Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management · automotive aftermarket and heavy-duty parts

Cores, VOR orders and superseded parts. Three agents designed for the parts business, stated as blueprints.

Automotive aftermarket and heavy-duty parts distributors run Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management with a catalogue of hundreds of thousands of part numbers, many warehouses, remanufactured lines sold against a refundable core deposit, and fleet customers whose truck is earning nothing while it waits. Three problems recur in that business that the standard product records but does not work: the core deposit that is never recovered, the vehicle-off-road order that loses to a routine transfer, and the part number that shows zero stock while its replacement sits on the shelf. We have designed an agent for each, as blueprints, and we have built three agents for the procure-to-pay and credit problems every distributor has as well. This page says which is which.

Talk to an EngineerThe three blueprints

Three problems a parts distributor’s F&O records but does not work

Core deposits

Refundable deposits on remanufactured parts, and a crate of returned cores with no paperwork. The sale, the return and the credit are three separate documents in F&O, and nobody owns the gap between them.

Emergency VOR

Vehicle off road. A fleet truck is down and needs the part F&O reserved first-come, first-served for a routine transfer order yesterday.

Part supersession

The old part number shows zero stock. The replacement sits on the shelf. The chain between them lives in a supplier bulletin, not in the lookup.

The problem

What a parts distributor's F&O records, and what it leaves to the counter

A parts business is a catalogue business. Finance & Supply Chain Management holds the released products, the on-hand by site and warehouse, the sales orders, the transfer orders, the return orders and the customer's credit. It holds them correctly. What it does not do is the three things a counterman, a core clerk and a fleet-account manager do all day: tie the greasy crate of returned cores to the open deposits on the account, decide that the one alternator in stock should go to the stranded truck rather than the weekly transfer, and know that the number the customer just read out was superseded two bulletins ago.

Those three jobs share a shape. The facts are in the ERP. The decision needs someone to pull three or four of them together, apply a rule the business knows but never wrote down, and then post something: a credit, a reservation change, a substitution on the order line. That is exactly the shape of work an agent that reads Dynamics 365 live and acts only behind a person's approval is built for.

We have not built these three yet. We have designed them, and the design is on this page with its status word in front of it. What we have built, and demonstrate on request, are the agents for the problems a parts distributor shares with every other company on F&O: receipts nobody posted, accruals nobody can explain, and sales orders on credit hold that nobody can explain to the rep.

Designed, not built

Three agents, designed for this business, stated as blueprints

Each is told as the story it comes from. None is built. Each would read Dynamics 365 live, show the exact record it proposes to post, and post nothing without a named person's yes.

Core deposit recovery agent

Blueprint

The story

A remanufactured alternator ships with a core charge on the line. Three weeks later a pallet of used cores arrives with a packing slip that names the customer and nothing else. The core clerk matches what they can by eye; the rest sits in a cage, and the deposit on the account sits open until somebody writes it off or the customer phones to ask where their credit is.

The design

The agent lists open core charges by customer and age, matches arriving returns to the charges they most plausibly settle and shows its reasoning, drafts the follow-up for cores past their return window, and after inspection proposes the exact credit note for a person to approve. It reads the sales lines, the return orders and the customer's account; it posts the credit only on an explicit yes, and reads it back.

What it will not do

It never grades a core, never writes off a deposit, and never issues a credit without the inspection result and a person's approval.

Emergency VOR sourcing agent

Blueprint

The story

A fleet customer calls at four in the afternoon. A truck is off the road for one part. F&O shows one on hand in the regional warehouse, reserved against a transfer order that will top up a branch next week. The counterman cannot see the transfer, the branch planner has gone home, and the customer is told to call back tomorrow.

The design

The agent finds the part across every site and warehouse, in transit, on open purchase orders and in supersession, ranks the options by the time the truck would be back on the road, and where the fastest option is a reservation held for routine replenishment, proposes releasing it with the planner's approval and shows exactly which transfer line gives it up. It drafts the customer answer with an honest time, not an optimistic one.

What it will not do

It never breaks a reservation on its own, never promises a time it cannot evidence, and never reprioritises an order that is itself a VOR.

Part supersession agent

Blueprint

The story

The customer reads out the number from the box they have in their hand. The counter search returns zero stock. The customer goes elsewhere. The replacement number, which supersedes the one they read out, is on the shelf two aisles away, because the chain lives in last quarter's supplier bulletin and in the head of the one person who was off that day.

The design

The agent follows the supersession chain, forward and backward, from the number the customer gave, across the catalogue data F&O holds and the supplier bulletins you feed it, shows the on-hand for every number in the chain, flags where a replacement is not a straight swap, and proposes the substitution on the order line for the counterman to confirm.

What it will not do

It never substitutes on the line without a person's yes, and it never presents a supersession it cannot trace to a source as if it were certain.

Built

What is built today, and applies to a parts distributor as it stands

Three agents, each with its own page and its own status word. A parts business has all three problems.

Built, demonstrated on request

PO Receipt Chase Agent

Overdue purchase order lines found and grouped by buyer, the warehouse's confirmation of what arrived taken, the product receipt posted behind an approval. Runs on test data in a demonstration environment.

How it works →Built, demonstrated on request

Aged GRNI Investigation Agent

Old goods-received-not-invoiced lines listed by age and value, each classified with evidence, duplicates cancelled only after a yes. The other end of procure-to-pay.

