Microsoft Dynamics GP offers functionality that captures the needs of most organization and with the assistance of your Microsoft Dynamics Partner, these requirements can be identified and implemented to increase your organization’s efficiency and productivity. Your Microsoft Dynamics Partner is there to help and can guide you through your requirements to map them to the specific features in Microsoft Dynamics GP to fully take advantage of the system and produce the desired results the organization expects.
Microsoft Dynamics GP is constantly being updated to modernize the already robust features offered within the application. Microsoft tries to take advantage of new technologies and concepts to dramatically improve the organization’s experience. In the last several updates, Microsoft has added new features as well as improved existing features that many organizations may not be aware of. As stated above, the Microsoft Dynamics Partner is there to help with identifying and implementing the features that can assist your organization. I wanted to point out three features often not identified in Microsoft Dynamics GP that may assist your organization.
Workflow Processing
Workflow processing was added to Dynamics GP several versions ago and has continuously been improved to offer more flexibility and functionality. Workflow processing enables the organization to process batches, transactions, cards, and more in a consistent manner following specific rules to meet your organizations requirements. A few areas that workflows can be created are:
- Financial
- General Ledger Batch Approval
- Sales
- Receivables Batch Approval
- Purchasing
- Payables Batch Approval
- Payables Transaction Approval
- Purchase Order Approval
- Purchase Requisition Approval
- Vendor Approval
- Payroll
- Employee Profile Approval
- Employee Skills Approval
- Payroll Direct Deposit Approval
- Payroll Time Card Approval
- Payroll W4 Approval
- Project
- Expense Report Approval
- Timesheet Approval
- Administration
- Smartlist Designer Approval
Lockbox Processing
Lockbox processing has been part of Microsoft Dynamics GP and is a valuable tool that includes functionality to automatically integrate and create cash receipts transactions as unposted batches in Microsoft Dynamics GP based on a file provided from your bank. This is a very useful process to process cash receipts in an efficient manner.
The file from the bank can be mapped via the Microsoft Dynamics GP configurator found in the Sales module. The configurator allows your organization to map the bank file format to several specific fields within Microsoft Dynamics GP and further allows for the definition of processing rules. There are a few required fields that are required for the Lockbox integration to take place. These fields are:
- Check number – Each check number imported must be unique to each customer’s checkbook.
- Check amount – The total amount of the check being received from the customer.
- Invoice number – Invoice number to apply the cash receipt too and automatically apply the check. If the invoice amount is not found for a customer, it will put the cash receipt as an unapplied document to be applied at a later date.
- Invoice amount being paid – The amount of the check to be applied to a specific invoice.
- Customer – The customer the check is being received from. It can be difficult to map the customer from the bank file to the customer in Microsoft Dynamics GP due to various reasons. The attributes that may make this matching difficult are: The bank probably does not know your customer id and the bank may have a different customer description than the description in your Microsoft Dynamics GP. To mitigate these issues, Microsoft added the functionality to match the customer by using the Bank Routing number and Bank Account number to easily match the customer found on the bank file to your customer in Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Purchase Order Generator
Microsoft Dynamics GP has a built-in feature to automatically replenish stock levels for inventory that have been setup as being part of the Purchase Order Generation process. In order for an item to be used in the purchase order generation process, the items must be setup on the following windows:
- Item Resource Planning – This identifies the item and site combinations to the quantity replenishment rules and levels for the item and site combinations.
- PO Gen – This window is accessed via a button found on the Item Resource Planning window. This window defines the rules used for how to replenish the quantities, which vendor to choose, and how to select the item cost.
- Item Vendor Maintenance – This window is used to define purchasing quantity requirements for each vendor such as Minimum, Maximum, Economic, and Multiple quantities to order.
- Item Quantity Maintenance – This window is used to define the specific vendor to purchase from for the selected site.
Once the item(s) have been setup for use with the purchase order generator, then your organization can run the process to automatically query the items, sites, and quantities and create new Purchase Orders to replenish the stock for these items.
Even though Microsoft offers robust features built into Microsoft Dynamics GP, there are times that the base functionality does not fully address all the requirements an organization may need. With the support and the experience of a Microsoft Dynamics Partner, these additional needs can be addressed through the large list of add-ons available from third party vendors. I wanted to identify two of the more common add-ons available which adds additional functionality to fill the specific requirements the organization may have.
Mekorma MICR
Microsoft Dynamics GP has built in checkbook processing features that will track bank information, bank activity, reconcile checkbooks, and produce checks for the vendors. Mekorma MICR expands on the built-in checkbook functionality by adding additional features to enhance the check printing process. Some of the additional check printing features offered by Mekorma MICR are:
- Automatically save digital copies of the printed check in a .PDF format that are archived for future reference in a shared directory of your choosing.
- Add additional security to the check printing process by either the User ID or Checkbook to ensure that only the appropriate users can produce printed checks.
- Add MICR lines to the printed check to enable the organization to use blank check stock with the MICR line added to the check for processing by the bank.
- Add one or more signatures to the printed check at time of check printing with the needed security to ensure only those check that should be issues are signed with the appropriate signature or signatures. This feature further can be enhanced based on specific thresholds to ensure that checks meet the threshold contain the appropriate signature or signatures.
EOne SmartConnect
Integrating data into Microsoft Dynamics GP can be accomplished in many ways; some better than others. SmartConnect developed by EOne Solutions is one of the most versatile integration tools to import data from various data sources into Microsoft Dynamics GP. The data sources may be text files, .CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, ODBC connections, and more. The imported data does not require the user to be logged into Microsoft Dynamics GP, but does require a connection to the SQL server hosting the databases. Integrations can be performed with several different methods, two of which are the SmartConnect GUI and preformatted Excel templates.
Microsoft Dynamics GP offers robust functionality to assist your most organizations with the ERP needs. With the assistance of your Microsoft Dynamics Partner, needs can be identified with an implementation plan to increase your organization’s efficiency and productivity. Remember, your Microsoft Dynamics Partner is there to help with your success and is a valuable asset in your toolbox to make your ERP system perform as efficient as possible.
