Credit Limits and Sales Process Holds

I just finished up a post for the BKD blog on sales process holds, and I thought I might spend a little time here on one the neat side benefits of using process holds.  For those of you that are not familiar with them, sales process holds are user-definable holds that you can assign to Sales Order Processing transactions (Quotes, Orders, Invoices, etc) that can prevent the document from being printed, posted, fulfilled, and/or transferred.  These holds are quite handy, as they can be applied to ranges of documents, individual documents, or even default when certain document types are used.

There is a bit of a "bonus" to using sales process holds in tandem with customer credit limits. You can actually specify a process hold to be automatically assigned to a document when the customer exceeds their credit limit.  For example, let's say that your credit manager has to review all documents that exceed a customer's credit limit.  By assigning the process hold automatically, the credit manager could complete his or her review and remove the holds on those documents that can continue to be processed. 

The setup for this feature is quite simple.  Start by setting up the process hold, Microsoft Dynamics GP-Tools-Setup-Sales-Process Holds.

Enter the Process Hold ID and Description.  Specify a Password if you want users to enter a password in order to remove the hold.  And then mark the items you want to "Apply Hold To".  Click Save.

Next, you need to specify the hold on the specify invoice and order types that should automatically have a credit limit hold applied.  Go to Microsoft Dynamics GP-Tools-Setup-Sales-Sales Order Processing Setup.  Click the Sales Document Setup button and choose either Invoice or Order.



Select the Order or Invoice ID, and then select the appropriate process hold in the Credit Limit Hold ID field.  Click Save.  Now, when you enter an order using this Order ID and the customer exceeds their credit limit, the process hold specified will be automatically assigned to the order.  In order for this functionality to work, you CANNOT have a password specified for the "Exceed Credit Limit" option in Receivables Management Setup (Microsoft Dynamics GP-Tools-Setup-Sales-Receivables).

When entering an order that exceeds the customer's credit limit, a warning will be displayed.  Choose Continue, and the hold will automatically be applied to the order when it is saved.

Note that the CREDIT process hold has automatically been applied.  How easy is that (to borrow from the fabulous Ina Garten)?

Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a supervising consultant with BKD Technologies, providing training, support, and project management services to new and existing Microsoft Dynamics customers. This blog represents her views only, not those of her employer.

Dance With The One Who Brung 'Ya - Correcting Transactions in Dynamics GP

So often it seems like many of the questions on the Dynamics GP forums deal with how to correct transactions. Or, even more often, how correcting a transaction has led to more issues. As a trainer, I teach my students to "Dance with the one who brung 'ya" which is my way of emphasizing the importance of correcting transactions in the module where they originated from. And when I am lucky enough to find myself on phone support duty for the day, I always end up with a few "how do I fix this or that" cases. So I always ask my standard questions..

• What steps have been taken so far? Often times, I find that attempts to correct the issue (sometimes even multiple posted corrections) have contributed to the current issue.
• What is the current state of the issue? What remains to be corrected (e.g., the GL is incorrect but the RM aging is correct)? Getting to this bottom line can often be helpful in solidifying the real issue.

But we want to avoid these issues in the first place, right? So getting back to the dancing. Here are the common correction points that I emphasize to students and users, to point out the importance of correcting transactions where they originated.

Sales Order Processing

• To correct a posted invoice (Transactions>>Sales>>Sales Transaction Entry).
• Enter and post a return (Transactions>>Sales>>Sales Transaction Entry).
• Updates inventory (if applicable), sales history by item, receivables management, and general ledger.
• Do not void using Receivables Management (Transactions>>Sales>>Posted Transactions), as this will only update the general ledger and receivables management.

Purchase Order Processing

• To correct a posted receipt or invoice (Transactions>>Purchasing>>Receivings Trx Entry, Enter/Match Invoices).
• Enter and post a return (Transactions>>Purchasing>>Returns Trx Entry).
• Updates inventory (if applicable), purchasing history by item, payables management, and general ledger.
• Do not void using Payables Management (Transactions>>Purchasing>>Void Open), as this will only update the general ledger and payables management.

Project Accounting (Employee Expenses, Miscellaneous Logs, Timesheets, and Equipment Logs)

• To correct a non-purchasing transaction (purchasing transactions are corrected in POP per the example above), return to the original entry window (Transactions>>Project>>Timesheet Entry, Employee Expense Entry, etc).
• Enter a Referenced type transaction and use negative quantities to decrease the original posting. You can use the PA Trx Adjustment tool to assist with this process (Transactions>>Project>>PA Trx Adjustment). Using either method will result in an update to project accounting, payables management (if applicable), payroll (if applicable), and the general ledger.
• Do not correct the transactions in payroll, or by voiding the transaction in payables, as these methods will not update the project accounting module.

Well, that's it for tonight. I promise that my next post will get in to the finer points of correcting project accounting billings and inventory transactions, which have more variations than the examples I have provided above.

But, in the meantime, please share any tips and tricks you have gathered over the years to assist users in understanding how to dance with the one who brung 'em :)