Run MOSS 2007 on Vista

If you want to play with MOSS 2007 on Vista, my new post at DynamicsCare has information on how to make that happen.

The Taxman Cometh and I Wrote About It

My new article on using Dynamics GP to deal with increased enforcement in Sales, Use and Personal Property tax is up at MSDynamicsWorld.com.

Everybody's hurting but nobody sticks their hand out like government. See how Dynamics GP can help.

Dynamics: Don't Hate Change. Adapt.

The new UK Dynamics landing page is pretty slick and a has nice slogan, "Don't hate change. Adapt."

Check out the video too.

Visual Studio Tools for Dynamics GP

Just for Ross, who has suddenly discovered the power of Visual Studio and may now be lost to the dark side of development forever, Jivtesh has info on Visual Studio Tools for 2008 and connecting it to Microsoft Dynamics GP.

More Project Accounting Cost Allocation

You'll remember back in October that I took a look at the new Project Accounting allocation functionality provided by Feature Pack 1 for Dynamics GP 10. Well if you want more info, Christina Phillips walks through another example over at Dynamics GP land.

Reconciling Corporate Credit Cards

Kerry at Rose Business Solutions has a great post up on reconciling corporate credit cards in Dynamics GP. It's even got T-Accounts!

Newsgroup Posting

Fellow MVP Mariano Gomez has posted about how he answers questions in the GP Newsgroup. My process is a little different from Mariano's so I thought that I would give it a minute here to highlight the different ways we work.

Unlike Mariano, I almost never visit the newsgroup site. I have an RSS feed setup via Google Groups that shows Newsgroup in my RSS reader. As I'm reading other items I get the newsgroup posts at the same time and I can reply using Google Groups as well.

Like Mariano, if the answer is quick, I'll usually hop on and post an answer. If it's more involved or if I can't answer it because I'm traveling or reading the question on my phone, I'll star it and come back to it later.

The beauty of the newsgroup is that you have lots of options to participate. No one way is right but all of them can help someone out of a jam and that's really why we do it.

Dynamics GP Use Tax

My new Complete Guide to Use Tax in Dynamics GP 10 is now available over at DynamicsCare. In it I take an exhaustive look at the out of the box options for dealing with Use Tax in Dynamics GP 10.

If you've got use tax needs, this is a good place to start your research to decide if GP's native functionality is sufficient for you or if you need a third party option.

Weekly Dynamic: Dynamics GP 10 Roles vs. Classes

In Dynamics GP 10, the User Class functionality that was previously used to assign security to groups of users has been superseded by the new role based security design in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10. But, user classes still exist as part of the user setup. Lets look at what purpose User Classes still serve in GP 10. The move to role based security means that classes are now divorced from their primary security role and it proves to be a good breakup because it adds flexibility to the system.

One area that still relies on User Classes is Organizational Structures. Organizational Structures are used to control access to accounts when Account Security is turned on. A user class is assigned to a level in the organizational structure. This limits the accounts in the chart of accounts that are available to a class of users and can be much simpler than adding individual users. For example, a set of AR users assigned to Division 1 can be put in a Division 1 class tied to an organizational structure that limits their chart of accounts access to Division 1 P&L accounts and company wide balance sheet accounts. This means that AR users and AR supervisors could be in one class even though they have different security roles. [One caveat, turning on Account Security without defining organizationl structures makes it look like the chart of accounts has been wiped out so turn this feature on carefully.]

Additionally, user classes provide two benefits in SmartLists. First, users can make a SmartList favorite visible only to their class. Previously this would have meant that an AP clerk would have access to a favorite but not an AP supervisor since they might be in different classes for security. That's less likely now that each would have a separate security role. This shows the added flexibility that classes bring to the new role based security structure.

Second, the system administrator can force Navigation Bar shortcuts like SmartLists down to user classes. When this is done, the individual user cannot remove these shortcuts. This means that it's easier for the administrator to ensure that all related users have a common subset of shortcuts. For example, it's easy now for a company to put a shortcut to an office supplies ordering website on all Purchasing user class members regarless of their level in the organization.

