I have a production order in SFC. Is there a way of telling whether it was transferred from MPS/MRP or inserted manually.

Only way to determine is via the reference date of the order. This way it is still not sure where the order is coming from.
As a general rule you can follow;
When start date and reference date are same then most likely the order is inserted manually.
When reference date and start date are not equal (reference date is same as the sales requirement) it is generated by mrp.

So, where in SFC is the reference date?

Reference date is a Baan V field Not Baan IV. See if you order date and effective date are the same when MRP order is transfer and also when you do Manual Order.

Dear all,

One useful way BaanERP could have informed us if the production order (or even purchase order) had come from MRP would be to pass the pegging information obtained during MRP run. That would even serves more purpose than just informing if the order had come from MRP. This information would be very valuable in production/purchase order. However, unfortunately, this feature is not available. I don't think it's that hard to add that feature

Rgds,
Paul

Just thinking of this issue to determine the origin of the order, you could define different order series for the transfer from MRP and manual inserted orders. Then the organisation does know where the origin of the order is coming from.

Effective Date and Order Series are pretty good work arounds. Only problem is, a user can easily get around these if he wants to. It would have been good if the application stored this information somewhere...

Thanks a lot for the suggestions anyways.