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12 Weeks of Winter – Week 12

In our last blog, Week 11 of the 12 Weeks of Winter, we covered many of the nice-to-have features in the latest releases of MS Dynamics GP.   I am sure you were happy to know that Microsoft’s focus of continuous improvement with each release is not slowing down!   With this being our last blog in our series, I would really want to know if we got “excited” on your list of reasons to upgrade.  I believe we have given you many good reasons to look at this as a process that will add value to the organization rather than a process that is done out of necessity.

With that said, the next question on your mind should be – How do I get started?  As you may already be aware, there are a number of resources available to you through CustomerSource.   In addition, the Dynamics Community  contains information on many of the topics that we have covered here in our blog.

Here are a few things to consider as part of your upgrade planning:

Will your current hardware support the new version?

GP2013

GP2015

If you are using or planning to use any of the Web Applications such as Workflow, Web Services and SSRS here are the system requirement for:

GP2013

GP2015

What is the best timing for your upgrade?

The first thing to consider is what version of Dynamics GP you are currently running and when support for that version ends.  If you want to take advantage of all of the new features you should look at staying current which means planning for an upgrade every 2 to 3 years.  Click here to learn more and keep up to date on the Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

For example, if you are currently running GP2010 you will need to look at completing your upgrade before the end of the year as mainstream support for this version will expire October 13, 2015.   This is especially critical for those of you with payroll, as there will be no tax table updates for the 2015 year end.  (Tax table support is provided within the guidelines of mainstream support.)

Although there are a lot of activities surrounding an upgrade, the average client will be down with no access to their solution for 1 business day.  This means that you need to look at the ebb and flow of your business and determine when one business day downtime would have the least impact on your business.   It would be critical to not plan your upgrade when you need to get your payroll out!

The best thing you can do is pick up the phone and give Joesoftware a call.  We can walk you through the process and cover some of the topics below that will take the unknowns out of the upgrade process.

Will you need to complete a test upgrade?

The purpose of a test upgrade is to provide you with an environment that will allow you to spend the time to test your critical processes and thus reduce risk of down time when completing your live upgrade.  This means that you will need to look at your internal resourcing to ensure that your team will be able to spend the required time to complete this critical testing If you don’t have time to do the testing, then you need to evaluate the “value” of this process.  Keep in mind, not everyone will need to do a test and the best way to determine this is to have a discussion with your Joesoftware consultant.

I must say that this has been a great way to countdown the 12 Weeks of Winter and with spring just around the corner, the end of our blog series is a great time to remind you about the purpose of our blogs. In Week 1 we encouraged you to schedule your upgrade in advance, suggested that you take control and pick the date and timeframe that works best for your organization and strongly encouraged you to be an early adopter and strategically preplan this engagement to ensure that you take full advantage of the new features.  “Proactive” is the key to successfully putting you in control.  I hope that you are picking up your pen today and writing “Excited” on the top of that list of reasons to upgrade – I know we are!

For more information on Dynamics GP please visit Joesoftware  or contact Patti at patti@joesoftware.com.

 

12 Weeks of Winter – Week 11

In our last blog, Week 10 of the 12 Weeks of Winter, we focused on some Purchasing and Fixed Asset features released with GP2013 and GP2015.   With over 100 new features available with the newest releases, I want to give you a quick overview of what else you can look forward to.   If you are looking specifically for GP2015 features, the Dynamics Community has a blog with videos and details around the new features that is definitely worth you investment of time.

As someone who has worked with the Dynamics GP product for many years, I find it hard to focus on one area when it comes to new features.  Over the last 10 weeks I have highlighted the “Wow” features; however I don’t want to overlook some of the nice-to-have items.   In many cases, it is those little things that get you excited and reaffirms your decision to upgrade!  Here is a quick 60 second overview for GP2013:

Email Functionality:

• SOP back order and packing slip documents
• RM Customer Statements

Home Page:

• Outlook has been removed
• Metrics was replaced by the Business Analyzer (see Week 8’s blog)
• You can maximize and minimize area pages in your home page
• You can move area pages within your home page
• You can customize the number of columns and location of display on your home page
• Self Service is a new home page role

Desktop Action Pane:

• User Preferences allows you to select how to display commands in the Dynamics GP windows

Lookups:

• The sort order is saved on a per user, per company basis when you save a default lookup view for your master records in the following windows:

• Items lookup window
• Employees lookup window

• Customers and Prospects lookup window
• Salespeople lookup window
• Vendors lookup window

Security:

• Changes to how you can interact with the Alternate/Modified Forms and Reports window

SmartList:

• New submenu has been added. From the Favorites Pane Submenu you can hide or show the Favorites Pane, increase or decrease the size of the Favorites Pane and choose to automatically hide the Favorite Pane after selecting a SmartList Favorite.