How it works →Built, training build on Microsoft demo data

Credit Hold Agent

Why is this fleet account's order on hold? Answered with the recorded reasons and the evidence, release kept behind the credit manager's role, the release traced for the rep who asked.

How it works →

Every Dynamics 365 agent Microsoft ships or has named, with status and source, checked 16 October 2026, sits in the agent catalog beside ours. Read the catalog.

The numbers we did not print

Why there are no industry figures on this page

Pages about this vertical usually carry a number for core-deposit leakage per year, a daily cost of a truck off the road, and a share of returns that are fitment errors. We checked the ones in our own planning documents against their sources and found vendor blogs, product homepages and surveys we could not locate. None of them is on this page.

When a figure can be traced to a study with a date, we will cite it with the date. Until then the problems are stated as what they are, which is enough: a parts distributor's finance and operations people recognise all three without a statistic.

The mechanism

How an engagement runs

Readiness first, then one blueprint taken to a working agent in your own sandbox, on your catalogue and your orders, behind your approvals. The readiness step is a page of its own: /dynamics-365/agent-readiness-review.

  1. 01

    Readiness

    Your F&O version and environment tier against Microsoft's prerequisites for the ERP MCP server, your catalogue and supersession data as they actually are, and the roles an agent would run under at the counter, in the core cage and in credit.

  2. 02

    One blueprint, built

    The blueprint whose problem costs you most, taken from design to a working agent on a sandbox copy of your environment, with the approval boundary in place from the first run and a status word updated on this page when it is true.

  3. 03

    Activation

    Production under the roles and approvals agreed in the sandbox, with the audit trail, the named approvers and the status of every component stated in writing.

Start with the readiness reviewThe manufacturing door

Turning agents on in Dynamics 365, in detail

Readiness, piloting, governance and audit, and what Microsoft's own agents cover versus a build on your customized F&O.

Browse all engineering writing
Who you talk to

A person, not a form

Every page on this track ends with a person, because the next step is a working session, not a form.

Mudassir Marwat

Founder & CEO, Cognilium AI

Leads the Dynamics 365 practice and sits in the first working session on every F&O engagement.

Talk to an EngineerLinkedIn

About the founder →

Questions parts distributors ask first

Cores, VOR and supersession on Dynamics 365, answered plainly

Does Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management handle core deposits?
It records the pieces: the sales line with the core charge, the return order when the core comes back, and the credit when someone issues it. What a parts business needs between those documents, matching a crate of unlabelled returns to the open charges on an account and chasing the ones past their window, is work a person does today. Our core deposit recovery agent is designed for that gap. It is a blueprint, not a built product, and this page says so.
What is a VOR order, and why does the ERP get it wrong?
VOR stands for vehicle off road: a customer's truck or bus is out of service for want of a part, and every hour counts. The ERP is not wrong, it is literal. It reserved the one unit on hand for whichever order came first, which was a routine transfer to a branch. Deciding that the stranded truck should have it instead is a human decision with a planner's approval. The VOR sourcing agent is designed to find every option, rank them by time back on the road and put that decision in front of the planner with the exact transfer line it would cost. Blueprint.
Can an agent handle part supersession in Dynamics 365?
It can follow a chain if the chain exists somewhere it can read: product data in F&O, supplier bulletins you feed it, your own cross-reference files. The part supersession agent is designed to follow that chain both ways from the number the customer gave, show on-hand for every number in it, flag replacements that are not straight swaps, and propose the substitution on the order line for the counterman to confirm. Where the chain is nowhere but in someone's head, the first job is to get it written down, and we will say that plainly in the readiness review. Blueprint.
Which of these is actually built?
None of the three aftermarket agents. They are designed, and the design is stated on this page with the word Blueprint in front of each. What is built and demonstrated on request is the PO Receipt Chase Agent and the Aged GRNI Investigation Agent, on test data, and the Credit Hold Agent as a training build on Microsoft's demo data. A parts distributor has all three of those problems too, and that is where an engagement usually starts.
Why are there no numbers for leakage or downtime on this page?
Because the ones in circulation, including in our own planning documents, trace back to vendor blogs and product homepages rather than to studies we could find and date. We publish a figure when we can link its source and its date. Until then the problems are described as the people who live with them describe them, which is enough to recognise.
Do we need to be on Finance & Supply Chain Management, or does this apply to Business Central?
The three blueprints are designed for Finance & Supply Chain Management, which is where parts distributors with many warehouses, transfer orders at scale and a large catalogue sit. A smaller distributor on Business Central has a different set of Microsoft agents available and a different build path; the comparison page sets out the difference, and the readiness review tells you which applies to you.
Where do we start?
A working session on which of the three costs you most, or on the procure-to-pay and credit problems you share with everyone else. Then the free readiness check, the five-day Readiness & Controls Review, and one blueprint built on a sandbox copy of your environment. If the right answer is one of Microsoft's own agents, or a change to your catalogue data before any agent, we will say so.

Start with the one that costs you most.

A working session on cores, VOR orders or supersession, or on the receipts, accruals and credit holds you share with every company on F&O. Readiness first, then one blueprint built in your own sandbox. If the first fix is your catalogue data, we will say so.
Talk to an EngineerSee the Credit Hold Agent

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