Contrary to my initial thoughts that Role Based Security in Dynamics GP 10 would make user classes obsolete, the opposite has happened. The continued presence of user classes has actually added flexibility to the system.

Fargo Flooding

Our prayers go out to everyone flooded out in Fargo. If you call for Dynamics GP support for the next couple of days you may get a lot of gurgling on the line since GP support is in Fargo.

If your request isn't urgent, consider hitting the GP Newsgroup instead.

The Dynamic DUOS

I'm apparently tired as I post these entries because I'm keep typing puns. Mariano Gomez on the other hand is wide awake and bringing more info on the Dynamic User Object Store (DUOS) and how to use it.

Flooding in Fargo

The Dynamics GP support team is drowning, possibly literally, though we hope not. The Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP blog has the inside scoop on flooding in Fargo where all of them are based. (All puns were intended and no puns were harmed in the making of this post.)

SQL View with Security Resource Details for GP 10

Victoria Yudin continues to put out great security resources for Dynamics GP 10. This time it's a SQL View showing security resource details.

Dynamics GP Version 11 Recap

Mohammad Daoud has a nice recap of the Dynamics GP Version 11 tidbits that came out of Convergence in New Orleans.

The Backup Bandwagon

Doug Pitcher at Rose Business solutions is on the Backup bandwagon. Doug reminds us again of the value of backing up every part of your Dynamics GP system.

On a personal note, I recently had to pull a copy of an old tax return only to find out that I didn't have a PDF copy and my tax file that would have allowed reprinting was not the final version. Apparently some machine consolidation has wiped out the good copy. Oops! Except that I made several backups before consolidating machines. First backup I checked had exactly what I needed.

Dynamics GP 10 Drag and Drop Navigation Bar Issues

There are times when I thought that I was crazy. I would be demoing the Navigation Bar, folders and drag and drop and it was always awkward. Things worked but they were never smooth. However, I never had any problems in GP 9. Some days I thought it was a bug and some days I thought that it was me.  Now I know that, at least with this issue, I'm still sane.

Patrick Roth over at Developing for Dynamics GP has a blog post on dragging and dropping items to the Navigation Bar and the issues he has. Hopefully we will get a fix for this soon.

Weekly Dynamic: Control Account Management

Dynamics GP includes a little known feature named Control Account Management. It's part of the Purchasing module and its designed to let companies use a centralized AP account and then split their AP to divisional segments for financial reporting.

Imagine that you have multiple divisions and you want to centralize accounts payable for transactional efficiency but you need to show separate AP per division or business segment on your financial statements. This is what the tool is designed to do. As an overview, AP is managed centrally and then at month end, a routine is run that segregates the open AP by the divisional segment. A reversing journal entry is automatically created to remove items from the AP account and put them in the appropriate divisional AP accounts (the control accounts). With a reversing JE, the amounts then clear and return to AP for central processing after month end.

Transaction
--------------
Debit AP
Credit Divisional AP
Credit Divisional AP

Reversal
----------
Debit Divisional AP
Debit Divisional AP
Credit AP

The setup is found in Tools->Purchasing->Control Account Management and essentially specifies which segment will be used to split AP, what divisions correspond to which control accounts and the batch info for the journal entries. Once setup is done, the Activation box should be checked to turn everything on. The screen is very straightforward and looks like this:




At month end a routine is run from Tools->Routines->Purchasing->Control Account Management. Clicking the report button shows how the open AP will be distributed based on open transactions and the expense account segments used in the AP transaction. Clicking the drop down button on the header shows the default batch information and allows changes including changes to the reversing date. Document type totals and distribution type totals are also available on their own tabs.


The segment ID drill down shows the full detail including vendor and voucher information. Clicking the icon next to amount owing, hides zero balance AP Control Accounts.

