Arrival Overview Functionality in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

Is your company not quite ready for advanced warehousing? Utilize the Arrival Overview functionality!

The Arrival Overview form and functionality is part of the WMSII (Warehouse Management System) module in AX2012 and earlier versions. I have encountered situations where consultants were hesitant to introduce Arrival Overview to a client if they were not implementing the WMSII module. In Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations the amazing possibilities that the advanced warehousing functionality offers often overshadow what the WMSI module can do, and implementation teams don’t consider exploring them.

However, Arrival Overview is a really good tool for basic warehousing without handheld devices to plan resources and execute receiving operations. It is a very good idea to start an implementation off with WMSI tools and advance to the more sophisticated solutions when the company is ready.

Let me note that this post only focuses on Arrival Overview to handle incoming flow but the Release sales order picking and Picking registration forms provide a very similar option on the shipping side of the equation. Stay tuned for another post about these two!

I have introduced Arrival Overview in initial phases of implementations as the appropriate tool on several occasions without an issue. Turning off the configuration key/feature pack for the WMSII/advanced warehousing module will not interfere with the Arrival Overview functionalities. As far as the requirements on the floor, as long as there is a warehouse administrator, you can make perfect sense of the processes without hand held devices.

The first advantage is for the warehouse manager to use the form as a resource planning tool – using the proper combination of the several available filter setups, a person can get a really good idea about the volume of upcoming work. This allows human resources, equipment and receiving bay planning to make sure warehouse staff will be able to handle the work and to minimize additional charges for waiting time to be paid for transportation companies.

As far as the process is concerned, imagine the warehouse administrator preparing scheduled incoming shipments the night before by creating arrival journals and printing receipt lists for everything using the date interval and delivery mode filters (and any additional filters your company might require). When the trucks start to arrive the next day, warehouse staff would be picking up the appropriate receipt lists to do initial checks before starting to unload.

Then as these receipt lists start flowing back to the warehouse administrator, arrival journals would be adjusted and posted.

One thing we’ve done with a client is have two separate trays in front of the warehouse administrator’s office – one for those receipt lists where everything on the shipment matched the journal and another one for those that needed manipulation or possibly even contacting the purchasing department. This allows the administrator to very quickly get through the non-problematic arrivals, so those can be processed further. The documentation for quarantined items at this point can be forwarded to the QC department, if applicable, and receipt lists sent back to the floor for final put away. Then while warehouse staff are busy with the put away of this first batch, he or she has time to go through and manipulate the journals for the ‘problem’ receipts and hand them out when staff are back for new jobs.

At this point the administrator can open all journals awaiting product receipt posting. Then based on the receipt lists flowing back from put away and the matching documentation that arrived with the shipment (to enter the packing slip number) the administrator can post the product receipts.

Utilizing this process flow will keep all staff involved working at all stages, and allows processing the three steps of the standard arrival/receiving process (initial check on truck – unload to staging – put away) to be continuous and seamless, even without hand-held devices.

The one technical comment I must note here is that if your environment is AX2012 R2 before CU7, you have one issue to pay attention to. When you are receiving items with an inventory model group where mandatory quarantine management is turned on, the arrival journal would not recognize this and would create the arrival journal with the default warehouse, but then error out when posting based on the quarantine setting. To get around this, you would have to make sure that all these items have a warehouse item record set up in the quarantine warehouse with a default bin location (if you are using bin locations for the item). Also, you must make sure that the ‘Check picking location’ on these journals is not marked – you can set it up as default on the journal name. This seems to solve the problem.

Again, this is only applicable if you do NOT have the feature pack for WMSII turned on but would like to use Arrival overview AND your environment is AX 2012 R2 previous to CU7. CU7 and consequently R3 and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations versions have this issue resolved and you can use the Arrival overview with no problems.

Please contact us if you have any questions about Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations or Dynamics AX.