MS Dynamics AX 2012 Simple Purchase Order Workflow Walkthrough

Assalam O Alikum Guys,

Today we are going to see a simple workflow available in MS Dynamics AX 2012, also what basic setups must be done before configuring any of the workflow available in modules. 

Number Sequence

In System Administration > Setup > System Parameters > Number Sequence set the number sequence for Workflow ID

Batch Groups

1. Navigate to System Administration > Setups > Batch Group
2. Create three batch groups 
3. DUEDATE, MSGPRO, & LINEITEM
4. Make sure select appropriate Batch servers for the batch groups.

Workflow Infrastructure Configuration Wizard 

1. Navigate to Workflow Infrastructure Configuration through System Administration > Setup > Work flow
2. In this wizard you are required to provide batch groups we created in first setup
3. Click Next
4. Select MSGPRO and Click Next
5. Select DUEDATE | Set hours (1 For Due Date) and Click Next 
6. Select LINEITEM | Set Minutes (1 For Lineitem Work Flow) and Click Next 
7. Click Finish [ See Screen Snap Below ]
8. You can confirm that batches are waiting for execution by Inquiring Batch Jobs
9. Navigate to System Administration > Inquiries > Batch Jobs [ See Screen Snap Below ]

Example Workflow Purchase Order Approval

We are going to create a new Purchase Order Approval Workflow, Specially for Purchase Workflow we need to Activate Change Management at Procurement & Sourcing > Setup > Procurement & Sourcing Parameters > General

1. Navigate to Procurement & Sourcing > Setup > Procurement & Sourcing Workflows
2. Click New, Select Purchase Order Workflow and Click Create Workflow
3. From the left hand side pan (WorkFlow elements), drag/drop Approve Purchase Order element to main workflow screen
4. Click properties on Top Pan
5. Select on which events Notifications should be sent
6. Double click the  Approve Purchase Order element
7. Click Step 1, Click Assignment on Top Pan
8. Click User on Selection
9. Click User Tab
10. Add user [ Better create another user for approval ]
11. Click Basic Settings
12. Enter Subject and Message for Workflow
13. Click Save and Close
14. Click Ok
15. Activate the Version, Click Ok

You have created the basic workflow.

Unable to add placeholder in MS Dynamics AX 2012 Workflow

I stuck in an strange issue, and was unable to resolve, I goggled and was unable to find any blog, knowledge base, or any other help. Actually I was in middle of creating a workflow for Vendor Bank Remitance and was unable to complete it as I wan unable to add any place holders.

I created a new legal entity, and tried to create same workflow and field was there. When I looked at in more details I found out that form is based on current language. I just navigate to Organisation Administration > Setup > Organisation > Legal Entities > Remove the language > Closed the form and re-add language as en-us. 

It resolved the issue,  Hope this helps any one out there.

Procurement Accounting MS Dynamics AX 2012

New accounting framework introduced by MS Dynamics AX 2012 is not as same as available in DAX2009, my this post highlights accounting practice that is followed by Procurement Process in MS Dynamics AX 2012.

Accounts in Procurement Process

To setup accounts for procurement process, we need to setup Purchase Fast Tab within Item Group available at Inventory Management > Setup > Item Groups. Click the Posting Button, to define accounts based on Item Groups & Vendor Groups.

Accounts Type associated with Product Receipt,

• Purchase Expenditure Un-Invoiced
• Purchase, accrual
• Product Receipt

Accounts Type associated with Invoicing,

• Purchase Expenditure Un-Invoiced
• Purchase, accrual
• Purchase Expenditure for product
• Vendor Balance
• Product Receipt
• Purchase, Inventory Receipt

All accounts are Balance Sheet Accounts, as if year-end close we would not like to transfer any account balance to Retained Earnings Account.

Logic,

At the time of receiving (Posting of Product Receipt), following entries are posted by MS Dynamics AX 2012.

Recording Accrual for a Vendor

• Purchase Expenditure, Un-invoiced (Debit)
• Purchase, accrual (Credit)

Recording of Inventory

• Product Receipt (Debit)
• Purchase Expenditure, Un-invoiced (Credit)

Overall effect of this entry should be,

• Product Receipt (With Debit Balance)
• Purchase, accrual (With Credit Balance)
• Purchase Expenditure, Un-invoiced (ZERO EFFECT)

Overall effect of this entry on process should be the same as an entry.

