Getting to Phase 2

Bill Kennedy of Energized Accounting has a great article out titled Getting to Phase 2. It's almost a year old which means that it's about time for phase 2 of the article's life. Bill pushes, nudges, cajoles and questions your reasoning for not moving to phase 2 with your systems. It's time to take a fresh look at your Dynamics GP system and take the steps to breathe new life into the work you do everyday.

Kits and BOM's and Components

Christina Phillips has a new post up on Kits, Bills of Material and Components over Dynamics GP Land. She does a great job of covering Kits vs. Bills of Material along with the pros and cons of each. Make sure you check it out.

Next Monday In Crystal Reports

Fellow Dynamics GP MVP Victoria Yudin has a new post up covering getting next Monday's date in Crystal Reports. I'm still dealing with this Monday so I'm not sure why she's already looking ahead to next Monday!

Weekly Review: Seeing Red

A surprising number of long time users still don't use this so I'll cover here. What is it? Show required fields on a form in RED.

In Great Plains select User Preferences Icon from the shortcut bar.

Select Display. On the right under Required Fields, set Font Color to Red and Font Style to Bold. Click OK and you're done.

Required fields throughout the system now show as Bold Red.

Originally Posted by Mark 9/28/2005 09:04:00 AM

Expanding the GL Trx Entry Grid with Modifier

Over at Developing for Dynamics GP, David Musgrave has a new post up on how to expand the GL transaction scrolling window (grid) when the main window is opened. The method he describes uses Modifier and David includes all the screenshots and code needed to make this work. Nice job Dave!

A Dynamics GP Advocate

Mariano Gomez has a new article up at MSDynamicsWorld.com covering the use of an Implementation Advocate in Dynamics GP implementation.

The Art of Dashboarding

The Microsoft Dynamics GP UK Blog has more on new dashboard features available in the new GP 10 SP3 Virtual PC Image for partners.

Dynamics GP in Cyrillic?

Mariano Gomez showed me a sneak peak last week of some work he is doing to translate Dynamics GP for Russian users. Now he's got a blog post up showing off some of his work and it's pretty cool.

New URL for Inside Microsoft BI

Inside Microsoft Business Intelligence has a new URL at http://insidemsftbi.com. They are refocusing the site after the changes in Performance Point. If you use BI with Dynamics GP this is a great place to keep up with changes in Microsoft's Business Intelligence stack.

Hello World!

Mariano Gomez takes on Visual Studio Tools for Dynamics GP in an upcoming series of posts. If you've been wanted to get started with programming for Dynamics GP, this is a great place to start.

Dynamics GP and Simple Solutions

Christina Phillips has a new post up on some issues she had with Project Accounting. It's a great example of how sometimes the best solutions are the simplest solutions.

Do You Know EFT for Payables?

EFT for Payables is the Do You Know topic of the week at Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP. Check out all the new EFT goodness in v10.

Weekly Dynamic: Turn off Map Integration

We've covered map integration in GP before but what if you want to turn it off completely instead of just choosing between local MapPoint and web based MapPoint? Well that's easy to do too. Simply pick User Preference from the Shortcut Bar. In the Mapping section select "Do not display MapPoint buttons. I'm not sure why you would want to turn off maps but you can and it's easy.

Dynamics GP Project Accounting Retainers

The DynamicsBlogger site has a nice Q&A up covering Retainer Fee transactions in Project Accounting for Dynamics GP.

Weekly Review: Account Rollup

I stumbled on this little gem in v 7.5 so I don't even know what version it was added in to but it definitely still works well in v10. If you need to look at groups of accounts this is the inquiry for you. You can even perform calculations!

What is it?
Account Rollup is an inquiry that you build which allows you to see different GL accounts rolled up together. Additionally, you can perform calculations on those accounts.

We use this for all kinds of things like:

• What's the Fixed Asset total across all divisions?
• What's the commission allocation based on sales?

Those kinds of things. Yes FRx will do this, but freqently, I don't want to launch FRx and run financial statements just to get a breakdown of my FA accounts. So how does this work?

In Dynamics GP, select Inquiry->Financial->Account Rollup
Enter an Option ID, tab and click yes to add the option.

You set the number of columns you want to see up in the right side. If all you want is totals, one column is fine. For calculations, use at least 2 columns.