Saving the transaction allows generation of a summary and a detail report showing the specifics of the reassignment. Saved transactions can still be deleted.

Selecting Generate will generate the journal entry in the specified batch.

I can also see how this could be useful for entities maintaining multiple companies in one GP database via a segment in the chart of accounts. The Control Account Management functionality would allow separate AP reporting per company while simplifying day to day AP processing.

Troubleshooting Slow Performance in Dynamics GP

If GP is slowing down on you, take a look at this CustomerSource article that details all kinds of troubleshooting steps for slow performance.

Dynamics GP 10 Security FAQ

If you want to know more about role based security in Dynamics GP 10, there is a huge Frequently Asked Questions article on CustomerSource. Not only is the FAQ big but it includes lots of links to related knowledge base articles.

Factoring and Dynamics GP

Mariano Gomez has a great post up on Asset-based lending and receivables factoring. Make sure that you check out how to solve this issue using National Account.s

Reporting Central and Reconciliation

You all know that I'm a big fan of reconciling subledgers to GL on a daily basis. The folks at Reporting Central showed me their new balancing reports designed to do just that. The cool thing about the reports is that they show why the two don't balance and what transactions cause the out of balance situation.

For example, on inventory balancing, there might be a section labeled GL or Inventory Subledger posted in wrong period or an indicator that the wrong account account was used along with specific transactions in each section. These go way beyond the AR and AP balancing functionality built into Dynamics GP and include reconciliations for AP, AR, Accrued Purchases, COGS, Sales and Inventory.

The reports are rended in Crystal Reports or SSRS making them easy to schedule and run.

It's time to stop whining that you can't balance and get control of your accounting department again. When you know what is causing out of balance issues you can step up and take action to prevent those issues from occurring.

CCH Gets Use Tax

Continuing my look at interesting things from the expo at Convergence 2009, I've been working on a use tax document detailing how to deal with use tax using only core Dynamics GP functionality but I wanted to recommend something that would provide a more seamless experience for those with significant use tax needs.

The folks at CCH have dedicated use tax functionality in their CorpSystem Sales Tax Office product. This has been tough to find when talking to other vendors. When I read through their white paper I could see that someone had really given this some thought and not just thrown use tax in with sales tax. Finally I talked to some folks at I.B.I.S. who had implemented CCH's CorpSystem product and they some very nice things to say about it. So now I've found a recommendation for those with more than modest use tax needs and I can wrap up my use tax paper and get it posted.

Agile ERP

Over at Navigate into Success, Vjekoslav Babic is looking at how an agile methodology might be applicable to ERP implementations. He's looking at it from the context of Dynamics NAV but the principles apply to Dynamics GP or other ERP software as well. I thought that I would weigh in from my blog since it would involve more people in the conversation than just leaving a comment.

His 5 basic steps that he is developing in later posts are:

• Deploy vanilla ERP first
• Deploy gradually
• Focus on value, and value alone
• Stay light with customizations
• Integrate where ERP is not absolutely necessary

Make sure you read the lead article and the subsequent ones that flesh out these points. Now for my take.

I agree with the 5 steps. Except in unusual circumstances, it's what we recommend and what I've seen work consistently. However, I would add a few things. My knowledge of the agile methodology is somewhat limited but I think that these fit.

• Get users involved early and often. Users will always complain that they didn't get trained or didn't get enough training. Involving users early and often for things like Customer and Vendor setup make these processes old hat when you finally go live. You want users saying thing like "Do I have to enter that again? I know how to do it cold."
• Deploy in building blocks. Deploy say the sales module and let users test. Then deploy Purchasing and let users test. Don't hold off user testing until everything is configured.
• Dump train the trainer. This process of training supervisory staff and letting them train end users has always been more about cost saving than effectiveness. Early and often user involvement should mitigate the need for this mechanism. Each training level you go down results in reduced effectiveness, so let the users get their hands dirty!

