Codename GP "12" Preliminary Features Series – 3 of 4

Codename GP “12” Preliminary Features – Part 3 

This is article is part 3 of 4 from the series Codename GP “12” Preliminary Features. Some images and content reproduced with express permission from Microsoft Business Solutions, a division of Microsoft Corporation.

DISCLAIMER: These features are subject to change.

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If you were taken by the Simplicity and Productivity features, then you will be more impressed with the this new list of features aimed at enhancing the Microsoft Dynamics GP product depth.

Product Depth features

Receivables Management Enhancements

As of the current release, it has always been necessary to enter and apply multicurrency cash receipts as a two-step process. MC Apply in Cash Receipts will now allow you to take a cash receipt entered in originating currency and apply it against an invoice all in the same transaction entry process.

Payables Management

Void of Check Return Applied Credits (return/credit memo) to reusable state – For example, if you have an invoice ($100) with a payment of $50 and a credit memo for $50, both applied to the invoice, you will be able to void the check and have the credit memo become available to either use against the same invoice or apply it to another document – the credit memo returns to an unapplied state. If the original payment was made by credit card, the invoice created for the credit card vendor will also be voided automatically.
Fixed Assets Enhancements

The Fixed Assets module has seen considerable improvements. New also is the Fixed Assets Historical Depreciation Reports. If you have tried to run a historical report, it was not possible and the system would retrieve all the previous depreciation information. Now you can select a specific depreciation date for your report.

System Enhancements

Document Attach. Are you tired of trying to fight your way with the Dexterity OLE Notes Container? First I should clarify, the OLE Notes Container will remain an integral part of Microsoft Dynamics GP. After all, there are a number of you using out there. However, now you will have a more powerful tool in Document Attach.

Document Attach

General Ledger Enhancements

GL Year End Close Options. This feature will provide an option to clear out balance for unit accounts.  Currently, unit account balances automatically carry over from the previous year. The year-end process now features a progress bar that will indicate how far you are into the process when executing it. GP “12” will also provide an option to NOT delete budget account with balances.

I hope you are enjoying some of these preliminary features. My next article will discuss some of the product innovations and what you can expect from a technology perspective..

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Codename GP "12" Preliminary Features Series – 2 of 4

Codename GP “12” Preliminary Features – Part 2 

This is article is part 2 of 4 from the series Codename GP “12” Preliminary Features. Some images and content reproduced with express permission from Microsoft Business Solutions, a division of Microsoft Corporation.

DISCLAIMER: These features are subject to change.

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Yesterday, in Part 1 of the Series we saw some of the new features in the Simplicity pillar: Select printer at Print Time, improvements in the Fixed Assets calendar setup process, reprinting of check remittances, and the ability to print SSRS reports directly from within Microsoft Dynamics GP, in what seems to be a race to replace Report Writer reports.

Today, we will take a look at some of the features in the Productivity pillar, whose aim is to “enhance productivity from application configuration to frequently performed tasks”.

Productivity Features

System Enhancements

Among the features being worked, the Named System Database and Multi-tenant Applications are two of the most important features aimed to change Microsoft Dynamics GP architecture. I have covered these two features extensively in my Microsoft Dynamics Communities column articles:

Microsoft Dynamics GP “12” Named System Database Architecture
Microsoft Dynamics GP “12” Multitenant Service Architecture

Bank Reconciliation Enhancements

In the Bank Reconciliation front, you can expect the new Sub Ledger Reconcile BR to GL feature. If you are worried about your checkbook balance and GL cash account not matching, this new option will present you with reason for the out of balance conditions: a batch not posted, a voided GL entry, etc. This new feature also looks at the Receivables and Payables module.

By adding the checkbook ID as a field, you can compare the checkbook balance to the Cash Account in GL. This new reconcile tool will attempt to match records on transaction source, date, and amount and will report matched transactions, unmatched transactions, and potentially matched transactions, with the capability to drill back to the document and/or journal entry.

You can then save the output file and date when the reconciliation was performed so you don’t need to run the reconcile again. This option has been retrofitted to the other reconciliation processes.

Fixed Assets Enhancements

Yesterday I talked about the Fixed Assets Calendar Setup enhancements. You can expect other enhancements in the Fixed Assets GL Posting process – you will now be able to create batches of fixed assets transaction. As with every other batch in the system, you will now be able to review what is going to post to GL before it is posted, via an edit list.

You can build the batch, insert restrictions – today, you are only able to enter a date range and Fixed Assets pulls everything – such as dates, transaction type (depreciation, transfer, retire, addition) review the batch, make changes, and post. You can post in detail vs. post in summary – the only option available today. Going forward, each distribution line in Fixed Assets will have an equivalent distribution line in GL.

Other enhancements in Fixed assets will entail Mass Depreciation Reversal. This one is much needed as, if you have depreciated 1,000 assets through the end of the year by mistake, you would have to manually back out each of the 1,000 assets. In GP “12”, you will be able to perform a mass reversal of the depreciation – all assets at once.

EFT Enhancements

EFT Payables and Receivables will see the introduction of the Bank Administration Institute (BAI). The process will use the current Configurator to setup an EFT file based on BAI standards.

