Business Central: Your Solution for Procurement
With Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can encompass all components of supply chain management within the ERP system. From procurement to shipping. Everything in one system.
With Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can encompass all components of supply chain management within the ERP system. From procurement to shipping. Everything in one system.
With Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can efficiently map, simplify, and manage all processes along the supply chain. This ensures high transparency and smooth operations in areas such as purchasing, sales, manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing.
Customization to individual workflows is also possible thanks to the workflow capabilities. Simplify your work with the features of SCM.
Dynamics 365 Business Central covers all key procurement processes as standard – from supplier management and order processing to invoice verification and evaluation. The deep integration into adjacent functional areas such as warehouse or finance ensures end-to-end transparency and efficiency in the supply chain.
In Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can maintain and manage all relevant supplier master data (vendors), including contact information, bank details and specific conditions.
Item management allows you to centrally manage all procurement-relevant information such as prices, stock levels, replacement items and assignments to suppliers. Integration with the warehouse and logistics module ensures consistent data maintenance.
Automated requirements planning helps you to generate order proposals based on stock levels, replenishment times and sales forecasts, thus ensuring security of supply. This means that buyers no longer have to enter every requirement manually.
Procurement processes in Dynamics 365 Business Central often begin with the determination of requirements, either manually or automatically based on stock levels and replenishment times. On this basis, you can create purchase requests and send them to various suppliers. You can compare the incoming offers in the system so that you can select the best conditions and convert the offer directly into an order.
The creation and management of purchase orders is a central element. You can generate orders manually or automatically on the basis of order proposals. It is also possible to process and track orders.
Once the order has been sent to the supplier, the goods receipt is recorded in the system and compared with the order. This enables seamless tracking of whether the delivered quantities and items correspond to the order data.
The invoice is then checked. Incoming invoices are assigned to the respective orders and goods receipts and checked for accuracy. This allows discrepancies to be identified immediately and reduces rework. Dynamics 365 Business Central supports both the classic and electronic document flow and offers functions for the automated processing and posting of invoices.
Price and discount management allows you to store individual prices, discounts and cash discounts for different suppliers, articles, quantities or time periods.
Approval and release workflows ensure that orders and invoices can only be processed after they have been checked accordingly. You can define individual approval limits and escalation levels.
You can manage framework agreements and call-off orders with suppliers in Dynamics 365 Business Central to secure long-term conditions and make procurement easier to plan.
Dynamics 365 Business Central offers extensive evaluation and reporting functions. The real-time analysis of data and the provision of personalized dashboards give purchasing managers an up-to-date overview of open orders, supplier performance and stock levels at all times. This makes it easier to manage the entire procurement process and enables well-founded decisions to be made, for example on optimizing order quantities or selecting alternative suppliers in the event of bottlenecks.
By using integrated data, you can predict the perfect times for reordering.
You receive automatic suggestions for repeat orders. Or even better: automate your orders.
Manage your delivery companies centrally in the system and make targeted use of discounts (without reminder fees).
You can easily handle returns and cancellations. This increases your customers’ satisfaction enormously.
With Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can sustainably reduce capital commitment in the warehouse in the long term.
Dynamics 365 Business Central also allows you to shorten procurement, throughput and delivery times.
Make-or-buy decision
The procurement management is involved in decisions of the management when it comes to determining procurement methods. For example, when deciding which products or components the company should produce internally and which should be purchased from external suppliers.
The system supports multiple planning options in procurement. This includes last-minute changes or make-or-buy decisions. You can determine purchase prices and manufacturing costs and derive your decision from them.
Reporting key figures
Furthermore, strategic procurement management is interested in or obligated within the company to evaluate and report purchasing key figures. You benefit from a strong reporting system, which is further enhanced by the integration of Microsoft Power BI. Through condensed data from all departments, you work with excellent decision templates – even when it comes to convincing others – and make well-founded decisions in the end.
There are over 100 standard reports available for your use. However, you can also create custom reports tailored to your company’s needs. Frequently used reports, which are available in the purchasing module, for example, at the touch of a button, include:
For the procurement management, procurement planning is one of the most important tasks. The expected and actual needs of the company are crucial for this. The goal is to avoid stockouts and keep ordering and inventory costs as low as possible. It is necessary to adapt to the market situation and plan accordingly in the short, medium, or long term.
The system automatically calculates the date by which you need to order an item to have it available in inventory by a certain date. If you specify a desired goods receipt date in a purchase order header, the calculated order date is the date by which the order must be placed to receive the items on the date you requested. If you do not specify a desired goods receipt date, the order date is used as the starting point for calculating the date by which the items are to arrive.
The system distinguishes four different replenishment methods to accommodate various industries and companies:
Various parameters can be considered depending on the method, such as:
To decide on the replenishment method, the ABC analysis for classifying items serves as a basis. Items are classified into three different classes based on their value and volume relative to the total inventory. After classifying goods into these item classes, decisions about replenishment methods can be made:
Once the demand for the goods is determined, they need to be procured. This means that they are requested from one or more suppliers and eventually ordered from a selected supplier.
The basis for procurement is provided by the item and creditor master data. This master data is required in the procurement area for every purchase request, purchase order, and order processing. This highlights the necessity of correct master data management. Therefore, it is necessary to create the supplier as a creditor. The same applies to required items or references in the master data.
Subsequently, it is possible to generate a purchase request. This can be the initial draft for an order. If the procurement management and the selected supplier agree, the order is processed internally. For this purpose, the request can be converted into an order.
It is also possible to map blanket orders or framework contracts. These represent a framework for a long-term agreement between you and a creditor. A framework contract is typically created when a company commits to purchasing larger quantities, which will be provided over a longer period in several smaller deliveries.
After successful confirmation of the purchase request, a request can be converted into a purchase order by the supplier at any time, with the option to archive the request if desired. The conversion to a purchase order can be completed via the Create Order action.
The purchase order can then serve as the basis for later goods receipt and subsequent invoice posting, enabling items to be successfully booked into your own inventory and the order to be paid to the supplier.
Potential returns can also be processed based on this.
We have been a Microsoft-certified partner for medium-sized businesses for over 20 years. We assist you with the implementation of Dynamics 365 Business Central, upgrading existing systems, or providing support for your current software. Our clients operate in a wide range of industries, as we do not offer pre-packaged solutions but instead provide tailored, near-standard solutions that are precisely adapted to your individual processes. No frills. Only what you truly need.
Why anaptis? Discover the advantages that will make your heart beat faster:
We prefer a standard-based software approach and first assess if a requirement can be solved with the standard. This is how we ensure that you remain independent and
We are looking forward to your inquiry!