I'm intrigued to see how subsequent posts expand on the orginal and I may comment more as the idea progresses. Thanks for starting a great conversation Vjekoslav!

Fastpath Configurator AD Gets Better

I thought I would take a few posts today and highlight a few vendor specific items I learned at Convergence. We'll start with one of my favorites, Fastpath.

So I'm at the expo at Convergence 2009 talking to the Fastpath folks and unsurprisingly, their Configurator AD product is getting a lot of attention. Configurator AD allows true single sign on with Active Directory for Dynamics GP (and other Dynamics products). When I last looked at Configurator AD, users were authenticated against active directory and if full single sign on was enabled, the first screen that came up when launching Dynamics GP was the company login. That was pretty cool until I found out that the newest version goes farther.

In the latest release, if a user only has access to one company, that company just launches. All the authentication is handled in the background. For users with multiple company access, a default company can be set to allow them to bypass the company selection screen as well. Now one touch launching of Dynamics GP with full authentication is a reality.

The Future of FRx

Jan Harrigan of FRx Buzz has the good, the bad and the ugly on the direction and timing of FRx, Forecaster, Enterprise Reporting and Management Reporter. If you use a Dynamics products (and if you don't why are you bothering to follow this blog?) the news is, ahem, less than what we hoped for. If you use FRx with a non-Dynamics product however, well, you are toast. Jan is all over all of the FRx angles.

SQL View to Show Dynamics GP Security

Ooooooh! Victoria Yudin has SQL code to show security roles and tasks in Dynamics GP 10. Suweeet!

Convergence Coverage from the Insiders

Make sure you catchup on more Convergence news from the official Dynamics GP blog.

Dynamics GP and DUOS

Dave Musgrave has info about using and reporting off of the Dynamics User Object Store (DUOS) in Dynamics GP. The DUOS table is a native GP table designed to hold custom data, usually from a custom window or VBA customization. The nice thing about the DUOS table is that it upgrades well. If you just a place to store a few values, DUOS is a great option.

Next NOTEINDX in Dynamics GP

MichaelJ2.com has a SQL script to get and increment the next Note Index for a record. This can be a big deal if you are inserting records into GP via SQL.

Weekly Dynamic: Use Tax, Landed Cost and Project Accounting

So you are running Project Accounting. You purchase materials for your project and you want to include use tax paid for those line items in the appropriate project. Well, with Dynamics GP 10 it's not all that hard to do. I'll be putting out Use Tax paper soon with every last detail but for those of you with a little experience, here are the steps.

• Run the Use Tax amount through AP
• Apply this amount to a PO receipt via Landed Cost
• Landed cost can be used to calculate the Use Tax amount and apply it to line items based on the value of the line item.
• If you apply the line items directly to a project, the landed cost total flows through to Project Accounting.
• If you simply post the amounts to inventory with landed cost applied, that cost flows through to Project Accounting when transferring inventory amounts to PA using the inventory transfer functionality.

The beauty of using the landed costs functionality is that it flows all the way through to whatever module is downstream and that included Project Accounting.

Convergence Wrap Up

I've got a bunch of posts from other people to catch up on so I'm going to wrap up some of my own Convergence coverage here and move on.

• We finished as the number 1 rated concurrent session for all of Convergence, not just GP. We were also the number 4 rated speakers overall at Convergence. We're proud of this not because we were good but because it says we delivered value and we made it fun.
• The 50 tips gets a semi-permanent link at the top right of the page. Plenty of people have already gone looking for it.
• The FRx situation is a big mess. Other folks have better coverage and I point to some relevant articles next.
• Word reports in GP 11 are very cool. Except if you look hard and ask some tough questions you'll find that they are still based on an underlying Report Writer report so don't let your Report Writer skills lapse.
• Email features in GP 11 look very good as do BP dashboards, and Customer/Vendor portals.
• Some (most?) of the features that we want in Project Accounting for GP 11 are not expected to be in there.
• Extender is getting some great new functionality and a price increase to go with it so buy before August.
• Microsoft financing opportunities are there if you want to use Bill and Steve's money instead of yours. Think no payments for 6 months.

