Dynamics GP 18.5 Has Been Released

As you may know, Microsoft has adopted a strategy of an annual release for GP. The latest version of Microsoft Dynamics GP is compatible with Windows 11, Windows Server 2022 and SQL 2022. It’s time to review whether you should upgrade to the latest version of GP. We have included a partial list of new features below.

Are You Ready To Upgrade Dynamics GP?

• Which version of Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) are you currently running? If you are running a current version of GP, you’ll be able to upgrade straight to 18.5, the new version. However, if you have fallen behind and are running older versions or haven’t upgraded in a few years, you may have to upgrade in more than 1 ‘jumps’.
• Are you current on Microsoft support? Paying your annual support to Microsoft entitles you to upgrades. Your only cost to upgrade would consist of the CSSI support and professional services you utilize.
• Do you utilize 3rd party add-ons? Are they ready for upgrade?If you use 3rd party add-on products, it’s important to check to see if they are compatible with GP 18.5. CSSI can help you with this process as we plan your upgrade.

Why Upgrade GP for 2023?

Some of the new features include:

• Summary Display in Bank Rec for EFT
• Filter selected Navigation lists
• Payables 1099-NEC form prints with lines and boxes
• Print Cash Receipts and email
• Print and email SOP and POP documents at the same time
• Credit Card Payment post in Summary to Bank Rec
• Auto Post batches once Email Approval Workflow is completed
• Schedule times to run Checklinks

Contact CSSI To Discuss Your Upgrade to GP 18.5

To talk about your upgrade to GP 18.5, new features of interest to you, and a path to update, please contact CSSI.

Using GP Sales Process Holds

Did you know?: You can use the Sales Process Holds Setup window to create process holds to assign to your sales documents.  Process holds are user-defined restrictions that control the processing of sales documents at different stages of the sales cycle.

You can set up process holds to:

• Prevent posting of documents until a manager approves the transactions.
• Restrict the printing of invoices until addresses have been verified.
• Stop the order fulfillment process because a part has been recalled by the manufacturer.
• Prevent the transferring of a quote to an order if the customer is over its credit limit.

You can set up passwords to further restrict processing. The user must enter the password to remove holds from documents.  If you don’t use passwords, you can set up a process hold to remind the user to complete a task before processing a sales document. Once the task is completed, the user must remove the hold from the document before processing occurs. You can apply process holds to any document type.

To set up process holds, go to Sales > Setup > Process Holds.  Enter an ID and description.  You can assign a password or leave it blank.  Check which processes you want to restrict with this hold.

To assign a Hold to a SOP transaction, go to Sales > Transactions > Sales Transaction and select a document.  Click on the Go To button and select Holds.

Select a Process Hold ID and click on Assign.  You can assign more than one Hold to a document.

Once a Hold is assigned, you’ll a red circle indicating a Hold is on this document. 

To remove the Hold, click on the Go To button, select Holds and Remove.

Add the Hold column to a Sales Transaction SmartList to see all documents on hold.

How To Get More GP Help

We hope that this explainer on implementing sales process holds in GP was helpful. If you need additional support on this or any other GP issue, please contact the team at CSSI.

Seeking to improve inventory accuracy and overall productivity in the warehouse at a company using Microsoft Dynamics GP? The best way is to implement warehouse management software, which enables your team to take advantage of powerful handheld computers and barcode scanning, accelerating the pace of supply chain work, improving inventory management, and reducing errors.

CSSI offers a WMS which was specifically designed to run on Microsoft GP. The system is highly scalable, suitable for a small warehouse operation as well as larger companies, and contains all essential warehouse features. Even better, the CSSI warehouse management system is customizable, and can be enhanced to accommodate the unique business requirements of your operation.

Here are several short videos which provide quick demos showing how the WMS tackles a specific warehouse process:

Order Fulfillment

This feature supports your picking of items on an open sales order. Review the entire list of open orders and select one or more to create a pick list.