In the center, you set the types of columns, but we'll come back to that. At the bottom, you add criteria like accounts, departments, divisions, etc. UNLIKE OTHER GP criteria areas, you can multiple independent criteria here. So if you want to see Chicago and New York but not LA. You add Chicago, then add New York.

Save and click redisplay. Controls on the right let you see net change or period balance totals. If you want to see what makes up the total number, select a month and click the blue column header.

Now, to get really fancy, you can ad calculated columns to a rollup. Simply create or modify (with the button) a rollup.

Change the type from Actual to Calculated. In the Selection column, click the blue arrow.

Back to my commission comment earlier. Let's say, I accrue 8.9% of sale as a commission accrual. My first column is my monthly sales. So I'll pick the only available column in the column box and hit the double arrows (>>) then add the multiply sign (*) then in the constant box I'll add .089 and hit the double arrows (>>).

You formula now looks something like C1 * 0.089. Save and refresh and you get a report with sales and the commission allocation for each month.

This is great for all those estimates you do every month. You can just take the numbers and do a JE.

Originally Posted by Mark 9/19/2005 02:12:00 PM

Is Caps Lock On When Logging Into Dynamics GP?

If you've ever managed to lock yourself out of Dynamics GP because your Caps Lock was on, Patrick Roth has the answer for you at Developing for Dynamics GP. He's posted some VBA that will warn you if Caps Lock is on when you try to log in to Dynamics GP. This is a nice addition to the GP toolkit. Thanks Patrick!

Online GP Conference for the Great Plains Arabia Community

The Great Plains Arabia community is having an online conference on July 29 covering the use of Excel as a reporting and analytic tool connected to SQL Server. Fellow GP MVP Monzer Osama is doing the presenting so I'm sure it will be a great session. The session will be in Arabic and very practical. You can find more info at http://gp4arab.eventbrite.com/.

Dynamics GP 11 VPC Coming

Dynamics GP MVP Mariano Gomez has info about the upcoming release of the beta of GP 11. Mariano says that it's coming this winter. As it happens, I saw a list today of expected new and improved features and there were some nice additions. Sorry, I can't share, but we will be talking about some of them at our upcoming iSight conference. More details to come. For now, check out Mariano's post.

FIFO Stock Status That Balances to the GL

Over at gp2themax fellow MVP Frank Hamelly has a new post up describing how to modify the Stock Status report if you are using FIFO to ensure that it balances to the GL. No HITB report required.

Dynamics GP 10 SP3 VPC Available

For partners, Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP is highlighting the availability of the Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 SP3 Technical Demonstration Toolkit/VPC. This is a revamped VPC to better provided demonstrations of the latest Dynamics GP release. Visit Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP for the whole scoop.

Dynamics GP in Arabic?

Yep, you read that right. Fellow MVP Mohammad Daoud has arranged for the translation of all of the strings and messages in the system into Arabic. It's not perfect yet but it's still impressive. It's worth going to Mohammad's blog just to see the screen shots.

Creative Payment Terms

Mariano has a nice new post up on dealing with custom/creative payment terms in Dynamics GP.

Do You Know...Excel Report Builder?

In their latest "Do you know" posting, Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP takes a look at Excel Report Builder. It's worth a look for you too!

Dynamics GP Trial Balance in Excel using FRx

Victoria Yudin has a great new post up covering creating a Dynamics GP Trial balance in FRx and then exporting it to Excel.

Weekly Dynamic: Horizontal Scroll Arrows

This is an old tip but still worth mentioning. For companies with account numbers longer than the entry screen, you can add horizontal scroll arrows to allow users to scroll back and forth to see the whole account number. To turn this on, select User Preferences from the shortcut bar. Check the Horizontal Scroll Arrows box under the Options header. That's all there is to it.

Replacing the GP Homepage With a Logo

If you really, really, really, don't want the GP Homepage you can of course click customize this page and turn everything off. If that's not good enough for you, Mohammad Daoud has a new post up with another option that replaces the GP XSL Homepage code with logo you choose.

Weekly Review: Extreme Makeover JE Edition

Each week I'd like to cover a feature in GP. Some of them are new, others just underutilized. Ideally, I'd like to do this more than weekly but hey, I have a job.

Extreme Makeover, JE Edition

In version 8.0 Microsoft introduced Journal Entry corrections and copies. This is feature I'd been asking for for some time. I even came close to writing my own version several times. You now have the ability to undo a journal entry, easily, and with a complete audit trail.

