Business Process Improvement with Conditional Process Holds in Dynamics GP Sales Order Processing

I was presented with a business process problem by a client related to managing Credit Limit overrides in Dynamics GP Sales Transaction Entry.  This company does not supply Order Entry users with the Credit Limit override password.  It's the Credit Manager's responsibility to decide whether or not to allow that override.

This client has been working for some time to generally route information to the right person that needs to make the decision and eliminate waste in their business processes.  During the normal course of business when users are presented with the "Please enter the credit limit override password:" prompt the Credit Manager is called to the user's workstation to make the decision on the fly.

This is a very inefficient process.  What a great opportunity for improvement!

To resolve this issue and get the information to the person responsible for making the decision while maintaining the system controls required we got creative with Process Holds, eConnect, and VBA with ADO.  Here's what we did:

First, we removed the "Exceed Credit Limit" password from Receivables Management Setup:

Now, users would have been presented with the more friendly prompt that would allow them to proceed without a password.

I don't claim to be a SOX expert but I'm guessing that wouldn't pass a SOX audit.  So, we added some VBA Code to the BeforeModalDialog Event behind the Sales Transaction Entry Window.  Of course, to make this work you would need to add that window plus the DocumentNo and the SOPTypeDatabase fields to your project.

The code calls the taSopUpdateCreateProcessHold eConnect stored procedure and adds the "CREDIT" Process Hold to the Document when the credit limit prompt appears and closes the dialog box by answering Continue to the prompt automatically.

Now, instead of stopping the user in their tracks to make this decision on the fly the Credit Manager can manage this Process Hold separate from the Order Entry Process.  To do this, we used SmartList Builder to build a SmartList that displayed SOP Documents On Hold.  Then, we added a Favorite with a Reminder to the SmartList to show only SOP Documents with the "CREDIT" Process Hold applied.

Now, when the Credit Manager logs into GP and periodically throughout the day he can quickly and easily analyze the Sales Orders for Customers that had exceeded their Credit Limit and manage them accordingly.

Get the right information into the hands of the person who is responsible for making the decision and you too can improve your business processes and efficiency.  It doesn't take much work or creativity to increase the ROI on your GP implementation using techniques such as this.

If you like this let me know.  If enough people do, maybe we'll produce a new freebie for Dynamics GP!

Don't accept what you're given, make it into what you need it to be.