Microsoft Dynamics GP Requisition Management in Business Portal solution for large corporation

Being hosted in Business Portal, it doesn’t require you to purchase Great Plains user licenses for each BP user – instead you purchase low cost BP user licenses.  Let’s review RM business logic:

• Approval Hierarchy.  If you read BP RM manual, you probably get a bit confused as it doesn’t go to very detailed level and doesn’t have FAQ section.  Important point in our opinion is the fact that in order to be able to create new purchase request (also referred as requisition), business portal user should be in approval hierarchy as the user (not as a member of the role).  What is not mentioned, however is the scenario when you have all your employees, who is entitled to submit requisition in approval hierarchy on the same level (meaning that approval hierarchy is not a binary tree, but the tree with one branch to many leaves)
• Requisition life cycle.  Typical scenario is when you have your end user or regular employee to submit requisition request to replace his old and obsolete computer with newer one (dual processor, LCD monitor, 4GB of RAM type of PC).  You should not expect your employee to be professional purchaser, so vendor is not known at this time together with inventory item number, proposed price, inventory location where computer system should be received.  When requisition is submitted by your fellow employee, it goes to the table of let’s say department manager, who simply places cost restrictions and approves this requisition passing it over to – at this time again vendor and your inventory item ID is not yet known.  OK, now it is on the table of professional purchasing folk (let’s say ex-military negotiation maestro).  This new key player sends out requisition request to potential vendors, collects bids and selects the best offer for purchase order – at this time vendor should be identified, plus item id preferably inventory account number.  This steps transforms requisition into legitimate purchase order
• Purchase Order goes to Microsoft Dynamics GP automatically, when you, as Purchasing Agent, scenarios accepts two ways – if you are in the role or creating purchase orders or the user who can place purchase orders