Bank Account Approval Extension

The ability to singlehandedly change payee bank accounts, poses a threat to organizations, as it makes it easy to commit fraud by changing an intended target bank account during a transfer of money. As a countermeasure the Banking foundation solution for D365FO can be extended with a bank account approval workflow solution, which ensures that new and changed bank accounts cannot be used until approved. The bank account extensions workflow covers both customer and vendor bank accounts, which can be activated separately. Unlike earlier the workflow covers bank account setup pages, both in standard D365 and in the Banking solution as well.

This guide will cover how to set up and activate of the bank account approval workflow. In addition, the guide will describe, how the workflow is used in practice.

INSTALL/DEPLOY THE BANK ACCOUNT APPROVAL EXTENSION #

The bank account approval solution is distributed as an independent deployable package and is available for deployment directly from Microsoft Lifecycle Services (LCS). From LCS, the package can be deployed to D365FO cloud environments, in the same way as e.g. the Banking foundation package can.

CREATE WORKFLOW USING THE WORKFLOW EDITOR #

Workflows are created and configured using a workflow editor. For more info on how to use the workflow editor, see:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/fin-and-ops/organization-administration/create-workflow

To set up and activate the vendor bank account approval workflow, follow the following steps:

1. Go to Accounts payable > Setup > Accounts payable workflows

2. Click New

3. Click the Propose vendor bank account changes workflow link in the Workflow type column. The Workflow Editor tool is started automatically

4. Sign in to the Workflow Editor tool using you Microsoft account

5. Drag, connect and configure workflow elements on the workflow editor canvas. For inspiration, see Basic workflow configuration example below

6. Click Save and Close

7. Refresh the Workflows page to see the created workflow

BASIC WORKFLOW CONFIGURATION EXAMPLE #

The following workflow configuration example should work for most organizations, but please note, that there is not a single, correct way to set up workflows. Workflows can be configured in numerous ways and should therefore be carefully tailored, to fit the requirements and practical use of your organization. To configure the basic workflow example, do the following steps:

1. Drag the Workflow approval for proposed vendor bank account changes element onto the canvas in between the start and end elements and connect them like shown below

2. Right-click the Workflow approval for proposed vendor bank account changes element and select Properties

3. Click Advanced settings and apply the following settings

4. Click Close

5. Double-click the Workflow approval for proposed vendor bank account changes element to move down a level

6. Right-click the Step 1 element and select Properties

7. Click Basic settings and specify Work item subject and Work item instruction

8. Click Assignment, open the Assignment type tab and select Participant

9. Open the Role based tab and select Approve vendor bank account changes in the Participant combo box

10. Click Assignment, open the Time limit tab and change Days value to 5

11. Click Assignment, open the Completion policy tab and select Single approver

12. Click Close

13. Click Save and Close to save the workflow configuration and close the workflow editor

14. Specify Version notes in the Save workflow dialog

15. Click OK

16. Select the Activate the new version from the Activate workflow dialog

17. Click OK

HANDLING MULTIPLE WORKFLOW VERSIONS #

A workflow can have several configured versions, but only one versions can be active. To open the Workflow versions dialog, follow the steps below:

1. Go to AMC Banking > Setup > Workflows

2. Click Versions

From the Workflow versions dialog, it is possible to see detailed information regarding the workflow configuration versions. Furthermore, it is possible to activate/deactivate, import/export, copy and delete the individual workflow configuration versions.

USING THE BANK ACCOUNT APPROVAL WORKFLOW #

Once the bank account approval workflow has been created and activated, the workflow will prevent payment clerks from executing payments from both new and changed bank accounts, without the bank accounts being approved by an authorized user. Furthermore, a non-editable field Workflow status field will appear on the customer and vendor bank account setup pages.

The workflow state can be one of four values:

– Changes not submitted: Initial state of new bank account, and state of change bank accounts, which has not yet been submitted

– Changes pending approval: State of submitted bank accounts awaiting approval

– Changes approved: State of bank accounts which have been approved. This is the only state that allows the bank account to be used for payment execution

– Changes rejected: State of bank accounts which was rejected.

SUBMITTING BANK ACCOUNT FOR APPROVAL #

Adding new bank accounts will result in an initial Workflow state of Changes not submitted.

Changing existing bank accounts (registration number, bank account or IBAN) will instead result in a Proposed changes pop-up dialog, wherefrom the user can confirm the change proposal by clicking the Close button. This will also result in a Workflow state of Changes not submitted. The user can also choose to discard specific or all changes, by clicking the designated buttons.

Please note, that the proposed changes will remain in the change proposal until approved. As a result, the changes will therefore not be applied and be visible on the bank account until this approval is done.

To activate the bank account, the user must now submit the bank account for approval.