Distribution Enhancements

Purchasing Receivings will now see Tolerance Levels handling for quantities being received. If you setup a tolerance level, any quantities not received within the tolerance limits will automatically be cancelled on the Purchase Order. You will have the option to setup whether you want to do this automatically or prompted.

SOP and POP Drop Ship for Serial/Lots items – GP “12” will allow you to track serial/lot numbers from vendors. Users will have the ability to enter the serial numbers for any product being drop-shipped, unlike current released versions of GP. If you have a SOP invoice linked to a PO then the Serial/Lot will come across onto the SOP invoice.

As you can see, there are tons of enhancements in all of the above modules. GP “12” is geared towards solving some of the complexities in business processes that were a bit neglected in current releases.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Running Fixed Assets Depreciation causes Microsoft Dynamics GP to "hang"

I just completed a full upgrade of Microsoft Dynamics GP from version 9 to version 2010 R2 for a client and they were going through their first month-end closing in the upgraded system. 3 weeks ago, after the upgrade, they reported experiencing an issue running Fixed Assets depreciation from two laptop computers, where apparently, when running depreciation the system would hang. The only option to recover would be to terminate the Dynamics.exe process from Task Manager. Nonetheless, we did not pay much attention to this at the time since the process was completed successfully from another machine, just in time to close the month of August – more on this later.

The client called back on Thursday morning, letting me know they were ready to run Fixed Assets depreciation again, and this time I offered to be onsite to see the problem first hand. So effectively this past Friday morning I drove to their location and stood behind the Sr. Accountant to see the process in action and spot any possible issues while there. The accountant proceeded to log into the company database for which he would run the depreciation, entered his September cutoff date and clicked on the Depreciate button… as luck would have it with some support cases, nothing happened and the process completed successfully. Well, after some chuckles and the typical apologies from the client, I was back in my car on the way home.

Fixed Assets – Depreciation Process Information


Halfway through, I received an email saying that as soon as I left, they logged into another company and were able to reproduce the hung up issue.

Now, I began playing all the typical troubleshooting plots in my head… the problem happens only in one company, the problem can be reproduced by all users, the problem can be reproduced on all machines. Typically, when an issue is constrained to one company, it’s related to some problem with the data or the way that company is configured. Not a bad proposition since I was only dealing with some 300 assets… but I am in my car, remember? So I offered the client to look at the issue when I was back in front of my computer, since I had discarded a user or workstation being the culprits.

Back at home I VPN’d into their system, then RDP’d to the SQL Server. I had the Sr. Accountant log into GP and start the depreciation process again. In troubleshooting the issue, I could see that the depreciation process was being correctly added to the Process Monitor and that the process showed Active, but it did not seem to complete.

Process Monitor

I also ran a SQL Profiler and noticed that the same set of T-SQL instructions would appear to be processed over and over at the database level. This told me the depreciation process was in an endless loop of some kind and something was preventing it from finishing.

SQL Profiler Trace

I then offered to run the process from the server with the ‘sa’ user and noticed that the depreciation was stopping on a particular asset ID (by clicking on the Progress button). This was now promising, because I now had a piece of data to look at.

Fixed Assets Progress window

I queried the Asset Master table and noticed that this particular asset had an acquisition cost of zero. In looking at the Asset Book, I noticed that the Cost Basis was USD $.01 (1 penny). Not sure why this grabbed my attention, but I asked the Sr. Accountant why had they set this asset up this way and he replied that they did it only to record the asset and keep track of its location, but that it had been fully depreciated in the past.

Asset General Information

Asset Book

He also added that the process was working fine in GP 9.0

So I figured I would try something by changing the Depreciation Method to “No Depreciation”. After all, if the asset had an acquisition cost of zero and a Cost Basis of 1 penny, what was there to depreciate? I ran the following statement to change the Depreciation Method to “No Depreciation”:

-- Created by Mariano Gomez, MVP
-- This code is licensed under the Creative Commons 
-- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license.

-- Remove the lock for the book being depreciated
DELETE FROM FA40203;

-- Change the depreciation method
UPDATE FA00200 SET DEPRECIATIONMETHOD = 15 WHERE COSTBASIS <= .01;

I then asked the Sr. Accountant to re-run the process and this time it completed in less than 10 seconds and produced the reports he was expecting.

Since it was not enough to fix this issue, I went out to the Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner Online Technical forum and found a case where a partner reported having the same issue at her client’s site. It seems Microsoft has identified and logged this as a problem report, but no concrete fix date has been given for it. So for now, the above query should do.

Also, you could end up with a cost basis of 1 penny at the end of the useful life of an asset, which would throw the system into an endless loop if you attempt to depreciate such assets once more. If you feel this is your case, the above script should also correct the problem.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Moving Items out of Inventory and into Fixed Assets

I love challenging customers (and partners) to use their Microsoft Dynamics GP system in very innovative ways. I like hearing things like ‘this cannot be done‘ or ‘there isn’t a way to do that‘. If there is a way, trust me, I will find it! One of these ways came in the form a simple question: how would you take an item that is already in inventory and move it to Fixed Assets?