Convergence Speaking

I thought a few folks might be interested in what goes on behind the scenes for a speaker at Convergence. Now that the whole event is over I wanted to give people a sense of what it takes to make one session happen.

The process started way back in October of 2008. The 50 Tips presentation was a hit at our customer conference, iSight and I received a survey from Microsoft looking for Convergence topics. I added a 50 Tips presentation suggestion to the survey and followed up with both my MVP lead and one of the owners of Convergence at Microsoft.

The topic was accepted and the real work started in January. We settled on a title and description and I made some changes to the tips to accommodate a broader audience. I started getting lots of Convergence related emails telling me what to do by when. Microsoft handled the Convergence registration and access to the speaker portal, my Convergence lifeline.

Since I'm not a Microsoftie or a long time MS presenter, I had to have a co-presenter and I was fortunate enough to get Pam Misialek, the Convergence giveaway queen.

The first pass of the PowerPoint deck had to be in by mid February. Pam and I talked via phone and passed around versions of the presentation until it looked good. A big thanks to Ross, Abby, Tan and Christina for their help in reviewing the presentation!

By mid-February I submitted the draft presentation and arranged for the presentation technology I would need and the related tech checks. That's when I started practicing.

A couple weeks later, the schedule was final. I knew where I was presenting and what the room capacity was. By the first of March, legal had reviewed my presentation and made a few minor suggestions all of which were easy adjustments. With that, the presentation was submitted to the graphics company that does setup and formatting for the conference.

Then tragedy struck...twice. First I pulled down my final presentation, post graphics formatting, only to find out that they had removed all of the item numbers and replaced them with lists. 50 tips is just not 50 tips if you can't count to 50 with me! Pam Misialek talked me down from the ledge (that phrase would probably have been censored by MS legal) and told me how to get it fixed once I got to Convergence. After that, my demo crashed. Specifically, the really cool Excel connection pieces simply refused to work. Ugggh. After an hour and a half of troubleshooting, I finally set everything back and rebooted. That fixed seemed to work. I had broken Excel, not Dynamics GP.

Suddenly, Convergence was here and it was off to New Orleans! Registration, speaker check in and getting the right presentation up was incredibly smooth. After that it was speaker training time. I was expecting a small group and someone with a list of typical speaking tips. Instead, I got a fantastic one-on-one session with speaker coach Montana. I got to practice in a room, she gave great feedback and we worked on pieces until they were right. Speaker training is HIGHLY recommended.

Presentation day dawned, as did my early morning tech check. Glitch number 3 showed up here. I couldn't show PowerPoint on one screen and GP on another. Nor could I use a hard switch to swap between them because of the room configuration. Instead, tech guy Bill would be backstage pushing a button to switch. Bill was going to earn his pay in my session.

Pam and I met to rehearse and she was fantastic. We worked out our interactions and Pam provided some great ideas and ton of giveaways.

Finally, we were up on stage and the room started to fill. We ended up with just over 400 people in that session and everyone was great. They wanted something fun at 5pm on a Tuesday and that's what we were designed to deliver.

The very first tip crashed. I hadn't reset the Journal Entry after testing. Also, a system flag I needed was off ,so other sample entries I tried didn't work. The audience was understanding. They laughed through it with me, Pam gave away swag, and we moved to tip number 2. After that it was smooth sailing.The audience was in to it and we ended up with great scores and half of the audience submitted evaluations.

That's when I discovered the high of evaluations. People should really be careful with evals. They make speakers manic depressive. When you read good comments you get high, then a negative comment makes you crash. You have to learn to process all of it to make yourself a better speaker. Sometimes you adjust for the negatives and sometimes you just realize you won't reach everyone.

