How to manage sales order holds in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

At Columbus, we deal with many clients who need to place holds on sales orders as a part of their business.

A client might choose to place a sales order hold for many reasons, including:

• A customer profile may need to be updated with new information (customer address, payment method, etc.)
• A customer has exceeded credit limit and may need approval for the transaction.
• A customer has placed a special order.
• A sales manager has decided to give a customer an extra discount.

The ability to place a sales order hold is a powerful tool provided as a standard feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (D365FO). There are several reasons why you might use this tool in your business environment, so in this article I will discuss this functionality in greater depth.

After you have completed this read you will have a better understanding of how to set up customer sales order hold codes, how to place a sales order hold, and how to manage your current sales order holds.

We begin by setting up our sales order hold codes:

1. Navigate to sales and marketing > setup > sales orders > order hold codes. 
2. In the order hold codes form, click on new. In the hold code field, type in the hold code name (or numeric value) that will be relevant to your business case.
3. In the description field, add an explanation describing the hold code.
4. If needed, you may assign a security role for the use of a hold code. To do this go to the general fast tab and select the drop-down selection the role field.
5. If you would like to establish a default sales order hold, the “default for sales order” selection will automatically assign a hold code to all new sales order holds. This is helpful if you only use one sales order hold or if a specific sales order hold is used more commonly than others.
6. You can also remove inventory reservations when a hold code is applied to the order by selecting “yes” in the “remove inventory reservations” field.
7. If you would like to assign a specific color to the sales order hold code in order to distinguish it visually or attach a note, you can set this up by navigating to accounts receivable > setup > accounts receivable parameters. In accounts receivable parameters, select “general” and expand the “sales setup” fast tab. The “on hold” sales order status field allows you to assign a color and a note to your sales order holds. 

Next, we will apply an order hold to a sales order:

1. Navigate to accounts receivable > orders > all sales orders or sales and marketing > common > sales orders > all sales orders, to create a new sales order or to select an existing sales order which you would like to edit. 
2. Select your sales order and then go to the “sales order” tab and click the “order holds” button under the “function” field in the action pane.
3. In the “order hold” form click “new” to select an order hold code.
4. If you would like to assign a note to the order hold you can do so in the “notes” fast tab.
5. Click “save”.
6. When you return to the “all sales order” form you will notice that the sales orders with holds will have the “do not process” and the “hold” fields marked.

Managing sales order holds:

Dynamics 365 gives you the option to check out the sales order for a length of time as you continue to work on it. You can check out sales orders, check sales orders in, or override the checkout placed by another user. To do this:

1. Navigate to sales and marketing > sales orders > open order hold.
2. The order holds form shows you all the order holds that have been placed, users that have placed holds, the amount of days that an order has been placed on hold, etc.
3. If you would like to clear a hold, you can do this by selecting the “clear hold” tab and clicking the “clear hold” or “clear and modify” options in the navigation pane.
4. a. Clear holds will remove the hold and mark the order as cleared along with a user ID and date cleared.
   b. Clear and modify will open the sale order form for modification or verification as well as clearing the hold and recording the user and date.
   c. Clear and submit will execute the open order submission job. This is useful in making sure that orders are not held up for other processing or credit limit errors. It will also remove the hold and mark the order as cleared along with a user ID and date cleared.
5. The checkout feature ensures that only one user can update information at a time. A checkout timestamp allows you to know when the sales order has been checked out.

Still have questions about creating and processing a sales order code? We're here to help. Drop us a line today.