What about financial forecasting and collaborative budgetting?  What are the plans for Management Reporter and these important areas?  I spoke to a reliable resource close to the Management Reporter and Microsoft Forecaster teams and I was told that there are no immediate plans to add this functionality into Management Reporter.  The team will continue to support this functionality in the existing Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 tool, and for the foreseeable future they will rely on this product and the other 3rd party applications out on the market to meet this need.

Look for more exciting enhancement to Management Reporter, but don’t look for a collaborative budgetting or forecasting tool any time in the near future.

Although you, or Tridea Partners as a Dynamics partner, can configure Dynamics GP or Dynamics AX to handle complex tax tables, we recommend using one of the third party solutions that handles the tax updates automatically.

One of the leading solutions is by Avalara (www.avalara.com), the creator of AvaTax – a cloud-based system – to help address your unique sales tax challenges. With complete integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX, AvaTax removes the difficulty of managing sales tax compliance by helping to eliminate the tedious work and complexity that goes into calculating, reporting, filing and remitting taxes.

Sales tax automation software can help:

• Achieve full end-to-end sales tax compliance
• Automate manual processes involved with managing tax tables and updates
• Eliminate compliance holes associated with using a flat state rate or zip code-based systems
• Reduce your audit exposure through ‘bullet-proof’ compliance
• Outsource all of your sales tax filing requirements
• Automate the paperless collection and management of certificates

Managing sales tax can be complex and time consuming. Depending on your unique requirements, a sales tax software application may dramatically simplify things for your organization.

The batch can be setup just like a GL recurring batch by updating the drop down menu for the Frequency field (shown in the screenshot below). The amount in the Recurring Postings field (shown in the screenshot below) indicates how many times this batch will be available for posting. Each time the batch is posted, the transaction dates are updated, but the cash receipt transaction amounts within the batch stay the same. If utilizing the EFT module, EFT Cash Receipt transactions can also be entered in recurring batches.

Furthermore, GL Recurring batches have been updated in Dynamics GP 2010 as well. The new feature that has been added enables the user to Clear Recurring Amounts for Recurring batches after posting. This can be accomplished by simply checking the checkbox next to Clear Recurring Amounts in the batch entry window (screenshot shown below). This feature is similar to Quick Journals, but is more customizable. This feature helps to decrease data entry errors by allowing common journal entries to be created with ease. In addition, this feature prevents a user from accidentally posting a recurring batch without making necessary changes as the batch will not post until the user updates the amounts for the journal entry.

1. First, create a new field (currency) on the Campaign Form.
2. Create a process workflow on the Opportunity entity that updates the Source Campaign tied to a given Opportunity.

a. Scope = Organization
b. Start when = Record status Changes
c. Add Check Condition Step = Opportunity Status equals [Won]
d. If condition is met Add Step = Update: Source Campaign
e. Click on Set Properties

f. The Campaign form will open
g. Click in the Actual Revenue field (that was created in Step 1)
h. Select Operator: Increment by
i. Look for: Opportunity
Actual Revenue
j. Click on Add

3. Close and Activate the workflow
4. Now, every time an opportunity tied to a Source Campaign is won, the Actual Revenue amount gets incremented/added in that Source Campaign form.

This is just one of the uses of the “increment by” feature in workflows. It obviously can be used to update other numerical /date fields on related entities. There is also an option to “decrement by” and “multiply by” which is also very useful.

Gartner’s report highlights Microsoft Dynamics AX as specifically being targeted at midmarket and upper midmarket organizations. It offers broad and robust functionality in distribution, manufacturing, professional services, retail and public sector, and delivers low TCO through bi-directional integration with other Microsoft products and technologies.  Microsoft Dynamics AX can serve multinational companies in the core and the upper midmarket with out of the box functionality. Microsoft Dynamics AX allows support of multiple sites or business units in one single instance, including those that operate in different countries and need country-specific localizations and currencies.

Magic Quadrant for ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies

The Navigation List can be easily modified to include search criteria relevant to the individual by changing or adding columns, as well as adding filters on the columns selected. Utilizing multiple filters, the resulting query delivers specific data for review and analysis. Once data is retrieved, the list can be easily exported to excel, emailed to a colleague and saved. These saved lists can also be made available to users assigned to a specific role or can they can be shared with just individual users.