Most of the people got what we were trying to do. This wasn't a deep dive but it wasn't fluffy. It was all about the little things that make life easier every day. But like anything, a few people didn't get it. A few of the comments were along the lines of "they should do fewer tips" or "they should go slower". It's 50 tips in 50 minutes. I can't go slow!

All in all, the comments were fantastic so I thought I would drop a few in here.

This session rocked. I picked up at LEAST 25 tips I did not know to take back
and use right away in my organization.

This session alone is going to save me enough time to make the conference worth
the cost.

I have been working with Dynamics GP since version 2.04. I knew alot of what
they said - but I learned a few new things.

If you've been working with GP since version 2.04 and you learned stuff, we did something right!

The nerves returned on Thursday for session 2 but everything worked and the session 2 went really well. We were a little over confident though and went about 2 minutes long. Managing a hard switch between the PowerPoint and GP was tougher than I thought it would be. We did get better scores though so I have no complaints.

The speaking process was actually really smooth and now that I've been through it once, I would happily do it again.

Make sure that you watch the new official Dynamics GP blog where my co-presenter Pam will be doing some blogging too!

Dynamics GP Back to the Future

Looking at David Musgrave's timeline of GP releases, I'm reminded that I started working with Dynamics C/S+ 5.0 in early 1999. We skipped 5.1 and upgraded to 5.5 as our first upgrade. Hey Dave, if someone at MS can remember which Convergence had the famous Marco Polo speech I would appreciate it. It was either 1999 or 2000 and that was my first introduction to Convergence.

The Dynamics GP Community and Convergence

Community continued to get a boost at Convergence this year.

• The Dynamics GP folks are finally on board with an official GP blog and they are very willing to work with other bloggers.
• There was a session on Dynamics communities (blogs, twitter, newsgroups, forums) this year that actually showed folks how to subscribe to RSS feeds for common GP blogs. (Sweet!)
• Nick Hovan of Microsoft tirelessly worked the community lounge pushing community efforts.
• I've heard that DynamicAccounting.net got a plug in a BI session for the GL Table References file.
• I heard Dave Musgrave's blog mentioned by several people.
• Lots of people stopped to say hi and mention that they like blog.
• The GP User Group (GPUG) had a good week though there are still some logistical struggles with Convergence. Last year their rooms were too small, this year they were too far away. I suspect next year will be juuuuusssst right.
• I added a significant number of Twitter followers this week.

It was fun to see the emphasis on community and to see that this year, it's not just talk. There is some real action around this. We first saw the community emphasis at Convergence 2005 and Microsoft is finally catching up to the rest of us.

Convergence 2009 50 Tips in 50 Minutes

For everyone looking for the PowerPoint and Notes from the GP03 50 Tips in 50 Minutes session from Convergence 2009, here you go!

Thank You to everyone who attended!

Convergenge CPE

CPE forms for Convergence are at info booths. They are supposed to be online as well but I haven't found the link yet.

Someone email or comment if you find link please.

Update: CPE form can be found online at:

https://www1.msconvergence.com/resources/content_files/Convergence%20CPE%20Form%20-%20FINAL.pdf

You will need your Convergence login to access the form.

Convergence Thursday Update

My stint as booth candy is finally done and before I present again I've got some information and a perspective on the Conference so far.

• It is a smaller, more intimate conference. We saw fewer, but better interactions in the booth. Folks are having fun on Bourbon Street but they are NOT here for vacation. This year, people are here for solutions.
• Customers I've talked to are excited about version 11 and other products like Extender.
• There is no dedicated information worker track this year but the SQL Reporting Services, Sharepoint and similar sessions have had good attendance and reviews.
• In contrast, customers and partners are unhappy over the FRx/Forecaster/ER/Management Reporter/Performance Point mess. The road map to roll all of these products together goes all the way to 2014. The market won't wait 6 years. There was also very little clarity on when many of the pieces will get SQL Server 2008 support. For FRx it was announced that SQL 2008 support would come in the version 11 timeframe, or roughly Q2 2010. A year!?! What about the rest?
• People will be buying. In contrast to Bill Kennedy's thoughts, we are hearing from customers that they like what they see at Convergence and want more. It won't be monster ERP implementations since most people here already have a solution, but there will be lots of smaller Sharepoint, BI, Reporting and efficiency projects for partners to work on.

