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.

GP provides a way for you to track your customer item numbers that are cross-referenced to your item numbers.
Go to Sales > Cards > Customer Items.

Here’s where you can select a Customer and your Item Number.  Enter their item number in the Customer Item field.  You can also fill in any of the other reference fields, user-defined Text fields and a Substitute Item Number with an Effective Date Range.

Create labels for the Text Fields by going to Sales > Setup > Sales Order Processing.  Click on the User-Defined button and fill in the fields under Customer/Item Maintenance.

Then, when you’re creating a new sales order, you can type in that customer’s item number and GP will automatically replace it with your item number.  This customer item number can also be added to any of your sales document printouts.

You can even make the customer item lookup the default lookup field when you click on the Item Lookup icon.

That’s it! Let us know if you need GP support by contacting CSSI.

If you’d like more GP tips, check out or our E-book.

This tool, included in the Professional Services Tools Library (PSTL), allows you to easily see historical sales information for a customer, including the most recent price and sale date for each item, while creating a new document in the Sales Transaction Entry window.

To enable this tool, log into GP as the ‘sa user. Launch PSTL from your GP Navigation Pane.

In the Sales Tools section, click to make active the SOP Customer Item Lookup tool. Click on the X in the upper right-hand corner to close the window.

Next, you’ll need to build initial data from your existing history tables.  Go to Sales > Setup > Sales Order Processing.  Click on the Additional button and select Create Initial Data.  This process may take some time to run, depending on how much historical data you have.

The new Customer Item Lookup window is now available from the SOP Entry and the SOP Item Detail windows. You can open the lookup window by pressing CTRL H or by choosing Additional >> Customer Item Lookup.

As you post additional invoices, these records will be added to the table and included in the Customer Item Historical data.

Ready for more tips? Download our free ebook full of GP tips.

Need GP support? Contact CSSI.

Ever wondered how to print all the transactions in a receivables batch in GP?

When entering receivables transactions there isn’t an option to print all the transactions in a receivables batch. Most users print receivables invoices by scrolling through each invoice and printing them one at a time.

The good news is that these transactions can be mass printed using the Sales List View called Receivables Transactions in the Sales module lists. Go to the Sales Navigation Pane and select Receivables Transactions. Add a filter to select the date range of invoices and add another filter to select the document type of Sales/Invoices. Use the checkbox to ‘Mark all’ to select all invoices to be printed.

A print dialog window will open and you can select the sort order, document format and originating currency to print, along with several other checkboxes for items to be included on the invoices. Click print to send to the printer.

That’s it! Let us know if you need GP support related to printing receivables batches, or any other GP topic.

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Need help with GP?

Do you need GP technical support, or assistance with upgrades, 3rd party add-ons, or more? Contact CSSI’s experienced GP team, and we’d be glad to help.

If you are a subscriber to our monthly GP newsletter, you’re aware that we provide monthly tips and tricks for GP which can save you time, money, and frustration. Now we’ve compiled these tips into an ebook which we’d like to make available to you free of charge!

Dynamics GP Tips and Tricks is packed with useful ways to improve your day to day experience with GP. Curated by our team of GP experts, we’ve built an impressive list of tips to save you frustration.

And best of all, it’s free! (Second-best of all — this is volume 1, with more to come).

Tips include GP topics such as:

• GP System & Setup Tips
• GP Financial Tips
• GP Receivables Tips
• GP SmartList Tips
• GP Miscellaneous Tips
• Tips for Customizing your GP Home Page
• GP Management Reporter Tips

Answering questions like:

• How to use GP allocation accounts?
• How to waive finance charges?
• How to take a GP company offline
  … and many more!

Get your free download immediately:

One favorite year-end activity is inventory stock counts!  A new feature, added in GP 18.3 (October 2020 release), is the ability to export and import Stock Count data to and from Excel.

The Stock Count Schedule window has a new “Export/Import” button.  This button becomes available once the schedule has been Started.  The export action will create a file called stockcountmmddyy.xlsx in whatever file location you choose.

Once you’ve entered your counts in the spreadsheet, go to the Stock County Entry window.  Click on the Export/Import window, select Import and browse out to and select your file.  Counts can still be manually edited after the import has been run.

If you need to reimport the file, you’ll first need to click on Clear Count.

We hope this is a helpful tip for importing or exporting year-end inventory stock counts in GP. Need help? Please contact CSSI.

Year-end processing time is here again!  And the last module that gets closed is general ledger.  With the release of GP 2013, a new checkbox was added where you can mark the checkbox to “Maintain Inactive Accounts”.

 • With this option marked, it will enable additional options to maintain All Inactive Accounts or just those With Budget Amounts associated with them. Mark the option you prefer.

 • If this checkbox is not marked, then ALL inactive accounts will be deleted that meet the criteria listed below, even if they were used in a budget.

• No balance
• No activity for an open period
• No account history amounts
• Not part of an allocation account
• Not part of an unposted transaction
• No multicurrency data
• No transaction history records

We hope this is a helpful tip for handling your GP year-end close and inactive accounts! Need help? Please contact CSSI.

Do you create and post transactions in sub-modules without using a Batch ID?  If so, then you know that you must remember to post the Financial batches that get created from these transactions.

With this new feature, also added in GP 2018 R2, you can now post through the general ledger at the transaction level.

A new checkbox, “Post Through General Ledger Files”, has been added to the Posting Setup window (Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > Posting > Posting).

This option is available for the following types of transactions.

Need help with this GP tip? Please contact CSSI.

This new feature, added in GP 2018 R2, allows you to assign a shared Calendar Year maximum amount for groups of benefits and/or groups of deductions.   This is especially helpful if you have employees who contribute to two different 401K plans.

Go Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > Payroll > Ded/Ben Shared Limit to set up the shared limit amount.  Create a Group Code and enter a Description.  Select the Type (Deduction or Benefit) and enter the Calendar Year Max amount.

When a deduction/benefit Group Code is created, the shared yearly maximum will be applied to all employees who are assigned to those deductions.  All deductions/benefits in the Selected column will be applied to the shared calendar year maximum set up in the Ded/Ben Shared Limit Setup window.

If an employee is assigned to only one or some of the deduction codes under the Selected column, they will still be subject to the shared calendar year maximum assigned in the Ded/Ben Shared Limit Setup window.

Need help with this GP tip? Contact us at CSSI.