Category Archives: Microsoft Dynamics GP

Extending Dynamics GP Data within your Organization

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Do you find that you’re running GP SmartLists and exporting the data to Excel so that it can be shared with others in your organization?  If you’re using GP 10.0 or later, there’s an easier way.  And you may already have it at your fingertips… GP Excel reports.

Beginning with version 10.0, Microsoft began offering a set of Excel reports based on the existing SmartList favorites.  These reports take advantage of a Microsoft Office integration method, called an Office Data Connection (ODC), which will allow you to view Microsoft Dynamics GP data in an Excel form.  This means the Excel reports have a “live link” to the GP data, allowing them to be refreshed with current data each time they are run.

Once the reports are deployed, you can of course access them from within GP.  But even better, since they can be deployed to a network share (or a Microsoft Office SharePoint library), they are also available to users in your organization who do not have a GP user license.  As long as a user has access to the deployment location (see figure below), that user can navigate to the share location, select the desired report and get up-to-date, live GP data right there in Excel.

But wait, there’s more!  If the users have rights to access the data connection, they can also create their own reports directly from Excel, using the Office Data Connections provided with GP.  It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Open Excel and select either a New or Existing Data Connection from the Get External Data options.  (I’m selecting a new one below which will ask for the name of the server housing the data.)

2. Select your company database and the Connection to use.

3. Finish and return the data to Excel.

It’s that easy!  You end up with an Excel report containing a “live” connection directly to the GP data that you can now manipulate as desired in Excel.  When you save the Excel report, the data connection is saved with it, and the data will refresh each time you open it!

If you’re on GP 10.0 or later, and haven’t yet deployed the Excel reports, you might consider it as just one of the ways to open up the GP data to other users in your organization.

Don’t Worry – Everything is under Control

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Welcome to 2012!  End of year activities are in full swing for us “financial folks” and hopefully your desk doesn’t look like the picture here :) .  It strikes me as somewhat odd that financial management professionals are given job titles such as “Controller” – yet when I talk to these people – their #1 complaint is that things are “out of control” in their organizations. As accounting professionals, we are preparing our financial data for 2011 for external reporting and/or tax preparation purposes, so we are closely reviewing all of the financial data for accuracy.  How frustrating it is to discover the inaccuracies that have occurred throughout the year by staff members! 

 Some of the more common errors are:

1. Immaterial Asset purchases are being coded to “Fixed Asset” accounts on the Balance Sheet in order to be capitalized and depreciated / expensed to future periods.  It is not uncommon to find $20 staplers in Asset accounts on the Balance Sheet rather than just being expensed to the Office Supplies expense account directly.

2. You may have Standard Monthly Journal Entries that book such things as Tax Expenses – with a corresponding entry to the Accrued Tax Liability Account.  Then when the A/P clerk makes the actual tax payments, they code the payment to the Expense Account – rather than to the Liability account.

3. You find that a significant number of vendors have been setup as Non-1099 Vendors when they really should be receiving 1099′s.

4. You review Payroll and determine that an employee was setup to participate in your 401K plan, however the payroll clerk forgot to appropriately exempt the deduction from Federal and State Income Tax withholding.

I could go on and on with examples like this – and they all lead to one thing – Controllers working late nights composing Adjusting Journal Entries to correct all the mistakes – and trying to figure out how to correct the 1099′s and W-2′s in order to make them accurate.
Why do these things happen year after year?  I used to think that it was poor training or poor communication – but I don’t believe that any longer.  Some of these mistakes are being made by employees who have been on the job for 15 years – and even more frustrating – in past years – these same employees have actually NOT made these mistakes. 

Consistency of performance is a great thing – so it would be nice if a clerk coded something wrong – that they would at least CONSISTENTLY do it wrong – not go back and forth between right and wrong!  If you have “given up” on the hope of making these types of errors go away – GREAT NEWS – I have discovered a way to solve the challenge!  Stop relying on “humans” to remember things – and instead, invest in Financial Management Software that allows you to establish Business Rules that the software then enforces FOR YOU!  We use Microsoft Dynamics GP Software to do this for our Company.�
Here are just a few examples of what can be done with the Dynamics GP Software:

1. We use Account Level Security to restrict users’ ability to code to G/L accounts that they should NOT be using.

2. We have the software enforce business logic on transactions.  For example, if an A/P clerk codes something to a Fixed Asset account for capitalization – we have the software look to see if the amount of the transaction is greater than $250.  If it isn’t, the A/P clerk must change the G/L coding in order to process the transaction.

3. When a new vendor is setup in A/P, if we have not received a W-9 from them – we mandate that the system start tracking them as a 1099-Vendor.  Once we receive the W-9 we can easily change the vendor to “Not a 1099 Vendor” if so desired.

4. On Payroll, we make “inaccessible” setup fields on employees that should never be changed. We are all human – and we all have “good days” and “bad days”.  The nice thing about the Dynamics GP Software is that when someone has a “bad day”, the software makes sure that they still do their job correctly. 

In summary, if your financial reporting environment is “Out of Control” – make a New Years’ resolution to look at Dynamics GP Software to better your life come January of 2013!

