The Benefits of Microsoft Dynamics GP Approval Workflows

As many organizations have now implemented remote working, several processes that could be carried out easily from the office have now gotten more complicated. Fortunately, Microsoft Dynamics GP offers many tools to facilitate remote working, including approval workflows. The benefits may not have been as apparent when everyone was on site at the office, but something as simple as obtaining approval from the right people can become quite cumbersome when everyone is working from home.

Configuring approval workflows in your Dynamics GP solution provides several benefits facilitating the use of your solution. They can be applied to various situations and modules, reducing the risk of errors and the amount of manual processes required. These workflows can be triggered by an action or an event of your choice, and the associated actions will take place automatically afterwards.

For example, you can automate security controls for transaction entry or the creation of new values, introduce digital segregation of duties within your current processes or put in place a digital approval history in GP. Workflows can also be used to authorize delegation if the approver is not available or to manage escalations and approval times.

Here are a few of the benefits by module:

• Financials: Automate account creation to avoid errors and double entries as well as the approval of journal entry batches based on specific criteria for individual accounts and batches or globally.
• Sales: Approval workflows can be put in place based on the specific criteria of a receivables batch, whether for a transaction batch or bank deposit batch. They can also be used for SOP transactions and others, and even make it possible to attach supporting documents to accelerate the approval process.
• Purchases: You can automate approvals at various levels, for example payables management, purchase management, purchase receipts and purchase invoices, again based on your specific criteria. This reduces the risk of double entries when creating supplier files and limits purchase requisitions to certain individuals. Workflows can once again be used to attach supporting documents to accelerate the process.
• Administration: Facilitate the creation, modification and deletion of various entities, for example security roles and tasks, users, user security, as well as SmartLists.

In all cases, workflows accelerate the approval process by automatically sending the approval request to the right person. As they are configured based on your specific criteria, they are adapted to your processes and organization while reducing the risk of errors and manual interventions by your employees. On top of eliminating manual processes, you also keep an audit trail as well as a transaction history. It’s also easier to track pending approval requests and keep requests from falling through the cracks when everyone is working from home.

For more information, or if you are interested in configuring approval workflows within your Microsoft Dynamics GP solution, contact JOVACO.