This new Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations feature can help AP Departments with improving the management and streamlining of the scheduling and creation of AP payment proposals to vendors. For example, you can automate payments so certain vendors are paid on Mondays and others on Thursdays. Or you can automate payments so suppliers from Mexico are paid on certain day of the month, like the 1st, and suppliers from Canada are paid on the 15th. You can also group suppliers into larger payment runs. The options are endless. Let’s explore:
Before you get started
First, you need to enable the new Vendor payment proposal feature in the Feature Management workspace. In Features Management search under Vendor payment proposal automation, select and enable it.
Create a new Automated Payment Proposal Process
Navigation
1. Navigate to: Account Payables > Setup > Payment Setup > Process Automations
2. In the top left corner press: Create New Process Automation.
3. Select: Vendor payment proposal, from the dropdown menu.
4. Select the legal entity to setup the AP payment automation within. By default, the company you are logged into is the company that will populate. However, you can change to any other legal entity to which you have access.
5. Press: Create Series.
6. A wizard will open and walk you through the remaining steps.
7. You need to configure two pages.
General page: setup batching and alerts
1. In the Series area, in the Name field, enter the name of the vendor payment proposal. You can also add a description below in the Description field.
2. In the Scheduling area, select the Schedule Time and Start Date of your batching. Select if you want an End Date, as well.
3. In the Occurrence Pattern area, configure your frequency of batching. From the dropdown, you can select from Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
4. In the Alerts area, select what types of alerts you want and how they should be delivered, such as email or alert pop up in D365 F&O.
5. In this AP payment automation example, the batching is scheduled to run weekly, every Wednesday.
6. When completed press: Next
Vendor payment proposal page: set up your payment criteria
1. In the Payment Journal field select the payment journal the automated payments will apply to.
2. In the Invoice selection criteria area, from the dropdown, select Due date, Cash discount date or Due date and Cash discount date
3. If you let Define to date criteria toggle to be No, as the default is, then all invoices that the automated payment are applied to will be included.
4. If you select Due date and turn the Define to date criteria toggle to Yes, enter the numbers of days in the Number of days adjustment for to date field, on, before or after of invoices to include compared to the date when the automated payment batch is run. The days can be zero, or a positive or a negative number.
5. For example, if you select Due Date in the Select invoice by field, set the Define to date criteria toggle to Yes and enter 1 in the Number of days adjustment for to date field. If you run the weekly payment batching on Wednesdays, all invoices due on the Thursday would be included as well.
6. In the Minimum payment Date area, you can define your minimum date and amount limit.
7. In the Payment defaults area, you can define Payment currency, Payment weekday, and Offset account.
8. In the Centralized payment area, you can define if you would like to include invoices from other legal entities.
9. You apply the Define Summarized Payment Date Criteria when your method of payment is set to Total in the Period field.
10. When Define Summarized Payment Date Criteria is toggled to Yes, enter the number of days in the Number of days adjustment for summarized payment date field on, before, or after the summarized payment date. The days can be zero, or a positive or a negative number. This will affect the Summarized payment date in the Payment proposal.
11. When completed press: Next
Records to include: Filtering
1. If you would like to restrict which suppliers the automated payments system should apply to, Press: Filter.
2. You can filter on specific vendors by using the Vendor Account field. You can filter on specific Method of Payment or Currency and more.
3. From the dropdown menus in the filter, you change the options for what is currently being filtered on.
4. You can also add new filters by pressing Add button and specify criteria.
5. When the payment proposal is completed, press: Finish.
Review frequency schedule
1. After you have created the automated payment proposal, you can review the frequency of creation of the payment proposals by pressing: View occurrences.
Batch processing
The batching should be scheduled and automatically running in the background.
Vendor payments
1. You can view the create payment proposals in the Vendor Payments workspace.
2. In the Process Automation grid, you can view your payment proposals that have been Completed or Scheduled.
3. Press: View Payments link to access the payment proposals.
4. Your payment journal has now been generated automatically by the system.
5. Review the payment journal, generate payment and post.
In summary
This new feature can assist AP departments with improving the management and streamlining of the scheduling and creation of AP payment proposals to suppliers. This can assist AP Assistants and AP Managers to stay on top of their game.