Microsoft Dynamics GP Updates for US Payroll in 2011

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For those of you who haven’t heard, the Federal Government has passed a law that reduces the amount of the Social Security Taxes withheld on your employees’ paychecks from a rate of 6.2% to a rate of 4.2% – in effect providing every American a 2% pay increase.  The government has decided that the Employer will NOT receive a rate reduction – and will still continue to pay 6.2%.  Unfortunately, this will require the Software Development Team at Microsoft to introduce totally new “code” into the software to accommodate the change.  This new code will not be available until mid-January at the earliest.  Therefore, we’ve summarized our recommendations to our clients as to how to process 2011 payrolls until the new code is released (and applied) in your environments:

  • The FICA – Social Security Table should be changed to 4.2%
  • When you process your payrolls – and the Check Register is produced, the “Total Tax Liability” shown at the bottom of the report will be INCORRECT.  This amount should NOT be remitted.
  • You should manually calculate the Employer portion due by taking the field labeled “Employer FICA Owed” on the Check Register – and multiplying it by 1.35399.  The result will provide the correct Employer taxes due – which will then be added to the Employees’ taxes withheld – and this will be the amount that will need to be remitted for your Total Tax Liability.  The example below shows what this would look like if you had $10,000 of pay.  Please note that this method will NOT work if you have certain special circumstances – or if you have any employees who will be over the $106,800 wage limit this quickly in 2011.

On behalf of Microsoft, we do apologize for this inconvenience – but with the government announcing this change in the later part of December, it was impossible for the coding to be done in a quality oriented fashion to accommodate early January 2011 payrolls.  We at Pinnacle are here to assist you if you should have any questions.

Integrating Your Website with the Rest of Your Business

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You’ve spent time and resources building a solid presence on the web. It’s attracting visitors and potential customers, but then what?  How does the information and opportunities it creates flow into the other parts of your business processes?

This is often the point at which web sites stall in their development. You know it’s important to get your information out there in order to get leads or even sales online, but, without clear direction, it typically goes no further.  At this point, your web site plays just one role in your business.

By taking the next step, and tying your website into other business processes, you can improve efficiencies and customer experience.

Leads

Contact forms are a commonplace feature on sites today. You want to make sure it’s a simple process for those interested in learning more about your products or services to get in touch with you. Usually this information is sent to someone internally via email. Sometimes that’s sufficient, but what if that person is busy or on vacation? The lead sits in there inbox, hidden until they can get back to it.

A better way to handle this is:

  • Have the lead feed directly into a CRM system.
  • The lead can go directly into a workflow, sending out notifications to both internal staff and the customer.
  • When the main contact is out of the office, the workflow would trigger an email to other staff that a lead has not been responded to and needs follow-up.
  • When that response does occur, it is recorded in the CRM system and available for others on staff to see.

In this case, the integration of the web site and the CRM system helps sales stay on top of new business opportunities regardless of staff availability.  One person being out does not hold up everything.  Furthermore, that lead can be tracked and followed from the time it’s entered until it’s closed without any need to manually reenter it into another system.

Support

Just as important as leads coming into sales, are questions and issues coming in from current customers.  Again, integration into CRM or a help desk makes your company more timely and efficient when handling requests.

The efficiencies in how customers are helped can be taken a step further.

  • As questions come in, staff can categorize these requests which can then be reported on.
  • As you see trends in what topics are popular, you can proactively address these by creating a knowledge base.  This is a set of reference articles can help both internal support staff and external customers.
  • Your staff can respond quickly with proven answers by directing customers to the knowledge base articles.
  • In the future, customers can search these articles and find the answers themselves, eliminating the need for support to get involved in these cases.

Sales

When a company selling products moves to the web, they usually have systems already in place for accounting, inventory tracking, and similar functions.  Once their web site starts bringing in orders, they may need to take the order information gathered from the web and then manually enter it into their internal systems.

The great thing about modern software systems is that data is stored in similar ways. This makes it possible to set up processes that synchronize this data.

For example, Pinnacle has built a solution called the Connector which allows businesses to set up maps between different databases and specifyhow the information flows between them.  Even if your systems store data in different ways (one stores quantity and unit price while the other just has a total), the integration can still be automated.

With a solution such as the Pinnacle Connector, or direct integration of the website with CRM, a company’s ecommerce store would be able to send the order processing information directly to their other systems, eliminating the possibility of human error, and ensuring that all necessary information has been entered into the correct systems.

GP 9.0 Support Ends in January

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Support for Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains 9.0 ends January 11, 2011.  What does this mean for GP 9.0 Users?

  1. For Payroll users, you will receive the payroll year end updates as well as round 1 of the US payroll tax update.
  2. No future updates will be released after 12/31/2010.
  3. If Microsoft releases any future tax updates, they will only be released for version 10 or above

Should you upgrade to GP 2010?  When it comes to that decision, we are not concerned about the tax updates if they are table updates.  We are concerned about possible code updates due to all the tax code changes being discussed.  Because of this, we are encouraging clients to upgrade by 12/31/2010 if possible.

Not sure about the upgrade? Learn more about how GP 2010 can save you both time and money.

GP 2010 “Three for $1″ Promotion Ending Soon

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Microsoft’s Three users for $1 promotion is coming to an end this next month.  The Business Essentials and Advanced Management licenses (up to a $12,000 value) will be available at this discounted price until the end of the day on Friday, June 25th.

Want to learn more about GP 2010?  Here is the presentation that we used at our last Executive Briefing on Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010:

Because right now may not be the right time to set up Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, we’ve had some companies ‘mothball’ it, so to speak.  They purchase the three users for $1, so they can get in on the deal, and then put it on the shelf until they have the proper resources or time to implement it.

If you have any questions on this promotion, or would like to learn more about GP 2010 feel free to give us a call at 574-235-8100.

You can also contact us on Twitter or Facebook.