Cross-Docking with GP

Cross-docking is the act of transferring goods directly from an incoming receipt to an outgoing order without putting the stock away. Obviously, cross-docking can improve your inventory turns, reduce material handling costs, and improve customer satisfaction through the quicker delivery of orders.

So how can you cross-dock with Dynamics GP. The first step is to begin using the Backordered Items Received report. This report prints out when a purchasing receipt is posted and lists all the items on the receipt that are backordered on a sales order. This is a step in the right direction but the report has a couple issues:

1. It only prints after the receipt is posted. Many companies do not post receipts until the goods are put away to keep the bin quantities accurate.
2. It is a paper report. Are your receiving people realistically going to print and review a paper report after they post the receipt?

A more proactive approach can be implemented using the purchase order dates discussed in an earlier post. If you know the expected receipt date of an item, you can create a report or smartlist showing items expected in the next few days that are also backordered sales order items. This report or smartlist can be posted daily in the receiving department to alert personnel to cross-docking opportunities.

As I final note, I would suggest that if you do not have some cross-docking opportunities, you are carrying too much inventory. You cannot afford to have everything your customers want in stock at all times. But that is another post…

Easy Expediting and Vendor Performance Management

Expediting purchase orders and monitoring vendor performance are key to increasing inventory turns and improving your return on assets. Dynamics GP provides some easy to use, but often overlooked tools for monitoring expected and actual delivery dates.

Each line of a purchase order has a required date and two vendor promised dates. These dates default to the purchase order date but should be entered and maintained by the purchasing department. A standard smartlist is provided to show overdue purchase order lines.

The system also records the first and last receipt date for each purchase order line. This allows you to report on a vendors historical performance by comparing the required and/or vendor promised dates to the receipt dates and calculating the number of times a vendor is late on delivery and the average lead time for each item.

Dead Stock Walking

So you went through all the trouble of identifying your dead stock, appointed someone to get rid of it, finally got it out of your warehouse and next week a replenishment order for the same dead stock shows up. Its hard to blame the purchasing people since they saw demand and wanted to make sure you were stocking the things that sell. What could you have done better?

In Dynamics GP, there are two safeguards you can use to avoid replenishing dead stock. First, as soon as the item is identified as dead, change the inventory type to discontinued. This will prevent the item from being added to a purchase order and allow you to delete it at year end if desired.
Second, all dead stock sales should be on a separate document type in Sales Order Processing and the line items should have the exceptional demand box checked. This will allow you to easily identify these sales and remove them from any replenishment calculations.