In Transactions->Financial->General, select Correct. You now have an option to back out a Journal Entry or Back out a JE and create a correcting entry.

You will also need the JE number (you can look it up) and year of the entry you want to correct.

What happens behind the scenes when you backout an entry is that GP creates a duplicate, opposite JE with a new JE number to offset the one you want to correct. If all you need to do is undo an entry, simply post your correction and you're done.

If you also select a correcting entry, the first entry created is the backout entry. When you post or save the backout entry, a second entry is created. This second entry is your original entry as a new, unposted JE that you can make changes to.

Both the backout and the correction are normal JE's that can be save to a batch, changed, posted, made reversing, etc.

Some obvious uses:

• That batch of month end accruals was accidentally posted in next month. Simply pull up the JE, do a correction to back it out of next month, and change the date on the correcting entry to the correct month. Post it all an you are in business.
• The 150 line JE keyed incorrectly by an intern. Hopefully this was reviewed before posting, but if not, use this tool to backout the incorrect entry and make the intern fix the correcting entry (or re-key it, depending on how mad you are ;).

A related feature is to Copy a JE. Same process, just click copy instead of correct. This is great when you need to create a JE just like the one you did last month!

By default, Correction only works for transactions that originated in the General Ledger. However, the administrator can change this behavior.

Tools>Setup>Financial>General Ledger now has new check boxes to control this functionality. Check "Voiding/Correcting of Subsidiary Transactions" and "Back Out of Inter-company Transactions" to allow for corrections of transactions originating in a sub-ledger.

This a great feature, a critical feature, that the competition has had for a while. Now we've got it and I love it. But you have to be on v8.0 or better. This was one of the compelling features that pushed us to upgrade to 8.0. Detailed specifics can be found in GP Help. Happy Fixing!

Posted by Mark 9/12/2005 10:00:00 AM

Do You Know: Garnishments?

Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP continues it's Do You Know series this week with a look at Garnishments in GP 10. Do you know Garnishments? Well now you can!

New DynamicAccounting.net Feature, The Weekly Review

There is a new feature coming to DynamicAccounting.net, the Weekly Review. I've covered a number of GP topics over the last several years and many of them are still relevant to most GP users, but they are a little hard to find. Also, Blogger's search doesn't seem to always go back as far as I would like. So I'm republishing a tip every Thursday morning under the Weekly Review banner. The new Weekly Dynamic tips will continue to come on Monday mornings to get your day started right with Dynamics GP.

FRx and Emailing Excel Reports

Liane McIlraith of Rose Business Solutions has a new post up explaining emailing FRx Reports as Excel files. Definitely worth a look.

Evaluting Consulting Staff

Dwight Specht is back with another great post on running a Dynamics consulting practice. In this case, it's evaluating consulting staff. Obviously this is applicable to consultants and partners but there is also applicability to customers. As a customer, it's important to understand the types and levels of consultants that might be sent your way and Dwight's post provides some insight into that.

SQL Magic at Rose Business Solutions

Kerry at Rose Business Solutions has a new post up on some SQL Magic they performed to import data into Dynamics GP. Over at I.B.I.S. we've been doing some SQL magic as well with a an absolutely kick butt SSIS package to import Project Accounting data and re-run the periodics to make sure that everything comes out right. It's really cool to see all the SSIS packages turn green as they succeed.

Four Ways to Cut Costs by Automating Purchasing Process

The ERP Software blog is running a 4 part series on cutting costs by automating the purchasing process in Dynamics GP. Make sure you check it out.

Weekly Dynamic: Why Setting Everything to Post Through Doesn't seem to Work

When an administrator sets up posting in Dynamics GP they get to choose whether to post to and/or through the GL. Posting To controls whether a transaction is even sent to the GL. Selecting the Posting To option means that a subledger posting updates the subledger and also sends an unposted transaction to the GL that then needs to be posted again to update the GL. Adding posting through means that the GL portion of the transaction posts to the GL automatically as well.

The fun really starts when a firm decides that they want everything to post to and through the GL. The way to set this is via the Dynamics GP menu then Tools->Setup->Posting->Posting, Select a Series (like financial), set Origin to ALL and check both the Post to General Ledger and Post Through General Ledger checkboxes. Click save to make the change stick and then repeat this for each series.

