Dynamic Solution: WilloWare GP PowerPack

This is the first installment of our new Dynamic Solution feature. The goal of this feature is to highlight third party solutions that can make a difference in your business. I’ve highlighted WilloWare’s free Spellcheck before but today we are looking at their GP PowerPack collection.
The GP PowerPack is a massive collection of enhancements for Microsoft Dynamics GP. There is a core set of features that include highlights like pop-up sticky note alerts for master records, AP templates for complex AP transactions and bin to bin transfers. In addition there is a set of very reasonably priced tweaks. Again, this is a massive collection of little improvement, all it takes for a couple of these items to be critical for your business to make the PowerPack worthwhile. Visit the site for the full list, they do a great job of highlighting the major features but I want pick out a couple of minor features that can have a huge impact.

• Next Number Generator – This comes up a lot and it’s easy to write custom code to do this but upgrading a 3rd party product is often easier than maintaining custom code over time.
• Lock Notes Field – Again a common request is to be able to lock down notes fields.
• Posting Controls - Set an allowed maximum dollar amount that a user is allowed to approve/post.   Posting Controls are set on a per-user, per-document basis, and are available for virtually every window in Dynamics GP with a Post button.
• Vendor Approvals - Vendor Approvals can be used to make sure that new Vendors are automatically placed on Hold.  Administrators can specify which users are authorized to remove the Vendor Hold.This is a huge control point to prevent vendor fraud and will make auditor’s smile. It’s also a great way to control 1099 setup. Without 1099 information, an AP supervisor can refuse to release the vendor hold until the information is provided. This will become a critical feature since most vendors will now get a 1099 starting in 2012 and the fines for missing information are going up.

The beauty of a suite like this is that a couple of features justify the price and a ton of other enhancements come along too. The list of features is just too long to show here. Hit the WilloWare GP Power Pack website for all of the specifics.