Business value

In many wholesales/distribution companies it is common practice that not all items from the suppliers of a company are created as items, only the frequently used items are normally created as items as part of the assortment.

Customers can also order items that are not part of the assortment, but can be delivered by the supplier. In general, these items are custom made, or ordered one time only for a specific customer.

For these so-called Specials, aka. Purchase-to-Order items, it is required that the sales staff can easily create a new item based on a template item. This template item enables the sales employee by proposing optimal defaults, and enforcing the entry of important item data. The definition of "important item data" can be defined per category. 

General process flow

The general process of using specials is:

1. Open a Sales Quotation / Sales Order        
2. Use the button [Create special], which will create a new item or configuration and will be marked with a Special flag on the Released product details, fast tab General.

A special item follows the standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations sales and purchase flow, which means that a special is integrated in the normal business process in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. There are two types of specials:

• Base item
  • A base item is a released product with product dimension configuration. 
  • A new special is a new configuration for the existing base item.
  • Creates only new configurations in order to avoid many special items in your released products.
  • It is possible to promote a special base item to a normal released product
    • Change the parameter “Base item” to No on the product master
    • Change the parameter “Special” to No on the released product
    • Remove the released product of the specials setup.
• Item
  • Item is a released product without a product dimension group.
  • A new special is a new released product.  
  • Can easily be promoted it to a non-special item: set the field Special to No.
  • A standard item can also be flagged as Special item if needed: set the field Special to Yes.
  • The number of items in the item table will certainly increase due to the creation of specials, but this is not an issue:
    • There are no real limitations to the number of items in the database.
    • Specials are excluded from item lookup screens.
    • Specials are also available in the add products form by switching the Item Type via de button in the available products pane from “Normal” to “Special”.

Restrictions and assumptions

Specials are always created per company. This means that there is no support for an Intercompany process with specials. If that is the case it is better to create a new product and release it to the companies that are required.

Special items are excluded from the check for assortments on sales orders, purchase orders and sales quotations. In other words: specials can always be added to sales (quotation) lines regardless the assortment set to the order header.

Not supported functionality: in some cases, the purchase price is not known yet, but the item is already received and delivered. If the sales price is agreed as purchase price plus surcharges the sales invoice should not be sent yet. In those cases it is recommended that the Blocking reason is set during the special creation. When creating the special a blocking reason can be used to prevent the sales invoice being created before the sales price is filled.

Manual numbers sequences are not supported for specials.

It is not possible to change a base item to a special item.

In order to change the base item to a non-base item (no) the parameter “Base item” must be deactivated on the product master.

A base item must be always of the item type “product master” as we are using a configuration for each unique special that is created.

Special items in a sales quotation or a sales order

Sales and marketing > Sales quotations > All quotations > Order details > button: Create special

Sales and marketing > Sales orders > All sales orders > Sales order details > button: Create special

A special is an item that is not in the base assortment of the company, but is generated by the user at the moment of sales order entry and purchased specific for a customer. E.g. when suppliers have big assortments you will not add all these items to your own database. Therefore, the sales employee will start searching for an existing product by using the product search functionality of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. If not found in the regular assortment he can switch the Type from Normal to Special to see whether this product has been created as special before. In that case the product is already present, but he cannot rely on the correctness of the pricing for that item. 

If not found as special, the sales employee selects the category node which will provide the default settings for the new special. The button create special is only enabled for that categories where the setting “Allow specials” is “Item” or “Configuration”. See the tab Specials for the specific category within the Product categories form. So first select the right category within the hierarchy, to use as a default for the new created item.

The create Special form will be opened:

The form has two tab pages (the preferred tab can be set in the parameters):

• Tab Search → use this tab page to search first for an existing item:
  • Search on External ItemId → search based on the vendor item id
  • Search on Barcode → search on a barcode string
  • The field Vendor account can be used as extra filter and shows:
    • items with an external Item ID if the field External item ID is used
    • items with a barcode and are set as primary vendor as the selected vendor account.

• Tab Create Special → in this tab page, values needed to create the product need to be entered before the released product, resp. configuration can be created as a special:

The category of the retail product hierarchy is inherited to the create special form.

The user fills in the data as far as needed and applicable:

• Product name and Search name
  • Will be stored in the field Product name and search name of the released product details resp. released product variant
• Vendor account
  • Entered automatically based on the default vendor mapped on the retail product hierarchy.
  • Enter manually
  • Will be stored on the released product resp. on the product dimensions/configuration *)
• External item number and external item description / text   
  • The value in this field will be stored in the vendor external item table and requires a vendor account value to be entered.
• Bar code setup / Barcode / Unit for the released product resp. released product variant
• GTIN code / GTIN for the released product resp. released product variant
• Reservation hierarchy field for the released product
• Unit sequence group for the released product

*) If a purchase order or direct delivery order is created from the sales order, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations will add the vendor of the configuration to the purchase order or direct delivery order.