I do want to reiterate the point that I'm not picking on Microsoft with the negatives. Customers want the best solution and they want MS to be the best. The expectations for the Blue Monster are high, especially when someone has handed them the core of their business. Microsoft needs to make sure that they are meeting those high expectations.

50 Tips for Dynamics GP is a Hit!

Pam and I finished the first run of 50 Dynamics GP tips in 50 minutes yesterday. Based on the feedback and surveys so far, the session was a huge hit. Its currently the number one rated session at Convergence 2009.

A big thank you to everyone who attended! An even bigger thank you to the guy who stopped me on Bourbon Street to say that be enjoyed the session. Dude, you made my night!

You can still catch the repeat of the session Thursday at 2 pm. By Friday morning I'll have the Convergence 50 tips PowerPoint up on this site.

Convergence 2009 Initial Thoughts

I thought I would tak a minute to highlight some good and bad from Convergence 2009 so far.

• The staff, venue and Microsoft folks have all been great.
• Attendance is definitely down but I think that it is a function of the economy, no major releases at this Conference and maybe even the European Convergence.
• I think that the lower attendance will give users greater access to Microsoft people.
• I've already seen a lot of people I wanted to connect with and I think the lower turnout helps.
• Folks are here, they are just sending fewer people and being creative with the budgets to get here.
• The green initiative is great, as is the water bottle, the environmentally friendly bag is terrible.
• The number of flyers in the bag was reasonble. We weren't drowning in paper.
• Last night's MS party at the aquarium was a hit. I should have seen that beer, wine, food and fish all go well together. It was odd to have it before Convergence really started though.
• The Expo feels like it's in Mississippi, and the MS Store is storage closet.
• The hotels all seem to be great and everything is reasonably close.

All right, that's all I've got for now.

Weekly Dynamic: Improve Balancing with Allow Account Entry

One way to improve balancing subledger accounts to the GL is to prevent users from entering journal entries to a controlled account. There shouldn't be any recurring reason for a user to make a GL entry to AP or AR. By preventing entries from accidentally hitting one of these accounts companies can improve balancing.

Setting this up is extremely easy.

• Simply select an account using Cards->Financial->Account.
  
• Select the control account like AP or AR.
• Uncheck the Allow Account Entry Box
• Hit Save

After that transactions have to originate in a subledger to post to that account.

I.B.I.S. ERP Blog Has Moved!

We've moved the I.B.I.S. ERP blog over to our new support site, DynamicsCare.com. You can now find the blog here. If you've subscribed via RSS, everything should still work fine for you.

Convergence 2009 Preview

There is a Convergence 2009 preview article up at MSDynamicsWorld.com. I was one of the contributors so if you want my pre-Convergence thoughts, that's a good place to start.

SQL Server Reporting Services Resource

If you are still figuring out how to get rolling with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), here is a great resource to get started with.

A Little Recognition

Dynamics GP MVP Monzer Osama was fast enough to catch a glimpse of Mariano and I on the big screen at the MVP summit. I chose Convergence instead of the Summit this year so the MVP's at the summit had to settle for this brief glimpse. Mariano has the video on his site so I'll just point you there.

Thanks Monzer! I've now had my 15 miliseconds of fame!

New Dynamics GP Landing Page

I have to admit, the new Dynamics GP landing page is pretty cool!

New Official Dynamics GP Blog!

Just in time for Convergence, I see the announcement of Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP. This new blog is the inside scoop from the Product Management and Marketing Team at Dynamics GP.

Way back in January of 2007, I lamented the lack of GP bloggers coming out of Microsoft. We've now got a thriving community of other bloggers but it's nice to have some official blogs as well.