Only users, that has been assigned the AMC Banking manager security role can submit bank accounts. Bank accounts are submitted, doing the following steps:

1. Open the Workflow menu and click Submit

2. In the submit dialog, specify a remark in the Comment field if required

3. Click Submit

Once submitted, a message will confirm the bank account submittal and Workflow status changes to Changes pending approval.

APPROVING PENDING BANK ACCOUNTS #

Bank account approval workflow

When a bank accounts enters Changes pending approval state, the next step is to approve the new or changed bank account.

Only users assigned the AMC Banking workflow approver security role, can approve bank accounts. Bank accounts can be approved directly from the bank account setup form, doing the following steps:

1. Open the Workflow menu and click Approve

2. In the approve dialog, specify a remark in the Comment field if required

3. Click Approve The bank account approver of course also has the option to reject a bank account. If a bank for some reason cannot be approved, the approver simply chooses the Reject option from the Workflow menu instead

Alternatively, the designated Approve vendor bank account changes page can be used instead. This page instead is useful, when bank accounts are approved in bulks and can be done, doing the following steps:

1. Go to AMC Banking > Payees > Pending bank accounts > Approve vendor bank account changes

2. Select one or multiple records from the proposed changes grid

3. Click Approve

Once approved, the bank account Workflow status changes to Changes approved, and can now be used for payments

PRE-EXISTING BANK ACCOUNTS #

When activating the workflow on a system with existing bank accounts, the bank accounts will initially have workflow status of Changes not submitted. In practice this means that all bank accounts are Inactive and cannot be used for payments, hence needs activation.

This can easily be achieved by opening the designated Approve vendor bank account changes page and bulk activate these bank accounts, using the pre-existing approval option:

1. Go to AMC Banking > Payees > Pending bank accounts > Approve vendor bank account changes

2. Change the Display bank accounts filter above the grid to Pre-existing

3. Select one or multiple records from the proposed changes grid

4. Click Approve

SEEING HISTORIC BANK ACCOUNT CHANGES #

Each time a bank account change is approved, a historic change records is added. To see the historic changes for a bank account, click the History button in the menu

Each historic bank account change will figure as an individual record in the left-most list. To the right the details section will reveal the exact nature of the selected bank account change record.

APPROVING CUSTOMER BANK ACCOUNT CHANGES #

This document has primarily covered the vendor bank account approval workflow, but a similar workflow exists for customer bank accounts. The workflow works the same way, but there are differences.

– The workflow is configured and activated from Accounts receivable > Setup > Accounts receivable workflows

– Bank account changes must be submitted from the customer bank account setup pages

– Approving of customer bank accounts must be done, either directly from the customer bank account setup pages or from the designated approval page, which is opened from AMC Banking > Payees > Pending bank accounts > Approve customer bank account changes

TROUBLESHOOTING WORKFLOW SYSTEM #

If the bank account approval workflow does not work as described above, e.g. that workflow status does not change, when submitting bank accounts, then most likely the standard workflow system is not running or is not configured correctly.
Below we have listed a few things, which can be easily checked and addressed by a user with administrator privileges.

BATCH MANAGEMENT SERVICE SHOULD BE RUNNING #

The workflow system utilizes standard batch functionality and a batch management service is processing workflows, sending emails and executes batch jobs. First thing to check is, whether the batch management service is running, by doing the following steps:

1. Click Start, type services.msc and press Enter

2. Ensure that the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Unified Operations: Batch Management Service is Running.

BATCH JOBS SHOULD EXIST AND BE RUNNING #

The workflow system uses three batch jobs to process messages, determine due dates for work items and process notifications for line items. These jobs should occasionally be run, for the workflow system to work correctly. Second thing to check is whether these batch jobs exist, and whether they are being run, by doing the following steps:

1. Go to System administration > Inquiries > Batch jobs 2. Ensure that the three workflow batch jobs listed below exist

3. Ensure that the batch jobs, are occasionally being run, e.g. by monitoring whether the value of Scheduled start date/time changes. Especially the Workflow message processing job should be executed quite often

If the batch jobs are not present or are not being run occasionally, then the workflow system should be reconfigured. Delete existing workflow batch jobs (if any) and reconfigure the workflow system, by doing the following steps:

1. Go to System administration > Setup > Batch group

2. Click New and specify Group and Description

3. Open the Batch servers tab and ensure that server(s) are present in the Selected servers list

4. Go to System administration > Workflow > Workflow infrastructure configuration

5. Select an existing user to act as the workflow execution account.

6. Select a batch group for the workflow messaging batch job (optional)

7. Select a batch group for the workflow due date processing batch job (optional) and specify how often this batch job should run.

8. Select a batch group for line-item workflow notification batch job (optional) and specify how often this batch job should run.

9. Click OK to finish and close the workflow wizard.

Please note, that if you cannot edit the batch groups in the Workflow infrastructure configuration page, then it is most likely caused by the workflow batch jobs belonging to another system partition. In that case an administrator should delete the obsolete batch jobs.