Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Purchase, Sales Return Cycle in Business Central (Demo)

I want to show you a complete purchase, sales, and return cycle in Dynamics 365 Business Central. We’ll begin with the purchase order, proceed with the receipt of the goods, handle a customer sales order, and address a customer return, which ultimately leads to a return to the vendor. In this demonstration, we’ll also utilize a serialized item number from our inventory to illustrate the process more comprehensively.

Purchase Order

To initiate this cycle, we start with a purchase order. In this instance, I am procuring solid-state drives, and the order is for ten of them. These drives fall under the category of serial number-controlled items, so it’s crucial to specify this fact.

Serial Number Assignment

Upon the arrival of the shipment, it’s essential to record the serial numbers associated with these drives. While many organizations use barcode solutions for this task, for the sake of this demonstration, I will manually assign serial numbers to move ahead quickly. We now have ten unique serial numbers for this specific item.

Receiving and Invoicing

The next step is receiving these drives into our inventory at the main warehouse location. This process also involves creating a vendor’s invoice and managing accounts payable.

Customer Sales Order

Moving on, we have a sales order for one of our customers. They require five of these solid-state drives. To fulfill this order, it’s necessary to select the correct serial numbers.

Identifying Serial Numbers

While the system may auto-select serial numbers, it’s important to ensure accuracy. In this case, the system automatically selected the wrong serial numbers, which were from a previous vendor shipment. It’s vital to recognize and rectify this by choosing the correct serial numbers associated with this order.

Invoice and Shipment

With the correct serial numbers selected, the invoice is now ready for processing. It includes the pricing, item specifics, and the associated serial numbers. Posting this invoice also simultaneously initiates the shipping process.

Customer Return

At a later time, the customer informs us of a defective drive and requests a return. We create a sales return order for this specific item.

Referencing Previous Invoice

To make this process efficient, we reference the previous invoice, specifying that we’re returning one of the items from that order.

Correct Serial Number

It’s crucial to select the correct serial number, in line with the customer’s indication of the defective item. In this case, we remove the other serial numbers and ensure the correct one is associated with the return.

Applying Credit

We can apply the credit to the customer’s accounts receivable. This credit is then matched to the initial invoice we sent to the customer.

Vendor Return

As we plan to return the defective item to the vendor, we can conveniently create a vendor return document directly from the sales return order.

Completing the Cycle

This comprehensive cycle encompasses the purchase, sale, and return processes in Dynamics 365 Business Central. It began with a purchase order, continued with the receipt of goods, processing of a customer sales order, management of a customer return, and ultimately resulted in a return to the vendor. This demonstration illustrates a seamless and efficient cycle in Dynamics 365 Business Central.