Button Create

If all fields are filled, the button [Create] will generate the released product resp. released product variant and the Setup details section of the tab page Create specials, shows the fields that should be entered by the user to finish the setup of the special before it will be added to the add products form. The fields that are displayed and the behavior (editable, mandatory) is based on the Specials fields setup of the retail product category.

Button OK

The OK button will insert the item in the grid on the bottom right of the Add products form where the quantity can be set. Press OK again to add the items to the order.

Product information management > Products > Released products

Created specials can be recognized by the Special flag on the general tab.

Product information management > Products > All products and products masters

Created special configurations can be recognized by the product master to which they are connected. In that case the product master has the setting Special = Base item.

Create special from Dynamics Product Search

When both Dynamics Specials Management and Dynamics Product Search are installed it will be possible to create a new product using data from the search index. Two additional setup tabs related to specials will appear on the commerce product hierarchy which can be used for mapping to the fields of the search index. For more information please read Create special from Dynamics Product Search.

Setup

Parameters

Inventory management > Setup > Inventory and warehouse management parameters

Organization administration > Specials setup > Specials setup

Defaults for special creation (item)

Retail > Products and categories > Retail product hierarchy > fast tab: Specials

On item creation it is possible to use the default settings from the retail product hierarchy categories. To enable special creation for a category for a specific company, select the Legal Entity and enable the Special checkbox on the basis product properties, this will enable the button [Specials setup].

Enabling for specials will activate the Specials setup button in the action pane (described in the next section: Special fields setup).

If no number sequences are set for specials the system will give an error message on special creation. The minimum setup is a number sequence for specials is a number sequence for the legal entity. This is the number sequence that is used for creating a released product in case of Allow special = item. It is also not allowed to setup a manual number sequence for specials.

Special fields setup (item)

These settings determine the layout of the create special form. This setup is global (shared across all companies). Purpose is to pre-set the data for a new special as good as possible, and to be able to enter the minimum relevant data for the special in one screen.

It is possible to define field groups and the order of the fields within the groups. The field property (view, edit, mandatory) determines what the user can do with the field on the form. With the copy function it is possible to copy the setup from another category to the current category. The setup is not inherited automatically to a lower level, so you have to specify the setup for each category that is enabled for special creation.

Example: create a screen with 3 field groups and define one or more relevant fields per group:

• Purchase
  • Price (view)
  • Unit (mandatory)
  • Charges quantity (edit)
• Inventory
  • Unit (mandatory)
• Sales
  • Price
  • Unit
  • Price UOM

Remark: In previous versions (up to AX2012R3) it was possible to use a lookup for labels in the client. In Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations the client has no access to the label files anymore, therefore this lookup is not present, but it’s still possible to copy and paste the label Id’s from Visual Studio into the label Id field.

Setup for special base items 

Product information management > Setup > Dimension and variant groups > Product dimension groups

Setup a product dimension group Configuration, where only configuration is active. Switch on "For purchase prices" and "For sales prices".

Product information management > Products > Product masters

The configuration starts with the creation of a new product master with product dimension group “Configuration”. The product master is the basic for the creation the special configurations. In the fast tab General, a parameter “Base item” has been added to the product. The parameter “Base item” must be “Yes”, in order to use the product master for the creation of special configurations. This parameter is editable if only “Configuration” is activated the product dimension group.

After the setup on the product master, the user must release the product master to a company. The field Special in the created released product master, in the fast tab General will be Base item.

Defaults for special creation (configuration)

To enable special creation for a category for a specific company, select the Legal Entity in the Specials fast tab and select the option “Configuration” in the “Allow specials” look-up. This will enable the button Special setup in the action pane and the special number sequence look-up in product field group.

The configurations are shared across the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations legal entities and therefore you can only select number sequences with scope “shared”.

Specials fields setup (configuration)

These settings determine the layout of the create special form. This setup is NOT shared across all companies.

In the specials setup grid, you can configure the base items for the creation of configuration. In the item number look-up, you can only select released products were specials is “Base item”. The look-up even filters the master products of the selected category, so it is not possible to select base items of other category. The grid contains a checkbox “Default”. If a base item in the grid is marked as “Default”, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations prefills the “create special” form with the default base item. Per category, is one “Default” base item possible.