Procure to Receipt in the new Dynamics AX (V7)

Microsoft Dynamics AX Procure to Receipt: Today, we will walk through an end-to-end example of the Procure-to-Receipt process in the new Microsoft Dynamics AX (V7). We will show the creation, confirmation, and updating of a Purchase order and statuses by a Buyer. We will then walk through registration and receipt of the goods by the warehouse and Buyer. Lastly, we will review order statuses and invoicing the Purchase order. For all of the scenarios shown below, we will be using the Contoso demo data setup in the new Microsoft Dynamics AX (V7) demo environments.

The first thing of note is the workspaces we will be using through this demo. Workspaces focus on specific activities rather than an entire module of functionality. The workspaces we will be using today are Purchase order confirmation, Purchase order preparation, Purchase order receipt and follow-up, and Vendor Invoice entry.

To start the process, we will act as a Buyer and create a Purchase order for an item. To do this, we will first navigate to the Purchase order preparation workspace as shown above. When we get to the workspace, click the “New purchase order” icon under the Summary section to being creating a Purchase order manually.

Next, a screen will open to being adding the initial required information to create the Purchase order; mainly, the Vendor account, address information, and so on. For this demonstration, we will use vendor “US-101” for Fabrikam Electronics.

Next, the Purchase order will be created and we can begin to add items to the order. For now, I will add item “A0001 – HDMI 6’ Cables” to the order for a quantity of 100.

Now, let’s imagine that is all I had completed. So I had not confirmed the Purchase order and the warehouse has not received anything. The new workspaces give me great insight into each order and the important states they are in. So we take this order, for example, which is not confirmed, and I’m another buyer and log into my Purchase order preparation workspace, I can immediately find the status of the orders. The Summary section lets me know what quantity of POs are Approved, what orders do not have a Confirmed delivery date. The Orders section shows me breakdowns of POs in various statuses, as well as direct links to Vendor and PO inquiries.

We can see above that the PO I created is in the Approved state. Now, notice the “Without Confirmed Delivery date” icon in the Summary section. This icon will show Purchase order lines that have been Confirmed, but not given a Confirmed delivery date. So since our Purchase order has not been confirmed yet, it will not show in this list. Let’s go back and confirm the Purchase order as the buyer. To do that, I’ll just click the “Approved” icon as shown above to open a list of all Purchase orders in the Approved Approval status. Now we can see the PO at the top of the list:

I highlight the PO I want to confirm, click the Purchase tab at the top of my AX session then under the Actions section, click “Confirm.”

I could have clicked “Confirmation” under the Generate section to the left of what’s shown above. That would have allowed me to use the standard screen to choose Print management to print, save, or email the Confirmation document. Now our Purchase order has been Confirmed.

If we go back to our Purchase order preparation workspace, we will notice a change. Now the “Without confirmed delivery date” cue has one additional order showing.

The reason being is that we have confirmed our Purchase order, but forgot to confirm the delivery date on the Purchase order lines. So we navigate back to our Purchase order to update the lines.

You do this by going to the Line details when viewing the PO in line mode, selecting the Delivery tab of the Line details then putting the record in Edit mode to update the Confirmed delivery date:

I enter a date of 4/7/2016 in the Confirmed delivery date field then reconfirm the Purchase order. If we were to go back to the Purchase order preparation workspace now, the “Without confirmed delivery date” cue once again would be for 5 since the Purchase order we created now has been confirmed and updated with confirmed delivery dates.

Now we can imagine I come back a few days later or perhaps a different buyer logs into the Purchase order confirmation workspace to review what Purchase orders are open that have been confirmed. So, this is typically going to be Purchase orders that have been sent to your vendor to fulfill but have not been received at your warehouse yet. If I go to that workspace, I can filter on vendor account to see what Purchase orders are open for review or what Purchase orders are confirmed and open. So I will select my vendor and find there is 1 open confirmed Purchase order.

Clicking that icon will take me to a list of the Open confirmed Purchase orders. So far, so good. As a buyer, I can easily create Purchase orders, see if they have been confirmed, see if dates have been confirmed, and see if Approvals have been made through workflow. That’s a lot of information and we have not even looked at the warehouse side yet!

So the next thing, other than the receiving process itself, is that often buyers and warehouse personnel want to see what back ordered or delayed lines and order are out there. With the workspace for Purchase order receipt and follow-up, there are Summary pages for All Purchase orders and Lines with delayed receipts. This gives immediate access to openly filter on all Purchase orders by status, vendor account, receipt dates, and items, as well as a form filtered only on delayed items. Delayed items would be Purchase order lines where the receipt date is in the past.

Also, as shown above, there is Pending and upcoming work cues that display receipts in all different statuses from “Delayed receipts, by vendor” to “Registered not received orders” which would be orders that have been registered as arrived at the warehouse, most likely through the Item arrival overview process, but have not had a Product receipt posted yet.

So now, we will quickly walk through the registration of the goods through the Arrival overview form. This process has not changed in the new Dynamics AXC, but it’s worth reviewing with the new look! As a warehouse worker, I setup my form to display Purchase orders for account “US-101” with receipt dates for the next two weeks. It displayed two Purchase orders, including the new Purchase order we created.

I create the Warehouse arrival journal by selecting my Purchase order receipt and line and clicking the Start arrival butt under the Receipts section. That journal can then be posted to update the Purchase order line status to “Registered.”

Now if another warehouse worker, maybe the manager, or a buyer needs to review Purchase order lines that have been registered but a Product receipt still needs to be posted to acknowledge the receipt and updates the status, they can navigate to the same Purchase order receipt and follow-up workspace. Within that workspace, if we now click the “Registered not received order” cue, we will see our order.

Now someone can go and post the Product receipt to update the status of the Purchase order and lines to “Received.”

Now the last thing that would need to happen is to post the invoice. Luckily, the workspace “Vendor invoice entry” gives enough ease of use and access to the documents we need. There is a Summary section of cues for various unposted invoices. There’s also cues for Documents not invoiced. The simplest one to show is Product receipts. This gives me a list of all the Product receipts posted. I can then filter by date, invoice account, and Purchase order number. That way, I quickly access which order I need to invoice.

You can notice right above the list is a button “Invoice now.” I select my Product receipt linked to the earlier created Purchase order and click this button. This opens the Vendor invoice form where I can populate the invoice description, Number, and date. I can also edit any information for unit prices or discount prior to posting.

Once all the mandatory information is filled out, I click the Post tab button to the left of the Vendor invoice tab at the top of the screen or can Invoice the line by clicking the drop down menu above the line of the invoice.

And just like that we have gone from Purchase order creation, to open order inquiry, to warehouse review and receipt, and finally invoicing. In the new Dynamics AX, we only needed access to 4 workspaces to do that. There are around 40 workspaces available, so we only need 1/10th of all of them to do an entire receiving flow. Additionally, all of the other functions are still available through the traditional AX modules now available through the browser interface.

Enjoy learning the new Dynamics AX!