Right off the start gate, I can think of 3 different ways to do this, but the solution I like the most because of its elegance and simplicity is as follows:

1. Setup an inventory site called FA and one called VIRTUAL or I/O (typically you will already have one of these setup if you have been using Inventory Control for a while).

2. Use the In-Transit Trasfer Transactions to transfer from your warehouse to the FA site using VIRTUAL as via site. Click on the Ship button to initate the ‘transfer’ to a Fixed Assets. In turn, this should create and in and out to your Inventory account — so far good!

3. Open the Receiving Transaction Entry window in GP and perform an In-transit Inventory receipt type.

4. Select the In-Transit Transfer number and select the item to be transferred to a Fixed Asset.

5. Open the Receiving Item Detail Entry window then mark the Capital Item option.

6. When you click the Capital Item checkbox, click on the expansion button (blue arrow) to open the FA PO Additional Information window to add the asset information.

7. Post the receipt.

Since the Purchase Order Processing module uses a Fixed Assets clearing account to capitalize an item, you should be fine (accounting wise) once the asset is created in FA and you run your FA GL posting routine. There you go! No need to create additional vendors or customers or perform extra gimmicks.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 – International Enhancements

After spending a week in Costa Rica enjoying the spectacular beaches and the fabulous weather in San Jose (although my purpose in San Jose was to deliver Microsoft Dexterity training), I thought it was just appropriate to blog about the international features sported by Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. The bottom line, there are quite a bit of enhancements for the international community, so let’s get right to them:

1. VAT Daybook. You will be pleased to know that the VAT daybook has become a feature available for installation to all countries. Since value added taxes are very common across the globe with most countries requiring pretty much the same tracking and reporting capabilities, the good folks at MS have decided to make it available to everyone.

For you folks up in Canada, the VAT Daybook can be used to generate the Canadian GST/HST return in electronic format. You can set up the reporting periods for the return as specified by the tax Canada Revenue Agency. You can assign the tax detail IDs to consider for each line of the return. You can set up the default claim percentage for input tax credit for each tax detail ID. You can change this percentage for each transaction before you generate the return. You can resubmit the return after making changes, if required.

Vous serez heureux de savoir que le fil de la journée de la TVA est devenue une caractéristique disponible pour l’installation de tous les pays. Depuis la valeur ajoutée les impôts sont très courants dans le monde entier avec la plupart des pays ayant besoin d’à peu près le même suivi et de reporting, les braves gens qui habitaient les États membres ont décidé de le rendre accessible à tous.

Pour vous, les amis au Canada, le fil de la journée la TVA peut être utilisé pour générer la TPS canadienne / TVH en format électronique. Vous pouvez configurer les périodes de déclaration pour le retour tel que spécifié par l’impôt du revenu du Canada Agence. Vous pouvez attribuer le détail impôt identifiants à considérer pour chaque ligne de la déclaration. Vous pouvez configurer le pourcentage par défaut de réclamation de crédit d’impôt d’entrée de chaque détail d’identification fiscale. Vous pouvez changer ce pourcentage pour chaque transaction avant que vous produisez la déclaration. Vous pouvez renvoyer le retour en cas de modifications, si nécessaire.

2. Fixed Assets Enhancements. For you folks in Australia and New Zeland you will be pleased to know that Fixed Assets Enhancements is a tool that allows you to create a depreciation method to calculate depreciation for low-cost and low-value assets. This product is automatically installed when you choose to install the Fixed Assets Management product for Australia or New Zealand installations.

3. Export Financial Data. Export Financial Data is a tool that allows you to export the ACCON account balance report for the users in Belgium and the ETAFI account balance report for the users in France. These reports are exported to a format that can be imported by the respective legal authorities. This product is available for selection only for Belgian or French installations of Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Données Financières de L’Exportation est un outil qui vous permet d’exporter les soldes des comptes rapport Accone en Belgique, et le rapport solde du compte ETAFI pour les utilisateurs en France. Ces rapports sont exportés vers un format qui peut être importé par les autorités judiciaires.. Ce produit est disponible pour la sélection uniquement pour les installations belge ou française de Microsoft Dynamics GP.

4. “Principles of Data Access and Verifiability of Digital Documents”. GDPDU is a tool that allows you to extract tax related data from Microsoft Dynamics GP based German legal requirements. You can send this data to the auditor for analysis before submitting the final report to the tax authorities.

You can choose to install this feature from the …\DvdImage\Interntl\Products\ folder located within your Microsoft Dynamics GP installation package.

GDPDU – Grundsätze zum Datenzugriff und zur Prüfbarkeit digitaler Unterlagen -ist ein werkzeug, dass sie die steuerrelevanten daten aus Microsoft Dynamics GP lebenden deutschen gesetzlichen anforderungen zu extrahieren. Sie können diese daten an den abschlussprüfer für die Analyse zu schicken, bevor die vorlage des abschlussberichts an den fiskus.

Sie können wählen, um diese funktion aus dem … \DvdImage\Interntl\Products\ in ihrem Microsoft Dynamics GP installationspaket befindet.

Now, you will want to excuse my French and German, but I did the best I could… now, go enjoy your new features!

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com