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[Mark Anderson]

Hi All

We’re a few months away from go live and we’re trying to decide if we’re going to require sales reps and purchasers to use release on sales orders and po’s. (They don’t have a process like this in the current system.)

I know the PO and Sales Order will be automatically released when any shipment/receipt is posted (we will be posting shipments from sales orders, posting receipts from purchase orders and will not be doing picking). I’m trying to figure out what release actually does, i.e. what will be affected by a release. What I want to be prepared for is when we train users and say “you have to click Release’ and they say “why?” that we have a solid answer

Can’t seem to find anything. Does anyone have any info?

Thanks

Mark

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Mark Anderson
Director of ERP Systems
Clesen Wholesale
Evanston, IL
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[Yeng Thao]

Release means you have released the order that can be moved forward to be process.  So once the order is release the shipper can ship the sales order.  Sames goes with purchase order also.  Now if the order is left open you cannot process the order from receiving the PO and shipping the SO.  We have a process that if the sales order is good to be ship than it will be release, but if the sales order is still waiting than we will leave it open so it can’t be process.  Same concept with our purchase order. 

There are a lot of things behind it also like reports that depends on Sales Order and Purchase Order that are open or released.  If I recall correctly if the order is left open it will not be accounted for in your reports until it is release. 

Another thing is when you want to modify the released order you will have to reopen it.  You cannot modify a release order.

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Yeng Thao
IS Manager
Command Tooling Systems
Ramsey MN
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[Mark Anderson]

We can ship and receive open sales orders and PO’s respectively. This will automatically make them released

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Mark Anderson
Director of ERP Systems
Clesen Wholesale
Evanston, IL
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[Cynthia Priebe]

How you have your locations configured for inventory picks/put-aways and/or warehouse shipments/receipts determines if an order needs to be released to proceed with shipping.

If you are using picks or warehouse shipments then the order must be released to create these documents. If you are managing your shipping from the sales order and shipping through post from the sales document then the order does not need to be released to ship. The act of Post -> Ship releases the order as has indicated.

In summary, how your location requirements are defined determines if the order needs to be released to proceed with actions for receiving or shipping using warehouse related documents or if you manage receiving and shipping directly from your orders and release is not needed.  ?

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Cynthia Priebe
New View Strategies
“The NAV & BC training and process experts”
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[Cynthia Priebe]

To answer the original question, Release indicates the document is ready for use by the enterprise. A document in open status is still in the process of being completed. But as you indicated, if you are shipping and receiving from the orders rather than warehouse documents, there is nothing stopping a user from shipping or receiving against an open document. This becomes a training issue. Whoever is entering orders must be taught to release it when complete and shippers must understand they are not to ship an order that has a status of open. 

I have had users create list views filtered to status = Released for users responsible for shipping orders. This minimizes the chance of them shipping an open order not yet ready for shipping. The CSRs are trained to release orders when they are done entering them and they are ready for shipping.

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Cynthia Priebe
New View Strategies
“The NAV & BC training and process experts”
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[Ben Baxter]

Carrying on with Cynthia’s excellent explanation, you can also use the Status field to trigger action for a Workflow.  If I want a Sales Order to be emailed upon shipment I can use the “Released” status as a trigger to fire that workflow.

Even if you don’t use it for any system process, tell them no one will be able to change their Quantity or Price/Cost once they have Released the order.  Releasing calculates the tax for the order, so the system is monitoring for anything that would cause a difference in the calculated tax.

For your purposes though there is nothing requiring you to Release the orders.

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Ben Baxter
Consultant
Accent Software, Inc.
Carmel, IN
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[Mark Anderson]

Thanks Ben

Just an FYI on our system (BC2020 w1). The tax updates as you enter sales lines. (We’re not using an external tax service like Avalara)

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Mark Anderson
Director of ERP Systems
Clesen Wholesale
Evanston, IL
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[Mark Anderson]

So a couple of points

 

“Whoever is entering orders must be taught to release it when complete and shippers must understand they are not to ship an order that has a status of open.”

 

This is a business decision, not a “must”. If warehouse receipts and shipments are not used, I can’t find any reason why this is required (hence the reason for the post)

 

“If I recall correctly if the order is left open it will not be accounted for in your reports until it is release”

 

This is my other issue, no-one seems to know for a fact what is impacted (other than stuff we don’t use like warehouse shipments, receipts and picks)

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Anderson | Director of ERP Systems

 

Mobile 312.576.4332 | Direct 847.448.4202

 

 

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[Ben Baxter]

An Open Sales Order will create demand.  An Open Purchase Order is treated as incoming supply.  If you don’t want them to impact supply/demand they should be entered as Quotes and use Make Order when they are firm.

Only a modification would remove the Open Sales/Purchase Orders from reports/planning.

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Ben Baxter
Consultant
Accent Software, Inc.
Carmel, IN
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[Mark Anderson]

Good info. Thanks

 

 

 

Mark Anderson | Director of ERP Systems

 

Mobile 312.576.4332 | Direct 847.448.4202

 

 

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[Cynthia Priebe]

Mark,

You are correct that when shipping from sales orders whether to release them or not is strictly a business decision. There are no requirements to release the sales order for shipping from the sales order. The must references that the user must be taught. 

Again, a reason to use the status could be that you are not using quotes and you don’t want anyone shipping an order until it is ready (completely and accurately entered.) This can be identified by Released vs Open status. Again, a business decision, not a requirement when shipping from the sales order.

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Cynthia Priebe
New View Strategies
“The NAV & BC training and process experts”
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[Rob Fontaine]

Hi Mark,

For another perspective that follows on what Cynthia and others described, we use the Status field on the PO as part of our internal controls, where “Released” means “Approved”.  We’re on NAV 2013 and have add-ons for workflows and security plus some customizations done by our Partner, which work together to enable us to manage and control the purchasing process and prevent unauthorized purchasing.  We don’t use Inventory or Sales, just Purchasing, and our PO’s only use GL Account lines.

First, the Release button is hidden in the ribbon menu for everyone except Admins.  We follow three-way matching and so we don’t invoice directly from the PO either, and the Invoice option has been removed from the Post function.  In “Open” status a PO is being worked on so it is editable, but it cannot be printed or saved to PDF and therefore cannot be provided to the vendor, and it cannot be received.    The PO goes through an approval workflow to be approved by the responsible manager (i.e., budget holder), and the last step when approved is the workflow changes the Status field to “Released”.  At that point the PO is no longer editable so that vendor, quantities, and prices cannot be modified, and it can then be printed and a copy sent to the vendor.  The user can also post receipts against the PO so that when the invoice comes in the Accounting staff can match the invoice to the posted receipts.  If there are any significant price or quantity variances the user needs to re-open the PO, make updates, and then put it through the approval workflow again to get the changes approved.

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Rob Fontaine
Director, ERP & Financial Analysis
SilverBirch Hotels & Resorts
Vancouver BC
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