Author: Colleen Williams

Management Reporter – Understanding How It Works

Management Reporter (MR) is the financial reporting tool that comes with Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains (GP).  This is the replacement for FRx, and when companies go to Dynamics GP 2015 they have to use Management Reporter or a third party product for reporting.  We get many questions concerning this change:  Why is FRx going away and why do I have to use Management Reporter?  What are the differences between the two?  Is everything that was available in FRx available in Management Reporter?  What is new in Management Reporter that was not available in FRx?  Let’s answer these questions, thereby helping with the decision on moving to Management Reporter or looking for a third party product for financial reporting.

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April 21, 2016

Best Practices for Setting Up and using SmartLists

Many users of Dynamics GP are learning that the best way to get information from GP is thru using a SmartList.  When you open the SmartList menu, you see of the left of all the GP modules.  You can open this folder and see the subfolder, and within each of these subfolders there are default SmartList reports that come with GP.  These reports are marked with a * at the end of the name.  Any user can take an existing SmartList and modify it.  Here are some easy steps to follow to create and customize SmartLists, including setting it up a reminder.

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February 25, 2016

How to Create a Balance Sheet in Management Reporter Without Closing Out the Year in GP



When you get to a new year in GP and have not yet closed your fiscal year, you will need to make some modifications to your column on your management reporter to run a balance sheet.  When you close your fiscal year in GP, this is the process that rolls the beginning balance forward for the new year.  If you have started your new year and have not yet closed the fiscal year, it is still possible to run a balance sheet with the beginning balance.  You will need to make modifications to your column on your balance sheet report.

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February 17, 2016

Why should you integrate data into your ERP instead of manual data entry?

The first question to ask is what do you mean by integrate data into your ERP?  When I say integrate data into your ERP what I am talking about is taking out the step of manual entry of transactions to loading large batches at once.  There are multiple ways to integrate data into your ERP software and you can integrate all types of data. 

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September 25, 2015

How to close the fiscal year in Microsoft Dynamics GP

Companies that operate on a fiscal year instead of a calendar year have to do two year end closes in their ERP software.  One close is for the calendar year for 1099 and tax filing and the other close would be for the company year end close.  Most people ask what is the purpose of two closings.  This is a great question the main purpose for two closing is to tax filings that are calendar related for example 1099 processing.  The next question that is asked is what happens to within my ERP when I close the fiscal year and that is what we are going to go thru below:

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August 28, 2015

Non for Profit .. What options are there out there for you using Dynamics GP

Fund accounting by definition is an accounting system emphasizing accountability rather than profitability.  This is used by non-profit organizations and governments.  Most ERP systems are designed to emphasize on profitability not accountability.  Dynamics GP has options for this that will assist you in spending less time managing funding and accounting processes and more time on your mission.  The modules available in Dynamics GP are interfund accounting, control account management, encumbrance management, commitments, and grant management.  Below we will give you the details of each module and how it can help. 

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May 26, 2015

5 Ways to get your ERP ready for an audit

As accountants the end of the year accounting is a big deal.  There are a lot of factors that go into the prep to make sure that everything gets accounted for prior to closing the books for a year.  The most important step to being audit ready is to be prepared.  Typically the documentation requirements for audits do not change year on year so you can use your documentation from the prior year as a guideline to get started.  Here are some steps that you can take to verify that you are ready to close your year as well as prepared for auditors to come in and evaluate your books.

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May 11, 2015