At the time of Invoicing (Posting Vendor Invoice) following entries are posted by MS Dynamics AX 2012:

Reversal  of Accrual for a Vendor

• Purchase Expenditure, Un-invoiced (Credit)
• Purchase, accrual (Debit)

Recording of Actual Liability for a Vendor

• Purchase Expenditure for Product (Debit)
• Vendor Balance (Credit)

Reversal  of Inventory

• Product Receipt (Credit)
• Purchase Expenditure, Un-invoiced (Debit)

Recording of Inventory at the time invoicing

• Purchase Inventory, Receipt (Debit)
• Purchase Expenditure for Product (Credit)

Overall Effect of this entry should be,

• Purchase Expenditure, Un-invoiced (Zero Effect)
• Purchase Expenditure for Product (Zero Effect)
• Purchase, accrual (with Debit Balance)
• Vendor Balance (With Credit Balance)
• Product Receipt (With Credit Balance)
• Purchase Inventory, Receipt (With Debit Balance)

Overall effect of this entry on process should be,

Balances from Receiving Entry,

• Product Receipt (With Debit Balance)
• Purchase, accrual (With Credit Balance)

Balance from Invoicing Entry,

• Purchase, accrual (with Debit Balance)
• Vendor Balance (With Credit Balance)
• Product Receipt (With Credit Balance)
• Purchase Inventory, Receipt (With Debit Balance)

Overall Effect after invoicing,

• Product Receipt (NO EFFECT)
• Purchase, accrual (NO EFFECT)
• Vendor Balance (With Credit Balance)
• Purchasing Inventory , receipt (With Debit Balance)

I am still looking for answers why Microsoft has provided such accounting, when it was never required.

Let me know if you have any questions for this post.

Distribution Review in FA Prior to Posting to GL

In new MS Dynamics GP 2013, Microsoft has introduced a top most required functionality where users using FA Module could review the distribution before posting the transaction to General Ledger.

New look of GL Posting Routing of Fixed Asset Module. We can see we can restrict the posting to,

• Asset ID
• Class ID
• Periods
• Source Document (For example, Deprecation Only)

This windows has also enabled users to print edit list,

It is always better to review distribution before posting.

MS Dynamics GP 2013 Inventory Reason Codes

Inventory Adjustments, Transfers, Variances, and Bin Transfers all allows Warehouse managers to manage inventory efficienctly. Problem arises when they realaly want to know the reasons of transcactions like,

• Inventory Lost
• Inventory Spoiled
• Inventory Damaged by Accidents
• Inventory Expired
• Inventory Movement Due to Space Issues
• Inventory Movement Due to wrong placements
• And so on.

In previous versions of MS Dynamics GP, these could places as Notes or using description,  but users faced too much trouble when sorting or finding the number of transaction for specific users. Thanks to Microsoft that they have introduced reason codes in newer version of MS Dynamics GP 2013.

All administrators are required to set the reason codes and its access to transactions, for example Inventory Movement due to Space issue could only be used in Inventory Transfer Transactions and Inventory Damaged by Accidents could only be used for Negative Adjustments in Inventory Transactions.

To setup the reason codes navigate to Inventory > Setup > Reason Code Setup

Enter the Reason Code, its description  Mark appropriate options like whether it should only be allowed to be used for Adjustment Entries and that must be negative only. User may also enter the default offset account. These Offset account could be modified during the normal transaction.

Microsoft has modifed Item Transaction. Item Transfer, Item In-Transit Transfer and Item Bin Transfer windows to allow users to select reason code for transactions. Also note that its available on line level not on header level, that is it could be much better if user could have select default reason code for entire transaction, though may be it will be available in future releases.

In case of wrong selection of reason code, user shall be prompted for the following kinds of informative messages.

Suggested Item in GP 2013

Hi guys, this is my first post in regards to GP2013, Microsoft has introduced radical changes to MS Dynamics GP and introduced new features, this enables partners to provide default features available rather than customising them. Today we are going to discuss Suggested Item Functionality. 

With Suggested Item, you can define items that could be sold along with the main item. For example, my company sells laptops but sales persons also suggests other items like Mouse, Keyboard, Printer, Hard Drive etc.

Suggested Items are available in Item Maintenance window, Setup the item and Click Suggest Items.

