GP 2015 – Understanding Vendor Approval Workflow

In Dynamics GP 2015, a new functionality is provided to manage the vendor approval process and control the setup and editing of new or existing vendors. The process is perfectly designed in terms of the cards, transactions entry and posting. Throughout this article, I am providing an overall explanation for the cycle, starting from the workflow definition, vendor card setup, payable transaction entry from both a business and technical perspective.

Vendor Approval – Workflow Maintenance

- Go to Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > Company > Workflow > Workflow Maintenance.
- Under the purchasing Series > Click on the predefined workflow “Vendor Approval”.
- Click on “New Workflow”.
- To define steps, configure the workflow properties, check GP 2013 R2 – New Requisitions Workflow

Once the workflow is configured, the steps are defined. Never forget to activate it by clicking the “Active” button on the workflow maintenance window. From now on, any new vendor will abide by the rules defined in your workflow.

Vendor Maintenance Window

The vendor card has new enhancements represented with adding new sections to manage the workflow, this is mainly represented with both: workflow sections and workflow status.

The workflow sections includes the buttons, for instance submitting the vendor for approval after the vendor has been configured and saved. You can view the history of the vendor at any time of the process. Additionally, the workflow actions in order to approve, or reject, recall or resubmit for approvals.

Here is another screen shot for the vendor maintenance window when showing the workflow actions, when an “Approval” or “Task” is required (from the web client)

Here is the workflow history window showing the detailed steps that this workflow has gone through, it shows when it was originated, edited, completed and by whom.

Vendor Transactions

As long as the vendor is either not submitted, or through the approval process. Transactions can be “entered” and saved but not posted for this specific vendor. When posting a transaction for a vendor that is still in the approval process, the batch will be held in the batch recovery, and the posting report will stat that an error has occurred preventing the transaction from posting.

Vendor Master Table - Technical Perspective  | PM00200

The vendor master table has a new column to reflect the workflow status for each vendor, this column is Workflow_Status and it has integer values from 1 to 7. Here is the column definition:

1 'Not Submitted'
3 'SUBMITTED  - No Action Needed'
4 ''SUBMITTED - Pending Approval'
5 'Recalled'
6 'Approvd'
7 'Rejected'

Best Regards,
Mahmoud M. AlSaadi