GRN Automation in D365 Finance and Operations: 3-Wk Imp

A typical day at a "Material Inward" Gate: Long queue of trucks

waiting at the gates.

• Manual material inspection • Paper work • No proper planning for the stock level and many more • Manual goods receipt process and hectic ERP system updates

Sounds familiar? Tired of the slow process?

Check out our GRN automation tool; Built on PowerPlatform for Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations

In this fast-paced growing world the organizations need to move ahead with the business processes which are fast, accurate and are easy to use. One of the time consuming and tedious business processes that we have often heard of or seen is, creating Goods Receipt Notes (GRN). In any ERP system, it is always manual and hence, time & resource consuming. Inaccurate at times due to manual intervention.

Organizations receive a delivery note / invoices from their vendors via email or as a hardcopy document. It is received either before or along with the goods that arrive at the gate. The manual process of reading the vendor invoice, matching with the actual PO in the system and validating the actual quantity received becomes very tedious. It results creatin a long queue of vehicles at the gate at peak hours. This results in a pile of physical files to verify and do the entries in the system.

By using Microsoft’s low-code no-code platform like Power Apps, Power Automate, AI-Builder and Dataverse, we built an application to automate the complete GRN entry process in Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. The same can be achieved in Dynamics 365 Business Central too.

The organizations can make a practice to have vendors print a QR code or PO number on their invoices and delivery notes. Our solution monitors incoming emails, validates the vendor contact with Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations and then reads the email attachment to extract the required values like PO number, items, quantity, address, amount, GST details to a draft form in the Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. By using the extracted PO number, it pulls out the actual PO from Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations and creates a comparison view of actual versus received materials. The person in-charge will just have to verify the same and click on a button to post / reject the actual GRN in the system. For physical vendor invoices, the person at the gate can just take a picture of vendor invoice from the mobile app to carry out the same process. On every rejection, an email gets triggered to the vendor with a reason for the rejection.

As a result, the organizations can get away with the hectic manual process involved in data entry and GRN creation. Now, a GRN can be generated in minutes instead of hours, facilitating delivery, warehouse, and managing the inventory efficiently. This way, validation of invoice and PO is carried out quickly. Thus, it enables faster payment releases, resulting into amicable business relations between the buyer and the vendor.

Timeline: 3 Weeks (+/- depending on the customization required)