Enter the Suggested item and select where suggestions should be available like (Quotations, Orders , Invoices or Fulfilment Order)

Suggested Item, windows shall be available within SOP transaction, window will automatically appear when Item having Suggested Items where selected on the line item,

Alternatively window can also be opened from the Options Menu of the SOP Transaction, make sure line item is selected.

 Mark the suggested items, along with quantity and Site ID, and Click OK

SOP Transaction line item will have suggested order along with main item

There is no flag in printing, whether item was main item or suggested item, for example if you have if you need to send quotation of main items and suggestions separately you may need to customize your quotations.

Price list in GP vs Trade Agreements in AX

Today, we are going to analyse the difference between Functionality offered by AX and GP for Trade Agreements and Price list respectively. To be very clear in MS Dynamics GP we don't have Vendor Price List, as compared to AX which provides Trade Agreements for both Vendors and Customers.

Price List in MS Dynamics GP,

In inventory module, users can set the price lists. These prices lists are only eligible for Customers, that means users can not manage price list offered by vendors. Users are required to create Price Levels and need to map these prices levels to customers. During creation of Transaction these price levels can be changed. 

Price levels in MS Dynamics GP 2010, allows users to select Quantity from/to, UOM and price amount. Price levels can be setup in Customer Classes to reduce data entry or bulk map of new price lists to customers belonging to that class. There is no option for Activate or Deactivate, users would be required to delete the price list in case of closed offers.

It seems logical, that different company may offer different prices for different warehouse/sites. We miss such functionality in MS Dynamics GP.

Users cannot perform SOP Transaction without setting up price list for the item.

Trade Agreements in MS Dynamics AX 2012

On Product Information Management we can see the trade agreements button on both Purchase Tabs and Sales Tabs. Purchase Trade Agreements works with Item vs Vendors, whereas Sales Trade Agreements works with Item vs Customers. In both the cases uses can select Group of Customers/Vendors, All Customers/Vendors, or Specific Customer/Vendors against Group of Items, All Items or Specific Items.

User can set the prices for Quantities from/to, UOM, Amount, Dates from/to, fixed price charge. Users can bring in Site/Warehouse combination for setting up prices.

In Dynamics AX 2012, users are required to create trade agreements journals, and need to post them in order to make them activate. 

Trade agreements setup, is not necessary. User may enter prices in Item Master, or during transaction. Prices mentioned Trade Agreements are superseded by the prices mentioned in Item Master.

By specifying the To Date we can expire the trade agreement, and start new one.

The main plus point for AX 2012, it that it provides separate pricing functionality for Vendors. Something which is very much required by MS Dynamics GP 2010.

Inventory Master in AX vs GP

Hi guys, 

Today I am going to share how inventory master in MS Dynamics GP 2010 differs from one that has been introduced in MS Dynamics AX 2012. Clearly MS Dynamics AX 2012 provides more functionality as compared to GP 2010. Since we are only focusing the inventory master, some functionalities may be kept un-discussed. Also we are just discussing the TOP Differences, as I wont be able to write down all in singe post :)

Top 6 Differences (which I believe) 

1. MS Dynamics AX 2012 provides the concept of Shared Products, which means I just need to create a Product one time and that information will be shared across the group (Multiple entities)
1. Certain information will be shared, and certain information is company-wide.
2. Administrators are required to Release the products to entities in order to be used by the users of the entity.
2. Not new in AX2012, but still one of the most important feature of DAX 2012 that it provide dimensions for the inventory, i.e. Size, Colour & Configuration. We can rename the Size & Colour, but not the configuration dimension.
1. These dimensions enable, organisation to reduce load on Item Master
2. For example, a company deals in Coloured Cups, each colour has its own value. i.e in case black cup is not available customer would not accept the white one. In this scenario 
1. GP Says, it need to create each CUP as a separate item
1. CUP-WHITE, CUP-BLACK and So on
2. AX Says, just create the item CUP and define multiple Colour Dimensions.
1. Colours would be treated as Values of Dimension Color, and be made required for the item. AX shall manage the inventory quanities based on these colors
3. I believe Categories in MS Dynamics GP (Limited to 6 Only) are Product attributes in MS Dynamics AX 2012. Again in DAX 2012, it is not limited to 6 and users could add unlimited number of attributes to the product.
4. Tracking Dimension Groups in AX provides more options as compared to GP which is just a selection for tracking as Serialized, Lot or None. See the AX Screen shot below
   
5. Similarly Storage Dimensions enables Users to manage, how they wish to manage storage for the item. GP Lacks such functionality, as we only have Site/Bin.
6. Item Model Group in DAX2012, provides detailed configuration on how Items would be valued/ handled. We miss such options in MS Dynamics GP2010

Controlling Items to be Purchased from Specific Vendors

After a long time, this is my first post in regards to my study towards Comparison between MS Dynamics AX 2012 and MS Dynamics GP 2010. One of the functionality I found interesting in both ERP is in regards to Vendor Assignment. This comparison is not about which ERP is better it is more about which ERP fulfils your requirements.

