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[Angela Morehouse]

Hi Everyone,  I’m wondering what I’m up against.  We currently do not use the Purchasing or Inventory modules (we’re a management and holdings company).  I have been tasked to see what it would take to setup Great Plains 15 to process purchase orders through.  We’d like to automate our out of date PO process.  Its based in Excel, paper intensive, time consuming with all of the paper shuffling for multiple approvals and down right archaic. These orders are mainly for our IT dept.  These are the high level steps (I believe) we are looking for; enter a PO, all the details and direct items to specific accounts, send through approvals, tie back invoice to PO for posting.  After digging up the 322 page GP purchasing guide it looks like we may have to setup Inventory and Purchasing to accomplish this.  Do I really need to perform all of this setup in order to run POs for IT through GP 15?  Can someone give me the high level or big picture steps to make this happen?  Can we make this happen and use the system in this way?  Thank you in advance for any assistance and information.

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Angela Morehouse
CC Industries
Chicago IL
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[Jen Kuntz]

Hi Angela,

There is a fair amount of “it depends” in my answer, but it does depend on the extent you want to use it.

Here are the basic out of the box options that I can think of but there may be things I’m missing:

• Simple PO’s, no inventory tracking, no workflow, no requisitions (flow is PO – Receiving/Invoice Match at its simplest, or “2 step” separate receiving from invoice match is an option)
• Simple-ish with some inventory setup (but not as in tracking widgets on a shelf), no workflow, no requisitions (same flow as above)
• From there, various options to “complicate” things depend on your requirements:
  • PO Enhancements – PO commitments vs. budget and/or PO Approvals (not email based, unrelated to Workflow)
  • Workflow – routing of PO’s for approval with possibility of email approval etc.
  • Requisitions – a step before the PO where people can “request” things and then someone approves and creates POs from there.

Setup

• Set up Purchasing (yes, you have to, as “purchasing setup” = “PO module setup).
  • This is where numbering comes from and a few options
• Set up a Site in inventory as it is required but literally you just need a Site ID and Description
• Optional inventory setup – using inventory items (if you don’t want to track inventory literally, look at Services, Misc. Charges types of items ). Bonus of setting up commonly purchased items is defaulting GL accounts on the purchase.
• PO Enhancements for approval if you want “in GP” approval
• Workflow if you want more robust approval/flow including possibility of email approvals.
• Neither if you are ok with “Print & get someone to Sign” manual workflow/approval processes

Processing itself:

• Create PO
• Print PO to release it
• If you don’t want a separate receiving step outside of accounting, use Receivings Trx Entry to do “Shipment/Invoice”. This creates the receipt and vendor payable in one step against the PO.
• Otherwise, Receiving “shipment” is one step and then “invoice match” is a separate step.
• From there, typical A/P – pay when due etc.

Hope that helps,

Jen

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Jen Kuntz, CPA, CGA
Microsoft MVP, Business Solutions
Kuntz Consulting Inc.
Cambridge, ON, Canada
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[Bill Schulz]

Angela

Yes, you can use GP’s Purchase Requisitions and Purchase Orders as well as workflow processing to substantially automate your process and eliminate the spreadsheet tracking. The setup for the various modules is not that difficult, and you can start with the default setup options and modify as you see fit.

Some of the big decisions revolve around determining whether you need to track any inventory and how you want to enter items for purchase. I have one client that chose not to set up any inventory items and treats every PO line as a unique, manually entered item. But most will create item cards for the various items they plan to purchase, reducing data entry effort with each PO. You can assign an account for each item so that account distribution is handled automatically. That then allows the user to select items from a list.

You will encounter little things like needing to set up Sites to complete the Purchase Req/PO. But again, that is not hard, just a detail that needs to be completed. Note that there are 5 required fields for a Requisition to properly transfer to a PO, Site ID, Vendor ID, Account, Shipping Method, and Ship to Address.

Workflow is the other somewhat significant setup issue. You need to clearly define your workflow rules. This includes who approves a Requisition or PO, and are there levels of approval (like anything over $5,000 needs CFO approval, but less than that is handled by the Controller or Purchasing Manager). Once you can write out you approval process, you are ready to tackle creating the workflow in GP.

Finally, getting your email properly configured can be challenging. Once it is properly defined, the system supports sending approvals by email to the various people in the process, as well as supporting emails to your vendors, if desired. Once properly configured, your approvers do not even need to log into GP to approve a transaction. They can do that directly from email. If you have GP 2015R2 your approvers can even see any attached document images. Prior to that images did not travel with the approval request.

You can certainly complete these set up tasks on your own, though your GP Partner can make that process much less difficult and provide specific guidance in your setup. But you do not describe any requirements that are out of the normal for GP’s Purchase Requisition/Purchase Order/Invoicing systems. I think you could be quite pleased with the tools available to you.

Just take it a step at a time. Decide on your Items, and set them up in the Inventory module. You can always add to those as you go along, so don’t worry about getting a “complete” list right from the start. Process a few Requisitions to PO manually, match to invoices, and get comfortable with that process. Then add email and workflow.

Good luck!

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Bill Schulz
Turnkey Technologies, Inc.
St. Louis MO
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