Requisition Management Enhancements – When?
I was thinking of much apt title for this post, I couldn’t get one. This post is about some of the pain areas in Requisition Management module for Dynamics GP (BP 3.0 or 4.0 or 5.0 whatever version we are). Because I feel we continue to see the same functionality since the old Business Portal 3.0 for Dynamics GP 9.0, Business Portal 4.0 for Dynamics GP 10.0 or Business Portal 5.0 for Dynamics GP 2010 with few exceptions. Having said that, We also understand there’s a lot of feature enhancements for BP as a whole, Workflows, Web services and Dynamics GP itself that is helping Dynamics GP to withstand as a favorite product to many in terms of choice.
I have implemented Requisition Management module in several places and I must say the product is flexible to implement and a robust functionality than what we could expect from. Yet, I opine that It has certain limitations which has to be addressed at least in the upcoming versions (Though not certain about when it would actually happen).
1. Ability to attach documents with each Purchase Requests- Idea here is to attach any supporting documents related to the request that can establish the valid need of the user for the same which in turn helps the purchasing or Finance departments to make right purchasing decisions. Requisition Management doesn’t support this functionality currently. workaround is to make use of Document library functionality in SharePoint.
2. Requisition Management integration with RFQ- Once any request reaches purchasing department, the purchasing department initiates purchasing process, part of which is RFQ process. A process that Requisition Management doesn’t support currently.
3. Multicurrency Support- Currently Requisition Management allows users to enter requisitions in functional currency only and no multi currency is entertained.
4. Quantity Field- Quantity field in each Item is limited to 7 characters currently meaning that we cannot enter more than 1000000. Though it is very rare to see requests with more than 1 million in quantity field, yet it is a limitation to be looked into. However workaround is to split the quantities into two line items in this case.
Barring the above exceptions, the module works so intelligently and the biggest advantage I could see is its user friendly interface for entering and approving requests. So is the case with Approval Hierarchy which works for any kind of approval mechanism that is required for and easy to set it for.
Fortunately, Most of the above limitations have already been entered as product suggestions in Microsoft connect. Though we have other third party products integrating with Dynamics GP for Requisition Management, yet, Requisition Management for Dynamics GP module remains the majority choice in terms of cost and value addition it brings to the purchasing process as a whole.
Here is a link pointing to Product suggestions page in Microsoft connect and all I could say is to help strengthen the need to fasten the enhancement timeline for Requisition Management in specific.