1. MS Dynamics GP 2010 provides users capability to relate Site to Vendors

2. I cannot see so far, specific vendors for specific sites in MS Dynamics AX 2012, for example  for site NORTH I got Vendor MR Khan, as contrast to site SOUTH I got Vendor MR Zain. Primary Vendor per Site reduce the data entry on most of the forms of MS Dynamics GP 2010.

3. In MS Dynamics GP 2010, we cannot purchase an item from a Vendor that is not assigned to Items (Even in case to Temporary Vendor)

4. In MS Dynamics AX 2012, we can purchase the item from any vendor until Item is not Vendor Controlled (See below). We still have two option in case Item is Vendor Controlled, System Warning or Process Stop.

5. In MS Dynamics AX2012, we have expiry dates for Vendors, one of the feature that is not available in MS Dynamics GP2010. Also the Vendor Agreements provide more advantage to AX2012 as compared to GP2010. Agreements shall be covered in Futures posts.

Vendor Assignment Process in AX2012

1. User will be required to control the item by Approved Vendor
2. Navigate to Product Information Management > Common > Released Products
3. Select the Product, click Maintain> Edit
4. On the Purchase Fast Tab Select any of the two option for Approved Vendor

5. Add Approved Vendors to the item 
6. Navigate to Product Information Management > Common > Released Products>Purchase Tab > Approved Vendors Setup
7. Add Vendors Effective and Expiry Date or Expiration as Never (EXPIRY DATE FEATURE IN NOT AVAILABLE IN MS DYNAMICS GP 2010)

8. After doing this setup Users would not be able to create POs for vendors that are not in approved list.
9. Users will have info logs like

Vendor Assignment Process in GP2010

1. Navigate to Cards > Inventory > Vendors
2. Select the item number
3. Make sure Vendor Lookup is selected to ALL
4. Select the Vendor, Click save
5. Repeat the steps for Each Vendor

6. We can clearly see that MS Dynamics GP provide more options for planning in case for Assigned Vendors.

7. Also in case when users are creating POs, and in case vendors are not assigned we get an option, that Vendor is not assigned and do we need to assign (WE CANNOT PURCHASE INVENTORY WITH UNASSIGNED VENDOR)

On clicking YES, users are taken to Same window (5) to assign the vendor.

8. Default Vendor for each site,

Configuring Management Reporter to be used on different Domain

I usually heard that Management Reporter can only be run on domain on which it has been installed, but fortunately I came across a case where one of my client changed the domain where MR Server was installed (Server where it was first installed).

With detail investigation I came to know ' If there is will so there is a way :)' Following is the method to re-configure MR Settings in order to run MR on different domain.

1. Re-Configure Managment Reporter Service (Run > Services.msc > Change the logon as per new domain user)

2. Re-Configure Management Reporter Application Pool (IIS > Management Reporter Application Pool > Advanced Settings > Change the ID for Login as per new domain )

3. Re-Configure Management Reporter Site Security (IIS > Management Reporter Websites > Advanced Settings > Change the ID for Login as per new domain )

4. Now if you run Management Reporter, you shall see that you are unable to login to MR because you are not authorized to login (You username is not authorized to login to MR ) --> Something like that not sure

5. Run SQL Profiler

6. Re-Try to login and see the entries made by MR to SQL Profiler

7. You should see the long SID Key --> something like S-1-5-21-1024493168-1997020141-3530977040-1000

8. Key is not that difficult to find as SQL Makes 6 to 7 entries and easily visible at the end of the Query

9. Now we are required to update Management Reporter Database

8. Login to SQL Server with SA Credentials

9. Select Management Reporter Database

10. Now we are required to update tables that is : SecurityUser &  SecurityPrincipal

11. Update user name and SID Fields in Security Principal & SecurityUser as per new user of domain

12. You shall now be able to run MR

13. Goto Security are re-configure other users

I guess that would be helpful for others :)

Thanks alot