Inventory transfer

Ensure accurate inventory transactions by logging the movement of inventory between locations or even between multiple warehouses.

Stock counting

Conduct cycle counts or complete accounting of inventory levels in order to ensure optimal inventory control.

Item bin transfer

Track inventory transactions where items are moved from one bin to another.

Receiving transactions

Select a purchase order to receive against, and receive items by barcode scan or manual entry.

Locating items

Improve warehouse efficiency by quickly identifying locations were a particular item is located.

Get Started with WMS Software in your GP Business

If you’re ready to discuss the implementation of warehouse management software for GP in your business, please contact CSSI . We will discuss your specific needs and will be happy to provide a live demo of the CSSI WMS solution.

Revenue/Expense Deferrals

This tool has been around for many, many years. It allows you to easily defer revenues and distribute expenses to future periods in the following modules:  General Ledger, Receivables Management, Payables Management, Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing and Invoicing.

To set up Deferrals, go to Financial > Setup > Deferral.  Deferral transactions will use the “ALTRN” Audit Trail Code and Source Document.

The Balance Sheet posting method is the simplest method where there will be just two accounts used in the deferral:  the deferral account (Deferred Revenue or Expense) and the recognition account (Recognized Revenue or Expense).

The Profit/Loss method requires you to set up five posting accounts for Original Cost, Deferred Cost Account, Deferral Account, Deferral Transfer and Cost Recognition.

Once the setup is complete, you can go to Financial > Setup > Deferral Profiles to set up templates of common deferral transactions. Here you can also click on the User Access button to limit access to a profile to specific users or user classes.

Deferrals are then applied in the Distribution window of a transaction, under the Additional button. Select Deferral to apply a one-time deferral or select Deferral Profile if you’ve set up previously defined profile.

In this sample payables transaction, the Deferred Expenses account is entered as the Debit account in Distributions.

In the Deferral Entry window, you select your Start and End period dates and the Amount to Apportion (which defaults from the Purchase amount). Select a Method:  Days in Period, Equal Per Period or Miscellaneous.  The Cost Recognition account is the actual expense account.

When you post the transaction, journal entries will be created and posted to the future periods.

Note:  You must have the Financial module open in all those future periods in the Fiscal Periods Setup window.
 
Any user who will be posting revenue and expense deferrals, who is not a PowerUser, must be assigned an “RED” (Revenue and Expense Deferrals) security role.

Contact CSSI for more help

If you have questions or need of GP support with this or any other topic, please contact CSSI for GP assistance.

New User-Defined Field Feature in GP 18.3 Release

This is another feature added in the GP 18.3 release.  In the General Ledger Transaction Entry window, there are now two new user-defined fields. When users enter transactions into the General Ledger, they can now add additional information regarding the journal entry.

Labels for the user-defined fields are at the bottom of the General Ledger Setup window.  Go to the Financial > Setup > Financial > General Ledger.

The maximum field length for the user-defined labels is 15 characters. The length of the user-defined field values is 30 characters.

Once you’ve defined your fields, you’ll see the new labels in the General Ledger Transaction Entry window.

These user-defined fields are available in the Financial Account Transactions SmartLists and they’ve been added to the following reports:

• Edit list
• Posting journal

Need GP Help?

If you need more help using these user-defined GP fields, please contact CSSI for GP support.

Using Copy/Paste in the Dynamics GP General Ledger

If you like the Copy/Paste functionality in General Ledger, then you’re going to like having this ability in Payables Transaction Entry.  This feature was added in the October 2020 GP 18.3 release.

You use the copy/paste in both the Transaction Entry” window and the Distributions window.

The Excel spreadsheet must have the required fields in this order to copy paste correctly; not all amount fields need to have an amount. You must copy/paste all data fields only; do not include the header fields.

In the Transaction Entry window, select a Vendor ID and put your cursor in the Purchasing field.  Then the Paste button will be available.

