Hi All,
Our company has an older service management software which is used to book jobs for engineers and needs parts assigned to it however all of our stock is held in business central therefore the aftersales team in charge of this has been raising sales orders to business central to create/buy the parts and then receive them into the service software. For legacy reasons we are pretty much stuck with this. What i want to do is make the management of these particular orders (Sell to customer no = SERVICE) more visible and more urgent within BC.
Does anyone have suggestions for how the purchasing team can see what needs to be ordered specifically for these orders without having to go into each order and check the demand overview?
We had looked at possibly moving all the orders to be fulfilled from a separate location but all stock is physically kept in one location so this is quite difficult.
We had also considered developing an app to check the items availability in stock at the time the sales header is released and add this as a field on the sales line however to be really useful this would need to have hooks into things like purchase orders being raised and received to update that field and it just feels like i am probably repeating something that is already available.
Is there a function available to call that does the same as the demand overview by event? i.e. look at the demand and all supply in the period up to the sales lines due date and say if there is action required to purchase/make the item rather than trying to write that?
Thanks in advance,
Tiarnan
Hi Tiarnan,
This is a common, complex issue that happens when external tools drive Business Central. You are right, the solution isn’t more custom code; it’s simplifying the core process.
We successfully solved this exact challenge for a European retail client who struggled to separate urgent repair demand from standard stock.
The Solution: Native Prioritization
The fix is to use standard BC features to filter the demand signal, not recalculate it.
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The Core Fix (Your Answer): We implement a non-disruptive setup using a Custom Dimension (e.g., “Demand Type”). Every Sales Order from your service software is automatically tagged with the SERVICE dimension value.
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Purchasing Visibility: Your Purchasing Team then uses the native Requisition Worksheet and applies a filter to only process demand tagged as SERVICE.
This immediately isolates urgent parts. The method works because we rely on BC’s powerful Planning Engine to calculate what to buy, and simply use the Dimension to filter which demand is urgent.
Our Strategy from the First Hour
When a system is driven by many workarounds, the first step is analysis.
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First-Hour Audit (Analysis): We start with a quick, free audit session to map the exact sequence: from your legacy service software creating the order, to the moment the purchasing team needs to act. This finds the true friction points.
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Surface-Level Planning: Our strategy is to stabilize the demand signal with the simple Dimension method described above. We focus on low-risk changes that immediately fix the workflow, giving you a quick win without the risk of building custom apps.
Ready to find the quick win? We can arrange that free 30-minute audit session to map out your specific service-to-inventory process right away.
You can drop me an email as well : hardik.gupta@allgrowtech.com
Thanks for the reply hardik, i am interested in this solution. I initially tried to filter the planning worksheet (we use this rather than the requisition worksheet) by the sell to customer no however the filter seemed to return nothing? Should the dimension be on the line rather than the order as this is where the demand is coming from?
Hi Tiarnan,
That’s a fantastic detail! You’re right to question the filter on the Planning Worksheet. The filter failing points to a deeper data setup issue, it’s likely related to your Item Card or Planning Parameters, not the filter itself.
Regarding the AI module you mentioned, while that’s something we can certainly train in the future, for this specific visibility problem, the data foundation must be rock-solid first.
We are at the point where simple troubleshooting via email is over. Let’s schedule a quick call. If you share your screen for just a few minutes, I can instantly pinpoint the setup issue and confirm how to proceed with the Dimension solution. Also, can you please let me know which legacy system you are working?
Are you available for a quick chat later this week?