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Use Microsoft Dynamics GP "Customer Items" to Reduce Order Entry Costs

by Frank Hamelly
Senior Consultant, I.B.I.S., Inc.,

If your company is a heavy user of Sales Order Processing (SOP) and has Customers that place repeat orders which list their Item Numbers and not yours, GP provides a simple, easy to setup, and efficient method to speed up the order entry process - Customer Items.

For example, your Customer calls an item a ‘USB/PS2’, but you call the item in your inventory a ‘123XYZ’. You can setup a cross-reference relationship between your item number and the Customer’s item number. When you enter a Quote, A Sales Order, or an Invoice for the Customer, and type USB/PS2 in the Item Number field, your item number 123XYZ is inserted and displayed in place of the customer item number. This process eliminates the need to perform a manual conversion of your Customer’s item number to your item number prior to entering the order thus reducing man hours expended in a non-value-added activity.

Let’s say you process 100 Sales Orders a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. That’s 26,000 Sales Orders annually. If you can save just 30 seconds an order, that’s a savings of 217 hours a year or the equivalent of a month and a quarter of an employee’s time that can be better spent in more value-added activity.

A further benefit of utilizing the Customer Item functionality is the ability to setup a Substitute Item in the event of a stock-out situation or a special promotion.

Suppose you’re offering a particular chair on closeout, but due to popularity, your inventory is sold out before the sale is over. You can substitute a replacement chair rather than back ordering the chair that is on closeout.

You can choose to setup Customer Items in ...

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About Frank Hamelly

Frank Hamelly, Sr. Dynamics Consultant with I.B.I.S., Inc., in Charlotte, NC,  is a business and technology professional with over 25 years experience implementing and supporting various ERP systems and business process re-engineering initiatives across all organizational areas and across various industries, for small, mid-sized, and Fortune 500 companies.  He has held numerous positions in Accounting, Finance, Customer Service and Information Systems.  His application experience includes SAP R/3, Baan, Fourth Shift, Peachtree, MAS 90/200, Quickbooks and Microsoft Dynamics ERP.  His industry experience includes manufacturing, , distribution, telecom, aerospace, life sciences, utilities and media.  Frank studied Business Administration with an Accounting concentration at the University of Pittsburgh.  He is a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), and has been named a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) each year since 2008.  He writes articles for Dynamics-related web sites and is a regular speaker at Microsoft Dynamics Convergence, GPUG Summit, MSDynamicsWorld's Decisions Virtual Conference, a trainer and presenter for the Great Plains Users Group (GPUG) and has been a reviewer for various books written by fellow MVPs.  Frank is author of the blog GP2themax with 5,000 visits per month.

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