Now we've got both the US and UK Field Teams with excellent blogs and of course David Musgrave and other GP developers have built the fantastic Developing for Dynamics GP site. Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP looks to be a great addition to the community.

Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP is a multi-author blog that includes my Convergence co-presenter, Pam Misialek along with Errol Schoenfish, Jen Dorsey, Gerice Anderson, Ben Corwin and Andy Westby. The number of blogger should mean that they turn out a bunch of posts and I'm looking forward to it. Congrats on the new site!

Microsoft Dynamics Bang for the Buck

Over at Dynamics NAV site, Navigate into Success, Vjekoslav Babic takes a look at the results from Panorama Consulting Group's ERP Report. This study includes data from actual implementation results. The study is current, results are from 2008, and while it doesn't break out the various Dynamics products, the whole Microsoft Dynamics line fares extremely well.

Vjekoslav breaks out some hightlights so you don't have to read the whole thing if you don't want to. Among the golden nuggets:

• According to their findings, 72% of ERP customers chose SAP, Oracle or Microsoft’s solutions.
• Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions (the report doesn’t break it down by specific product lines) are the 3rd most common, with 14% market share—as much as the combined market share of Baan, Epicor, IFS, Infor and Sage.
• Microsoft Dynamics solutions come with shortest average implementation duration of the Tier I vendors, and the lowest implementation cost of all ERP vendors. But saying “the lowest” doesn’t do Microsoft Dynamics right: “the lowest” means 6,5 times less than average SAP implementation costs, 4,9 times less than average Oracle implementation costs, and 3,25 times less than average implementation costs of all ERP solutions.
• Also, from cost perspective, implementing Microsoft Dynamics solutions proves to be the most predictable choice: quartile deviation of Microsoft Dynamics is 9% that of SAP, 11% that of Oracle, and 20% that of all ERP vendors.
• Microsoft Dynamics has employee satisfaction rate of 76,9%, the highest employee satisfaction rate of all ERP vendors, 12,5% higher than overall average for all ERP vendors.

Anyone else feeling warm and fuzzy now as Convergence approaches?

If you're a partner or project sponsor, go grab the full report. If you're wrestling with your Dynamics system, feel comfortable that you made the right choice. Call your partner and figure out how to make Dynamics work for you. If you're a consultant, you picked well, now go be the best consultant you can be. Finally, if you are happy with your Dynamics implementation, send a copy of the report to all of your friends who struggle with SAP or Oracle!

Unlock Transactions In Microsoft Dynamics GP

MichaelJ2.com has a new post with info on unlocking locked records. He details a small mod he built to make unlocking a self service function. Nice work!

Follow Convergence on Twitter!

This year you will be able to follow Convergence on Twitter at:

http://twitter.com/MBSConvergence

I'll be twittering convergence too on my personal twitter account at:

http://twitter.com/mpolino

I suspect that Dwight will be twittering as well via:

http://twitter.com/DwightSpecht


If you want up to the minute Convergence news, twitter is definitely the way to go. If you don't want up to the minute Convergence news maybe we should talk about your priorities!

Weekly Dynamic: Get a Date with Dynamics GP

Newer versions of Dynamics GP have some advanced date handling features. In a date field, type a number and click tab. The system will assume that you mean this month and year and that you typed the day. If you type the month and day, GP will assume that you mean this year.

Example, if today is 4/12/09, typing 17 will return 4/17/09. Typing 0501 will return 05/01/09.

Dynamics GP's date handling features aren't as advanced as say, Outlook. You can't, for example, type "Tomorrow" and get tomorrow's date since GP's date fields only allow numbers. It is still nice to know that there are some date shortcuts!

(You didn't think that this post was about using Dynamics GP to attract members of the opposite sex did you?)

Simple Table Backups with T-SQL

Michael Johnson over at MichaelJ2.com has a nice post up on creating a simple, table level backup with T-SQL. This can be very handy for those times when you want to say, restart Project Accounting or rebuild setups for different module.