In Business Central, over-receipting allows users to receive more stock from a purchase order than was initially agreed. We touched on this area in previous posts, such as our Item Card exploration, but figured it deserved its own dedicated post. Today we are going to run through over-receipts, including applying it to Vendor and Item Cards, setting defaults and finally, covering over-receipt workflows.
Over-receipt Codes page
To begin with, navigate to the Over-Receipt Codes page. Here, create a new record. The records are very simple, with only requiring a few fields to be filled in. As you can see in my examples below, I aptly named the Code and Description fields to reflect the percentage over-receipt allowed.
Next, there’s the Default checkbox. You don’t have to enable a ‘Default’ value. What a default will do is apply that over-receipt value to all items if they don’t have another Over-Receipt Code value overriding it. So essentially, this will allow all items to be over-receipted.
The highest Over-Receipt Tolerance % value you can input is 100.
For now, we are going to ignore the Approval Required field but we will cover this later on.
Establishing the Over-Receipt Code value on an Item or Vendor Card
After creating the over-receipt code records, the next step is to establish whether it applies to an item or vendor. We will focus on the Item Card for now, but will discuss the Vendor Card later on. On the Item Card, in the Inventory tab, there’s the Over-Receipt Code. By inputting a value here, you are stating that purchase orders for this item can receive more stock than originally planned.
In my example, I am using a 10% over-receipt allowance on my item:
Now, on a Purchase Order, after inputting a Quantity on the line and releasing the order, I can amend the Qty. to Receive value to be higher than that of the Quantity, within a 10% range. When you do this, the Quantity and Qty. to Invoice values will change to match it. The Over-Receipt Quantity will populate with the amount added after releasing the order. Alternatively, on the line, you can change the Over-Receipt Quantity and that will amend the Quantity, Qty. to Receive and Qty. to Invoice values.
In my example, if I exceed 10%, I will get the following error:
After inputting a Qty. to Receive within the permitted range, you can post the order.
Setting an Over-Receipt Code value on a Vendor Card
As alluded to earlier, you can also set an Over-Receipt Code value against a Vendor Card. This is located in the Receiving tab. This will mean you can over-receive stock for any item you purchase from that vendor. Applying it against an Item Card won’t stop you from doing it against a Vendor Card too. You can choose to apply it to one, the other, or both!
If you have a different Over-Receipt Code value on the Item and Vendor Card, the Item Card takes precedence, which as it’s more granular, probably makes sense. This means if you have a 10% over-receipt allowance on the Vendor Card but a 100% allowance on the Item Card, you can go above 10%. However, if you have a 10% allowance on the Item Card and a 100% allowance on the Vendor Card, you won’t be able to exceed 10% over-receipt.
Can you over-receive stock without an Over-Receipt Code?
If you don’t set a default and also don’t determine an Over-Receipt Code value on the Item or Vendor Card and try to have a Qty. to Receive value greater than the Quantity on a Purchase Order, you’ll get an error like below:
If you set an Over-Receipt Code value on an Item that is less than the ‘default’ on the Over-Receipt Codes page, the one on the Item Card takes precedence as you’d expect.
Over-receipt workflows
In Business Central, users can also incorporate over-receipt workflows, forcing over-receipts to require approval. To begin with, on the Over-Receipt Codes page, enable the Approval Required checkbox for a record you wish to apply this for.
Afterwards, it’s time to navigate to the Workflows page. As over-receipts relate to purchase orders, we want to create a new record. For simplicity’s sake, start from a template. To do so, click ‘New’ and ‘New Workflow from Template’:
Choose the Purchase Order Approval Workflow option. In the Event Conditions section, make sure the Document Type is Order and the Status is set to ‘Released’. As you have to release an order to begin the over-receipt process, it’s the only one that’s required here. Below, in the Purchase Line section, make sure to specify which Over-Receipt Code you want to tie the workflow to:
In the ‘Then Response’ section, whilst the configuration is flexible, I have set mine to Approver Type: Approver and Approver Limit Type: Specific Approver:
As a reminder, make sure you have any user records set up on the Approval User Setup page. This is critical to determining which user(s) will receive the approval request. Also make sure to enable the workflow after making it or else it won’t have an effect!
Demonstrating the over-receipt workflow
Let’s now demonstrate the full over-receipts process in Business Central. To begin with, I am using the same Purchase Order record from before (107299). This had a Quantity value of 100. After the order was set to released, I amended the Qty. to Receive to be 107, so within the 10% over-receipt threshold. At this point, you should see a blue notification at the top of the order indicating there’s an over-receipt.
If I try and post the record without sending the record for approval, I get this error message:
As I can’t post the order without approval, let’s now do that. To do so, click ‘More Options’, ‘Actions’, ‘Request Approval’, ‘Other’ and ‘Send Approval Request’:
Based on your workflow configuration, this should send to whoever you specified. After doing so, you must wait for approval.
Note, if you haven’t ticked the Approval Required box on the record on the Over-Receipt Codes page, you’ll get this message:
In short, you must enable the workflow and tick this box for it to work.
If you have any issues at this stage, one thing to check is which Over-Receipt Code value is on the purchase line. I have found on occasion that it defaults to one in excess of the one required. For example, in this case, it applied my over-receipt code for a maximum of 100%, rather than the 10%. As I didn’t have a workflow set up for 100%, I got the message above. In that situation, simply change the Over-Receipt Code value on the purchase line.
After the over-receipt has been approved, you are free to post the purchase order!
Closing remarks
Thanks for reading! Over-receipts in Business Central are a great tool once with little maintenance after initial setup. If you have any comments or queries, be sure to contact us. To never miss our posts as they go live, follow us on LinkedIn.