing a release against the blanket, reducing how much is left on the blanket.
StockIQ will choose a blanket PO to release against automatically if one is available, choosing the oldest first. You can change this by selecting a BPO line, and clicking the "Assign Blanket" button.
If you do not wish to issue a release against any blanket PO, then use the "Clear Blanket" button.
As you clear or assign the blanket PO assigned, the blanket PO columns in the Place Orders grid will update accordingly:
Note that when blankets are present, StockIQ will highlight the planning lead time with a purple flag to indicate that a non-standard lead time is likely in effect. For all blankets where the "Skip Manufacturing Time" checkbox has been checked (see the Blanket Purchase Orders Screen topic), StockIQ will recognize that it should be able to ship from manufacturer on-hand, thus bypassing any specified manufacturing LT.
A related message is displayed in the notification area for the line:
When you place an order for a line that has a blanket PO #/Line # specified, that will be included in the output so that any blanket PO information in your ERP can be updated, noting that this release was against a given Blanket PO number.