The newest release of Dynamics GP, version 2018 R2, has been released. With each major release it’s important to know what new features and changes are available to decide the important questions. What features may benefit your organization? What changes might impact your day to day business?
Sales Enhancements
For sales, six new enhancements have been added, two of which are new features. Of the new features, the first allows the printing and emailing of sales documents at the same time as a single process which is useful if you frequently do both. The second new feature allows for single click emailing of customer statements from the Customer Maintenance card.
Other enhancements include a new SmartList for deposits associated with unposted sales transactions, additional sort options on Sales Order Process Item Inquiry, and the retention of the Ship-To-Address when changing a customer using the Customer Combiner and Modifier Utility.
Human Resources & Payroll Enhancements
Changes in this area affect the FICA totals with the payroll check register report which are important to be aware of if you use HR and payroll functions of GP. The report now has two new calculated fields of FICA totals. One is FICA Medicare, which is the sum of Employee FICA Medicare total and Employer FICA Medicare. The second is FICA Social Security which is the sum of Employee Social Security total + Employer Social Security total. Prior versions of Dynamics GP totaled employee and employer Medicare separately. If you are using a modified version of this report then you may have reset security back to the original report to see the new fields.
Another significant feature change is the allowance of start and end dates for pay codes. Previously the restriction of pay codes required manually inactivating them to be excluded from a pay run which can be a hassle, especially if forgotten. With the addition of start and end dates, the active range of pay codes can be set at the time of creation and/or updated when decisions are made on their active time. There is specific logic for GP handles the setting of the new start and end date fields so it’s important to review how setting these will impact your organization. Details on this are available on Microsoft’s website at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-gp/whats-new/version-2018-r2.
The final enhancement in this area is the ability to set shared calendar year maximums on group benefits and deductions. This enhancement is intended for organizations with employees who contribute to multiple 401K plans and should greatly help in managing these.
When this feature is used the amounts in the pay run will show on the Build Checks report. In order to calculate the pay run for the annual maximum, GP will apply TSA deductions- first in priority order, then full deduction amounts for sequenced deductions, and lastly all non-sequenced/non-TSA deductions in alphabetical order.
New Sales Approval Workflow
A new Sales Transaction Approval workflow has been added that allows you to create approvals for various transaction types based on conditions such as customer credit limit. As with other workflow types, a new email message has been added with it along with the tracking and displaying of the workflow history in the inquiry form.
Financial Enhancements
Several enhancements have been added in the areas of finance. One to be most aware of is a new checkbox option for recurring monthly or bi-monthly batches to use last of day of the month for receivables, payables, and inventory batch entry. When selected the posted date will be automatically set to the last day of the month for accounting months with 28, 30, or 31 days.
One important thing to note with this is when this option is enabled for the first time, the document date on the transactions will be the current users GP date (shown in the bottom left corner). If this is not desired, then the document dates must be updated in the Transaction Entry window to match the posting date.
The next enhancement adds additional options to the HITB report to determine if items with zero quantity or zero value are included in the report. These options are set by selecting Inventory under the Reports menu and then selecting Activity to bring up the Inventory Activity Reports Options window shown below.
The third financial enhancement allows posting through the G/L at the transaction level in many of the financial window. The option to enable this enhancement has been added to the Posting Setup window. shown below:
The next enhancement adds the ability to bulk-update master records as active or inactive in navigation lists. Options with the names Inactivate and Reactivate have been added to the Modify section of the Accounts Navigation List, Checkbooks Navigation List, Customers Navigation List, Salespeople Navigation List, Vendors Navigation List, Items Navigation List, and Employees Navigation List window. The options become available when multiple records of the same state are selected.
Finally, the last two enhancements add options to allow or prevent duplicate checking numbers for checkbooks other than Payables Checks, and a setting to control if inactive checkbooks appear in checkbook lookup windows.
Purchasing Enhancements
A significant change in purchasing is you can now enter a quantity below the total requested when creating a purchase order and thus perform a partial purchase. When this is done, the remaining quantities on the requisition are cancelled and the amounts ordered and cancelled noted in the history and the requisition status set to Partially Purchased.
Three other enhancements were added. First, the Purchasing All-in-One View will now show the Applied-To Document Number associated with payments, returns, and credit memos. The second enhancement allows sending purchase order emails using different templates. The third adds a warning popup for vendors on hold when entering a payables transaction.
System Enhancements
Two system enhancements have been made to Dynamics GP 2018 R2 regarding passwords. First, user passwords may now be 21 characters long, up from the previous limit of 15. The second update allows for 7 days advance notification of password expiration.
System administrators may now turn off the Business Analyzer for the Home Page and/or navigation lists at the system level. This is useful if your company does not use this feature and you want to globally prevent it from appearing for all users. The new option for this is available in the system preferences window. The ability to selectively enable or disable Business Analyzer on a user basis remains available.
The Home Page will now have a new tab named Intelligent Cloud Insights which allows for connecting Dynamics GP to a Dynamics 365 Business Central cloud tenant for data synchronization. When upgrading, the default home page will remain unchanged and simply display a new tab for Intelligent Cloud Insights. New Dynamics GP installations will use Intelligent Cloud Insights as the home page default. You can find out more about this feature at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/administration/faq-intelligent-cloud.
The final enhancement in this area is any SmartList Favorites created in the SmartList designer will now appear in the SmartList Favorites navigation lists.
Need Help?
Does your need training on the new upgrade of Dynamics GP? A good Dynamics Partner like KTL Solutions has the knowledge and experience to handle the legwork of development and support. KTL Solutions is Dynamics Partner with knowledge and experience to help with migration, deployment, customization development, and support for Dynamics GP. Our experience working with hundreds of clients will provide best practices, recommend improvements, and software customizations you need to help your business succeed. Contact us today.