That's easy enough until you return to the window and see that when you select all, the Post Through button is no longer checked. Most responses to this start with "What the...".

Here is what's going on. In the past, some modules didn't allow posting through the GL. Setting the origin to ALL would update only the transaction types that would allow posting through. Consequently, the box wasn't checked since all of the items weren't really set to post through. Now however, all the trasaction types allow posting through the GL. The fact that the box isn't checked when users select an origin of ALL is just an annoying leftover.

To really check if posting through is set, select an origin of ALL and with the lookup window still open, use the arrow key to arrow down through the various origin types. Each time you select an origin, the window will refresh to show the appropriate settings in the background.

Happy 1st Birthday to Developing for Dynamics GP

Congrats to Developing for Dynamics GP. They've hit the 1 year mark. This is the first blogging site by Dynamics GP employees and it was a great day when it launched. It continues to be a great site for Dynamics GP development and inside information. Keep up the great work!

GPUG Users and Partner Summit

September is beautiful in Chicago. It's cool enough to feel fall coming but not freezing yet. And it's a beautiful time to visit as part of the GPUG Summit. The GPUG Summit moves to the midwest this year, September 14-18 near beautiful Chicago. A new feature this year is a partner only conference at the beginning. Partners need an outlet to share and learn and GPUG is working to provide that outlet with the intent to expand the partner conference next year.

The GPUG conference is very affordable and provides a great Dynamics GP learning opportunity. Make sure that you check it out.

Dynamics GP SP4 Info

The eOne Dynamics Blog has info on a fix coming in SP4 for times when the mouse stops working in GP 10. We're still hoping for a permanent fix for an issue where VBA and modal dialogues destroy tabbing. That one was fun.

Calculate the Number of Days a Vendor Check Takes to Clear

Mariano has another new post up on calculating the number of days it takes a check to clear. Just one clarification, even if you don't reconcile the bank statement daily, you can set the cleared date for each transaction by clicking the blue arrow next to Payment or Deposit in Bank Reconciliation. It's definitely not efficient but it does work if you really want to track the exact date that transactions cleared the bank and you don't want to reconcile daily. I've yet to meet anyone who want the information that badly.

Dynanmics GP DB Maintenance Utility

Mariano Gomez has a nice post up on the Microsoft Dynamics GP Database Maintenance Utility and using it to recreate functions, stored procedurs, triggers and views.

How Advanced is Your Organization With Dynamics GP?

My new article is up as the featured article at MSDynamicsWorld.com. Make sure to head over there and take the quiz to find out how advanced your organization is with Dynamics GP.

Sage's Largest Partner Closes the Books for Good

My last post on competition was back in March so I don't feel bad highlighting this. According to ChannelWeb, MIS Group, Sage's top business partner for the last two years has suddenly closed it's doors due to credit problems leaving it's Sage customers scrambling. Ouch! Dwight Specht has highlighted what resellers need to do to tighten the belt in this economy and it looks like MIS got caught in the credit crunch. It's a tough spot to be in so I'll avoid any gloating or snide comments. I've worked for companies near death and looked over the brink. It's never fun. Personally, I'm thrilled to be busy, billable and happy with the health of the company I work for.

[Hat Tip to Matthew Landis for this]

New White Paper on Extender

Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP points us to a new whitepaper on Extender. I'm afraid that we're going to have to agree to disagree on Extender. Go ahead and start the hate mail.

Extender demos really well. I've never seen clients so excited about an add on. It addresses a common pain point, simple modifications. It's easy to use and good number of partners hate it. Not because it takes away customization revenue, it really doesn't. An awful lot of clients come back for customizations after butchering their data with Extender so really, partners are getting paid twice. The most common problem is that companies really need something else like Project Accounting or Field Server but don't want to admit it so they hack together something with Extender only to find out that it doesn't meet their needs. At one large client "use Extender" has become the running joke for how not solve an issue. They make the joke, not us.

What doesn't come out in the demo:

1) The data doesn't move between modules. If user add notes or features via an Extender window in a Quote in Sales Order Processing those items don't transfer forward to an Order or and Invoice and they don't transfer backward to Back Order or Return.

2) Reporting is a giant pain to get right because of the way Extender stores the data.

3) If you delete an Extender window, it deletes all the underlying data. Yeah, it's a potential audit problem in addition to a data problem.