Distributions will default from the Vendor record unless you paste in distributions. Below is a sample file layout for the distribution:

You’ll need to grant security access to this new feature by adding it to the Security Task shown below.

That’s it! Need more help with this GP tip? Contact CSSI for GP support.

One of the new features added in the October 2019 release (GP 18.2) is the ability to see who posted a journal entry in the Financial Transaction Entry Zoom window.  This includes journal entries created by posting batches from within other modules.

FYI – This field has always been available to add as a column in the Account Transactions SmartLists.

Did you know that you can open a GP account inquiry window from within the Management Reporter Report Viewer?  You just need to drill-down to the account detail in MR and then you’ll see the Dynamics button.

Click on the Dynamics button and this will open the GP Financial Detail Inquiry window for that account number and that period/month.

The Detail Level setting in the MR report definition must include Account detail.

You must be logged into GP; otherwise, you’ll get the message below.

And, you must be using the Management Reporter Report Viewer, not the web viewer, as the default viewer to drill-down into GP.  In MR, go to Tools > Options and check the box highlighted below.

That’s it! If you would like additional help with drilling down to general ledger detail in GP, contact us for help.

GP Purchase Order Quantity Tolerances

Receipts against purchase orders don’t always match up perfectly with what you expected to receive. Here’s how to set up Shortage and Overage quantity tolerance percentages in GP to limit the quantity received on a PO receivings transaction. 

1. To enter percentages for sales inventory type items, go to Inventory > Cards > Item Purchasing Options.

2. To enter default percentages for non-inventoried items, go to Purchasing > Setup > Purchase Order Processing.

3. When you try to Receive an item, greater than the Overage tolerance, you’ll receive this message.

4. If you receive a quantity less than the Shortage tolerance, the remaining quantity will automatically be cancelled on the PO.

For instance, if you order a quantity of 100, receive 91 and your shortage tolerance is 10% then the remaining 9 will be cancelled.

Need More GP Help?

That’s it! If you need more support for setting up purchase order quantity tolerances in GP, contact the GP team at CSSI. We are happy to offer helpful, friendly GP support for you and your team!

Issue Checks To Vendors Prior to Receiving the Items

Did you know that Dynamics GP has functionality allowing you to create a check to a vendor against a PO prior to receiving the items and posting the invoice? Here’s how to do it:

1. Set up the PO module to allow prepayments

• Go to Purchasing > Setup > Purchase Order Processing
• In the Prepayment Setup section, check the Allow Purchase Order Prepayments box.
• You can require a password by filling in the Prepayment Password field.
• Assign a Prepayment G/L Account for the prepayment to post to.

2. Create a purchase order and the prepayment

• Create a PO as usual
• Fill in the Prepayment amount
• The not-equal sign (≠) means that the prepayment amount has not yet been paid
• You can enter a prepayment for a New, Released, or Change Order purchase order that hasn’t been received or invoiced against.
• You can only enter one prepayment for each purchase order.

• You can click on the blue arrow to the right of the Prepayment amount to change the default Prepayment Account and/or select Manual Payment instead of Computer Check.

• Print and save the purchase order

3. Create the prepayment check

• Go to Purchasing > Transactions > Build Payment Batch
• Create a Batch ID
• In the Payables Batch Entry window, check the Purchasing Prepayment Batch box

• Select the Checkbook ID then Save

• Next you have several options.  You can select the PO Number(s) to be paid.  Or you can just click on Build Batch and GP will create a batch of all PO prepayments. 

• Or you can click on Edit Payment Batch and only those vendors who are getting prepayments will appear.

• Click to Print Payments.  The PO number will be printed on the check stub.
• Post the batch.
• The check transaction(s) will debit Cash and credit the Prepayment account.

4. When you create the PO Invoice, you’ll see the Prepayment amount reduces the Total invoice amount.

• When you post the invoice, the Prepayment account will be debited

How To Get More Help

Do you have questions or need more help with purchase order prepayment or any other GP feature? Contact the GP team at CSSI, we’d be happy to help.