Procurement Categories

In AX2012, we can initiate the Purchases only if we have a procurement category hierarchy defined for the legal entity. So, let me just take you through “How a procurement category hierarchy should be created and products should be added to the procurement categories”.

How the Procurement Categories help in AX2012?

In short, defining the Category hierarchies will help the users in raising purchase requisition easily and helps the organization to restrict the items to different Business units and cost centers.

Instead of just writing and making you bored like other lengthy functional manuals, I would like to come up with a scenario which helps for better understanding.

In my company, there are hundreds of items, but the organization wanted to have a hierarchy which allows the user to raise the requisition for only computers. Under computers User should be able to navigate to Desktops and laptops and select the needed items.

Create a New Category Hierarchy –“Demo Hierarchy” through Product Information Management >Setup>Categories>Category Hierarchies> New Category Hierarchy

In the Hierarchy form which is opened, we can create the Hierarchy how we want it.

For an instance, Let us create the Hierarchy with “Procurable items” under which “Computers” Node and the sub nodes under computers will be “Desktops” and “Laptops”.

Now, Just a Hierarchy has been created but this is not yet associated to procurement module. To designate this newly created Category hierarchy as “Procurement category hierarchy” for company, open the Category hierarchy types form under Product Information Management >Setup>Categories

Check whether a Category hierarchy type “Procurement Category Hierarchy” exists in the grid and link and specify the “Demo Hierarchy” in the field “Category Hierarchy”( if you are not seeing the hierarchy type “Procurement Category Hierarchy”, click New and select the same and link the newly created category)

Now our “Demo Hierarchy” is designated as Procurement Category. If you observe the Category Hierarchy types form you can see “Sales Category hierarchy” and few others. Linking this new hierarchy to the Sales Category Hierarchy will enable our new hierarchy to be applicable for Sales. Other Hierarchy types have their own purposes.

As we assigned our “Demo Hierarchy” to Procurement, we can see the Procurement Category hierarchy for the organization as “Demo Hierarchy”. Open “Procurement Categories form” Under Procurement and sourcing > Categories.

Open Purchase requisitions form, create a new requisition and click the Add items to see our work.

In the above image, you can see our categories are being shown to the user. However, no items are shown as we didn’t link the Items to the Categories.

Create below 4 Items in your released product details form to see how should we link them to the categories.

Lenovo desktop, HP desktop, Dell Laptop, Apple Laptop ( I’m not explaining the Creation of Products as it is been discussed in many other blogs)

Let us Link lenovo, HP to “Desktop” Category and Dell,Apple to Laptops Category.

Easy way of doing this is, Procurement and sourcing>Setup>Categories> Procurement Categories

Focus the Desktops Node, Expand the Products Fast tab to add the desktops, Similary add the laptops to the laptops Category.

Now, Go to Purchase requisitions>Create a new requisition>Add items, the hierarchy will show as expected.

My Next post on this procurement categories will be more interesting as we are going to see how we can restrict different items to different Business units and cost centers.

Catch you…Keep Daxing