One of my issues with the whitepaper is the "Try it, it's easy" mentality. It's too easy to try it, enter a bunch of a crucial information, decide you'd really like a better design, delete the window, poof! all that data is gone. Insert explative here.

I like the idea of Extender but it's still to easy for users to hurt themselves with it.

FastPath Security for Dynamics GP - What it Can and Can't Do

I recently completed phase 1 of a large Dynamics GP Project Accounting implementation. One of the complicating factors was that the client chose to introduce a rebuilt security model at the same time. This meant that we had to deal with new functionality and new security issues at the same time. The biggest hurdle was realizing that the SA user's security had been significantly locked down.

The client uses FastPath’s Configurator for security setup, Configurator AD -SSO for Active Directory based sign on and Audit Trail for security audits. There was some confusion about what FastPath’s security does and doesn’t do so I thought that I would clarify some of those points in this blog post.

Configurator – FastPath’s Configurator lets companies setup GP security. It provides an interface to setup security outside of Dynamics GP. This means that a security administrator can setup security without needing a GP login. The interface is also a lot nicer than GP’s interface and it support security settings import and export. The key thing to understand is that Configurator sets GP security. Configurator can’t do anything with GP security that can’t be done from inside the interface. So if there is a security problem, it’s still a setting in GP security. It’s  a security setup problem, not a FastPath vs. GP security problem.

Configurator AD - SSO – Configurator AD connects GP users to Active Directory allowing an AD security administrator to assign AD users to roles inside of GP. It doesn’t provide options to change the tasks in the roles only to assign users to roles. Configurator AD - SSO also provides options for Active Directory based single sign on for Dynamics GP, which frankly, is just wicked cool when you see it in person.

Audit Trail – Audit Trail provides auditing options on GP tables along with audit reporting options. One of the advantages over GP’s Audit Trail module is that FastPath’s Audit Trail application can audit virtually any SQL application, not just Dynamics GP. That provides the option to leverage an Audit Trail investment across the organization.

Despite the confusion our phase 1 go live was amazingly painless. The few issues we had were resolved so quickly that I got to go home early. I don't get to say that very often so a big congrats from me to everyone involved.

Dwight Specht Tells Us All to Man Up

Legendary GP guy Dwight Specht is back blogging after a hiatus to have his second child and he's good and wound up. Dwight tackles consulting practice, infighting and the economy in his latest missive and tell us all to stop the whining. I'm quite happy to not only be employed but be very busy in these tough times. I AM in need of vacation but other than that I'm going to assume that I'm not in the Prima Dona consultant role since Dwight is perfectly capable of telling me to stop whining in person. He doesn't need a blog post to do that.

For the record, Dwight's post is absolutely worth reading and I prefer the term "Consulting Diva". I also like my Diet Mt. Dew at precisely 38 degrees and favor the foam pillows at the Hampton Inn. (If you're not smiling now, you really need to lighten up.)

The FRx Saga Continues

MSDynamicsWorld.com takes a look at lingering questions around FRx and it's future in a recent article. We know that there will be a future just not quite what form and in what time frame.

Any Font in the Dex Script Editor

David Musgrave brings us an undocumented feature (the good kind, not a bug euphemism) on how to use any font in the Dexterity Script Editor.

Correction: Pat Roth is the author of this fine post.

Do You Know...Security?

Security is the latest topic on Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP and their weekly Did You Know series. The Dynamics GP blogging team takes on security

Weekly Dynamic: Transactional Posting Dates

We looked at Batch Posting vs. Transactional Posting last week. One of the benefits of batch posting is the ability to control the posting date via the batch posting date. This works for most batch types except GL.

The ability to change the posting date is important. For example, If an invoice arrives several months late, the invoice should typically be posted in the GL for the current month, even though the invoice date is in the past. This can still be accomplished with transactional posting, the process just isn't obvious.

In any of the transaction, click the blue arrow next to the date field. In our AP invoice example from above, this would be the Doc. Date field. The arrow next to a date field typically opens a window with additional date fields allowing a user to fine tune dates including setting a different posting date.

The posting date in this window controls the posting date of a transaction not placed in a batch. Unless this date is explicitly changed, it defaults to the document date on the main transaction window.

Batch posting allows you to set this posting date once for the batch. If using transactional posting, the date will need to be set on each transaction.

Another MVP Year for Mariano Gomez

Congratulations to Mariano Gomez on another year as Dynamics GP MVP!