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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics GP (Archived) / Great Plains RMA Proce...
Microsoft Dynamics GP (Archived)

Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

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Posted on by Community Member Microsoft Employee

All, We use a combined system, CRM to Great Plains for our RMA and customer return's of our Serailized and Non Serialized Items, we sale directly to the End Users as well as to Distributors, and we handle Warranty and Non Warranty Returns.

The RMA system works great if the RMA is generated to the Original Customer (As Invoiced within Great Plains)

Our issue is that when a Customer who has possesion of the product requests a Return Authorization Number and they acquired the device from a Distributor we cannot Receive the Device into Great Plains, as the RMA is issued to the Present Customer but the System has it owned by the distibutor. 

We can associate the Serialized Item to the Custmers Account within CRM to Generate the RMA (CASE) without any issues, the issue we have is that Great Plains Still thinks that the unit still resides to the original customer that the product was invoiced out on. We do not utilize Contracts or Equipment Cards in our Process and do not look to do so in the future.

At this point we do not want to RMA the unit back with in Great Plains and then Sale the Unit back to the Customer that we are now dealing with.

We can always ISSUE the RMA under the original distributor, but if we had to Invoice the customer through Depot Managment the Histroy would be under the Distributor and not the end customer.

I cannnot believe that we are unique in what we are trying to do, we have just not seen a clean way to bring a unit back in through the CRM/GP RMA process when it is a DISTRIBUTOR type of relationship.

Looking to see how others mat have handled this situation.

Alan Armstrong

aarmstrong@impedimed.com

 

*This post is locked for comments

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    I am glad that I have been able to be of assistance.  

    Sorry, Alan, I forgot to mention that Equipment Records are created automatically depending on your setup options when implementing this module.  Essentially I do not use them a lot either and really only discovered this workaround by accident.  I do use Equipment Cards when looking for Warranty periods and dates of both purchase and sale, which to me seems to be one of its primary purposes.

    I am more concerned with any affect that changing this may have on other Field Service areas such as preventative maintenance and contact management than I am about the Purchasing & Sales areas, which is why I am promoting caution.  But as I said we only use the Returns Management area and all seems to be working well.

    Judi Carson

    Australian Satellite Communications

  • Frank Hamelly | MVP, MCP, CSA Profile Picture
    Frank Hamelly | MVP... 4,029 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Excellent!!  Thanks for posting results of your testing Alan and thank you Judi sharing your experience with us.

    Best regards,

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Hi Frank,

    Here is an update from our testing in our Test Company today. From one of Judi's earlier responses, she mentioned the Equipment Maintenace Card, I did some looking around on the Equipment Maintenance Cards in our system and found that they exist for the products we have sold. As we have not utlized this part of GP and it is not part of our normal processes we have never looked at these cards.

    We tried Judi's method of changing the Owner of the Equipment card to the new customer. Once this was done we were able to see the Serialized Unit appear in the RMA/ENTRY screen under the customers acount. When we processed the RMA it was retuned properly and we were able to invoice it back out.

    This simple change will be implemented into our present process for products that were originally sold to a distributor and are being returned by the new end user and for our non-medical customers who may have purchased product from E-Bay or from another source we can now update this equipment card and now work directly with the customer. Our present CRM process stays in tact, our Present RMA process within GP stays correct all we need to do now is create a Procedure that documents this new step in the process when it is required.

    The Original History stays in tact with the Original Purchaser but know the histro will be shown to be under the new account. We still maiontain the integrity of the serial number and its history.

    I would like to thank you the time and valuable feedback as well as thank Judi for metioning what she had done as this was the missing piece.

  • Frank Hamelly | MVP, MCP, CSA Profile Picture
    Frank Hamelly | MVP... 4,029 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Thanks for the feedback Alan.  I didn't think that would work for you but thought I'd toss it out there just in case :)

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Hi Frank,

    As we are a regulated industry (Medical Dev ice) the integrity of the Serial number must stay in tact and as best practic goes you do not want to change serial numbers on products as you loose any historical knowledge for the device history record. You will find this is true with any company who controls product by serial number.

    Judi, we presently do not use Equipment Cards, however we are haviong a closer look into this as a compnay we have been chatting with utilizes the Equipment Card, early on in 2008 when we implemented the CRM and GP process we are using it was decided not to use Equipment Cards as it added too much time to the process.

    We are still working through this process and will be doing quite a bit of work today in our test environment.

    We look forward to additional feedback.  

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Thanks Frank.  One of the reasons that I am cautious in offering this as a work around is that we are only using the Returns Management area of the Field Service module (therefore only the SVC tables are being used).  

    For historical purposes under SOP & POP & Inventory Serial Number tracing  all financial information for that inventory item remains intact.  

    SVC00300 (equipment) records are created at time of purchase (creditor) and then sale to the original debtor.  The Debtor ID is not locked and can be changed in the equipment card, suggesting that this information can by dynamic without affecting other tables.

    Your suggestion would also work well.  The only issue that I could see with it is with Xship or Credit RMA's as they bring the item into stock with a 'technically' incorrect serial number but wouldn't be a problem if the item was going to be scrapped.  How important is not being able to trace a complete history on a serial number is an individual case decision.

    Certainly, Alan, I would try my suggestion in a 'TEST' company throwing all possible scenarios at it before adopting it in your live company if you think it is a solution that you may want to try.

    Judi Carson

  • Frank Hamelly | MVP, MCP, CSA Profile Picture
    Frank Hamelly | MVP... 4,029 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Judi, I don't really have any insight into whether your process will cause any issues in GP.  Technically, I can't imagine that it would but not sure how it will affect your historical records.

    Alan, could you change anything in the serial number?  Maybe put a space at the front of the number or a period at the end?  Anything that would differentiate it from the number already on record in GP?

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Hi.  I would like to concur that we have the same problem within the RMA system that Alan has experienced.  Customers will take the equipment to the closest distributor, which may not be the one that they have purchased it from,  or return it directly to us.  This is caused in our case due to tyrannies of distance.

    I have discovered by changing the Debtor ID under the Equipment record you can raise an RMA to the customer that has requested the In Warranty/Out of Warranty Repair (Cards-Service Call Management - Equipment).  I would like to point out that I make notes against that equipment record to record original Debtor ID etc.

    I have not experienced any detrimental effect by doing this, but perhaps Frank can shed some light on whether this can cause problems within GP.

    Regards

    Judi Carson

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    NO we cannot, some if these items are Medical Products and we can not alter the Serial Number.

  • Frank Hamelly | MVP, MCP, CSA Profile Picture
    Frank Hamelly | MVP... 4,029 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    Re: Great Plains RMA Process (Distributor)

    Understood.  Could you bring the item back in to GP with a suffix on the serial number indicating that it is a non-warranty return?  I.e., xxxxxxxxxNW?  That would allow you to receive the item from the end-customer and then ship/invoice the same serial number back out to them after repair.

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