Receiving compensation from a vendor for a purchased item that you are dissatisfied with is important for recovering costs and maintaining satisfactory vendor relationships. Typically, a purchaser responsible for the interaction with specific vendors would also be the person to make contact with those vendors in case of purchase returns.
Managing returns to vendors includes a series of tasks. The number and scope of these tasks generally depend on who initiates the return: the company itself (when, for example, dissatisfied with the quality of purchased items or in case of wrong delivery) or a company's own customer. Irrespective of that. A typical vendor-oriented return process may include the following tasks:
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Determining the compensation agreement with the vendor.
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Debiting the vendor, either by means of receiving a credit for physically returned items, or by means of a purchase allowance (if the company is not required to physically return the items).
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Creating a replacement purchase order (if replacement is part of a compensation agreement)
In relation to the vendor-oriented process, there are a number of internal handling tasks:
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Shipping items to the vendor (if the purchase return, including repair, is part of a compensation agreement).
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Receiving replaced/repaired items.
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Ensuring the accurate inventory value of the items to be returned to the vendor.
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Combining several return shipments to the same vendor into one credit memo document.
The following table describes a sequence of tasks with links to the topics that describe them. These tasks are listed in the order in which they are generally performed:
| To | See |
|---|---|
Learn about the business requirements and steps involved in returns management, such as compensation agreements and inventory value considerations. | |
Get an overview of different ways to process purchase returns. | |
Use functions on an unpaid posted purchase invoice to automatically perform a credit memo process and either cancel the purchase invoice or recreate it so you can make corrections, using the simplified features in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. | |
Create a purchase credit memo to revert a specific posted purchase invoice to reflect which products you are returning to the vendor and which payment amount you will collect, using the simplified features in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. | |
Determine who supplied a certain defective serial/lot number before starting the purchase return process. | |
Ensure that after returning the item(s), your inventory is revalued using the unit cost that is connected to the original purchase entry. | |
Create the purchase return order and fill the lines with a function to automatically reverse posted purchase invoice lines or receipt lines. | |
Have the vendor compensate you for a purchased item by replacing the item. | |
Have all relevant return documents be created automatically, such as the purchase return order, a replacement purchase order, or a new sales order. | |
Return several items covered by different purchase return orders. | |
Accept and post a purchase allowance granted by the vendor because the received items are faulty. | |
Ensure that the originally received serial/lot numbers are reversed in the purchase return process. | How to: Handle Item Tracking Lines with the Get Lines Function |
Determine where a returned defective serial/lot number originates from and if the defective lot is sold on other orders. | |
Undo the quantity posting of a return shipment where the purchase return document (purchase credit memo) has not yet been invoiced. |