Perhaps the following template might suit your needs:

\documentclass{article}
\newcounter{functionalrequirement}
\renewcommand{\thefunctionalrequirement}{FR\arabic{functionalrequirement}}
\newcommand{\newFR}{%
\refstepcounter{functionalrequirement}%
\thefunctionalrequirement}
\usepackage{lipsum}% Just for this example
\usepackage{booktabs}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
See, for example,~\ref{fr:first} and~\ref{fr:second} below:
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
\toprule
Reference & Description \\
\midrule
\newFR\label{fr:first} & First \\
\newFR\label{fr:second} & Second \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}
Principally you want to use \refstepcounter{<cntr>}
to increment the counter. This internally does a \stepcounter{<cntr>}
, but also updates LaTeX's referencing mechanism by \the<cntr>
. You'll note that I've updated \the<cntr>
above to prepend it with FR
. You can remove this if you only want the reference to be the number.
\refstepcounter
instead of\stepcounter
\ref{..}
to returnFR<num>
, correct? Or should it just return<num>
?