The Navigation List contains an Action Pane from which the user can execute transactions related to a particular item in the list. Selecting a task from the Action Pane ribbon links the user to the corresponding transaction screen in Dynamics GP. A big benefit of using the Navigation List to carry out transactions is that the transaction screen will prepopulate with header data related to the selected customer, vendor, account, etc. information, saving time on data entry.

The Navigation List also includes an Information Pane which gives the user the ability to drill down on detail information for each of the selected items in the list, allowing users to quickly review data without having to navigate through various screens.

The Navigation List is a powerful search, data retrieval and workflow tool within all Dynamics GP Series and should be readily utilized. For those users who have completely embraced the usefulness of the Navigation Lists, Microsoft has introduced the Navigation List Builder tool in Dynamics GP 2010. This module serves to further customize and integrate the lists to include exactly the data that they want, whether it is from a table in Microsoft Dynamics GP or any 3rd party product, as well as external SQL tables and views.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter integrates the following entities in Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM:

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter includes a series of map templates that provide default field mapping between source and destination entities. These templates are editable and new templates can be created to support customizations you have made on the source and destination systems. The CRM Adapter is currently available through the partner channel at no charge.

These new Word Templates can be setup by going to Reports > Template Maintenance.  Modified versions of reports customized in Report Writer can be used to generate new Word Templates allowing for custom fields to be added to the template.  There are many benefits that come with using the Word templates.  One of the most important is that many users are already familiar with Microsoft Word and its functionality.  Because of this, there is nearly no learning curve and users are able to make effortless changes.  Additionally, images can be stored for logo’s and applied to all documents for a specific GP company by going to Reports > Template Configuration > Images.  While Report Writer only allowed for one modified version of each report, the Word Template functionality allow for multiple versions.  These templates can also be assigned to particular master records such as Customers and Vendors making customizing your business’s Invoices and Purchase Orders easier than ever.

Blending the terms can sometimes be problematic, however, when discussing the requirements that these manufacturing modes place on ERP software systems.

Batch Production is really just what the name implies: groups or “batches” of a product are produced together, even though the item being produced can take the form of a discrete unit. Process Manufacturing is typically characterized by output that does not take the form of discrete units. Furthermore, the product cannot typically be “disassembled” back into its component parts, and it often involves the extraction of 1 or more products from a particular input (example: juice, pulp, and an oil might all be extracted from the same fruit).

While Microsoft Dynamics GP does not have a specific solution set developed for batch or process manufacturing, it can and has been successfully deployed in both environments, as long as certain requirements are not present. Microsoft Dynamics AX, on the other hand, has a solution set specifically developed to meet the needs of both batch and process manufacturers, making it an extremely attractive solution for those industries.

There are some software system requirements that, although not specifically related to the mode of production, tend to be present in batch and process manufacturing environments because of the nature of the industries involved (example: lot number traceability in food & beverage). Below is a list of some requirements, as well as a quick look at whether or not related functionality is available in Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX. The intent here is not to characterize how comparatively robust is the functionality in each system, but simply to indicate whether or not some
functionality is available that could potentially meet the needs of a client.
Requirements that are common for both batch and process manufacturers:

• Managing shelf life / Expiration dates – Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX
• Traceability of Lot Numbers  - Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX
• Tracking of Batch Attributes / Batch Records – Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX
• Quality Assurance and Quality Control – Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX
• Number of Decimal Places for Tracking Inventory Quantities (when very small quantities of an ingredient are used in formulas/recipes): 5 decimals in Dynamics GP; 8 decimals in Dynamics AX
• Multiple Units of Measure per Item – Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX

Requirements more commonly associated with process manufacturing:

• Ability to Transact the production of planned Co-Products (multiple outputs from the same production process) that should share the cost of the production inputs – Dynamics AX
• Ability to Transact the production of By-Products  – Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX
• Tracking Catch Weight (example: # of fish and lbs. of fish both need to be tracked independently) – Dynamics AX
• Planning and managing the packaging and containerization of bulk product into multiple forms based on actual yields – Dynamics AX