General Ledger:

• Mark the Clear Balances During Year-End Close for Unit Accounts
• More options available during the Year-End Close for inactive accounts with zero balances
• View the Status/Progress of your Year-End Close once you hit the Year-End Close button

Payables Management:

• Ability to change the remit to Address ID on existing payables transaction – allowing an edit rather than having to void the transaction
• Reprint remittance forms and check stubs
• When voiding a payment that has a credit or return applied to an invoice, the credit or return is automatically unapplied from the invoice and be reapplied as needed
• You can combine a vendor ID with another existing vendor ID using the Vendor Combiner and Modifier window
• You can now set up a default sort order for printing your cheques

Receivables Management:

• Define labels for user defined fields in Customer Address Maintenance
• View the Checkbook ID in Cash Receipt window that the Cash Receipt was applied to

• You can combine a customer ID with another existing customer ID using the Customer Combiner and Modifier window

Bank Reconciliation:

• The Outstanding Transaction Report is now included in the reports that can be reprinted

Analytical Accounting:

• AA now integrates with:

• Fixed Asset Management
• SOP deposits and payments
• Finance charges
• Landed Costs in POP

Electronic Banking:

• Enhancements to both the EFT field length and the EFT settlement date

As you can see, the list is long – too long to highlight every new feature.  For more features and in depth details you can check out the Dynamics Community blog for GP2013.

Stay tuned as the calendar turns to March where our last blog of our 12 Weeks of Winter will take out the unknowns around your upgrade and have you looking for ways to start benefiting from the many new features highlighted in our 12 Weeks of Winter.

For more information on Dynamics GP please visit Joesoftware or contact Patti at patti@joesoftware.com.

 

12 Weeks of Winter – Week 9

In Week 8 of our 12 Weeks of Winter we walked through the Business Analyzer and provided you with a link for some in depth training by Microsoft.  I hope you had a few minutes to dig into this powerful “Actionable BI” tool that is available with the Dynamics solutions.   Our focus in these 12 Weeks of Winter is to showcase valuable features that provide you with reasons to upgrade your Dynamics GP solution.  Although a lot of our topics are focused on GP2013 R2 which many of you are already using, today we are going to highlight functionality introduced with GP2015 that will surely get you writing “excited” on your list of feelings when it comes to planning your upgrade.

Most of us have used SmartLists to extract data from the tables, this simple tool has been a great resource for users of the Dynamics GP solution.   If you are looking to create mailing lists or labels or drill down into some inventory details or looking for some basic payroll data, using SmartList has been the right tool.  What I hear from end users is a data dump just isn’t enough – we really want information which is quite different.

With the release of GP2013 R2 Microsoft introduced the SmartList Designer.   It is part of your GP2013 R2 solution – not something extra you have to purchase and it is intuitive enough for the average end user to use to start building lists of information vs. the data dump that I referenced earlier.

The SmartList Designer provides an interface that allows you to create queries based on table definitions found in Dynamics GP and third party applications.   You can create a new SmartList from scratch or you can create a SmartList based on an existing SmartList.   You can also modify the SmartList that you created using the SmartList Designer to add filters and criteria important to your search.   And taking it up a notch so that you are able to create valuable “information”, SmartList Designer allows you to add in calculated fields.    You will know you have access to the Designer when you open your SmartLists and you now see a “New” button at the top of the SmartList window.

Once you click on the New button, the SmartList Designer window opens and you can work on creating your new SmartLists.

Moving to the “exciting” part of this new feature, with the release of GP2015 you can now take these SmartLists and publish them to your network as a Refreshable Excel Report.  No more logging into Dynamics GP to pull that information – what you will find on the SmartList Window with GP2015 is a  Publish button.   Check out the Microsoft Dynamics GP Community blog where you will find details around the requirements to deploy this new feature. https://community.dynamics.com/gp/b/dynamicsgp/archive/2014/12/01/draft-gp-2015-new-feature-creating-refreshable-excel-reports-based-on-smartlist-designer-queries.aspx

Business Analyzer and now SmartList Designer with refreshable Excel reports!  “What’s next?” you ask. Week 10 is going to move back into the core functionality and talk about some long awaited features within Purchasing and Fixed Assets.

For more information on Dynamics GP please visit Joesoftware or contact Patti at patti@joesoftware.com.