Rose Business Solutions Dynamics GP

Archive for the ‘Dynamics GP’ Category

It has come to my attention that the Other list has been released and those included in this list are throwing celebratory victory parties and are paying their temp workers (those they’ve hired to sit and press the vote button all day) their promised bonus checks.

I’m not too sure what to think about that Other List. Maybe its because I’m uncool but I have no idea who most of these people are. I know all the Microsoft big wigs from the US and I know all the bloggers but that only makes up like 20% of the list. The other people on the Other List are a mystery to me. How about you? How many people have you heard of on the Other list? Now compare that to the Doug Pitcher’s OFFICIAL 100 most famous, awesome and totally influential Dynamics people for 2012. Chances are if you are awesome yourself you know 80 to 90 percent of the people on my list. It’s can’t be a coincidence.

As always, I feel its important to recognize the proper people for their awesomeness from the past year. I had one person email me and ask when the Real List was coming out.  Wait no longer my Awesome friends. The third annual DPO100MFATIDP for 2013 is officially here.

1. Doug Pitcher – It’s my dang list so why not rig the ballot.
2. Linda Rose – Hard to move up over Mrs. Rose when she is awesome enough to take the Rose team to Tahiti for a reward trip this past year.
3. Leslie Vail – Leslie’s campaign to be on the awesome list has not gone unrewarded. It started with her plea for votes on the awesome list as the Other list is just not that cool. She is so great that even that didn’t help as she got voted in for the Other list. Now she followed up with a formal apology which is humbly accepted. You rock Leslie. Congrats on your spectacular-ness.
4. Kirill Tatarinov – Kind of here by default. When you lead MBS I guess you need to be at the top. I’ve taken pictures with him and have been surprised at how short he is. Kind of like Tom Cruise or Ryan Seacrest.
5. Victoria Yudin – Just this morning a consultant said to me “I found something on Victoria’s site that…” When a consultant can drop the single name Victoria and no one thinks of lingerie you know you’re awesome.
6. Steve Chapman – Movie (youtube counts right?) star. Demo king. If you don’t know who Steve is you don’t know how to use the internet.
7. Doug White – He just did a thousand mile walkabout in Australia. Sounds pretty tough as nails to me.
8. Tami Jones – Tami gave Doug White a hard time last year as she was listed above him on the list and was so cool she was listed twice. Does this make up for last years oversight Doug
9. Dwight Specht – Try as Dwight did he couldn’t crack the Other list. In his nomination campaign he even offered free beer. Not sure what else he could of done. No worries Dwight. You’re still awesome.
10. Aaron Donat – Senior escalation engineer at MBS. I always try to go straight to him but he’s often working on solving the economic crisis in Greece or advising Bill Gates as to where he should focus his philanthropic efforts. When I met him in person for the first time in NO he gave me something like $50 in casino chips as he didn’t want to cash them and he’d already made $50,000 at roulette (or there abouts).
11. Jivtesh Singh – MVP and all around great guy. How do I know he’s an awesome guy? Check out this blog post where he encourages everyone not to vote for him but to vote twice for David Musgrave. I also met Jivtesh at Convergence for the first time in New Orleans. He indicated I was the most humorous blogger in the community. If I can’t be helpful I might as well be entertaining.
12. Melissa Sanders- Our lovely and quite dashing office administrator. She threatened to cut my payroll check in half and not do my expense reimbursements for six months if she got as low of a rating this year. I guess bribes or threats work to make it on the top 100 list.
13. Mathcbox Twenty – I almost got in a fight with someone at the Matchbox Twenty concert. (I wish I was that tough). Some 6’ 3’ dude and his 7’ 2” girlfriend stepped in front of Tami Jones and she wasn’t impressed because it blocked her perfect view of Robby. Jeff Demaria started puffing up and I thought we were going to see some pocket protectors fly. I always get a kick out of accountants gone wild at events such as this.
14. Rebecca Bunas – AKA the Rock Star. The phrase I’m with Rebecca still works wonders.
15. Terry Heley – I have clients that want payroll updates when they are available. I always feel like I’m cheating as I usually just wait for Terry’s updates so I don’t have to monitor payroll all the time.
16. Daryl Anderson – One of our go to guys for help with web clients and Dynamics in general
17. Errol Schoenfish – Errol saw me across a crowded bar (sound like the start to an awesome song) and he yelled out “where’s Rebecca?” I take it that he knew who I was. I’m Rebecca’s groupie.
18. Julie Rague- She was so gleeful to be included last year on the awesome list she started recruiting future candidates by introducing me to everyone she knows. It went something like this: “Do you know Doug? He has this amazing list that I’m on”. Great conversation starter.
19. Mariano Gomez – I wanted to see the fight between Mariano and Mark when I listed Mariano first. I also met up with Mariano at Convergence (OK, the truth was he let me take a picture and get his autograph).
20. Mark Polino – Mark went on a free fall this year on the awesome list. I still think he’s pretty cool but without any interactions with him this year (other than me swooning from afar) its hard to make it any higher than his ranking on the Other List.
21. Kofi Annan – There is always a spot for the keynote speaker at convergence
22. Tami Jones – She fixed my laptop and sent it back with my desktop filled with pictures of all the things we did last year including Tahiti, closing down Bourbon Street, and visiting the CN tower in Toronto. I’m sure we do work when we are together but the pictures are incriminating.
23. Katie Hasbargen – DYNAA program lead. Took our group on a riverboat tour in NO. It pays to be in the good graces of awesome people like Katie.
24. Don Morton – Football coach, mentor and site leader over the Dynamics Academic Alliance (DYNAA)
25. Patrick Roth- One of the coolest support engineers around. His mad dexterity skills are the talk of the town. As he walks down the hall women AND men faint at just the sight of him. I hope you never make the Other List Patrick so you can keep heading up the charts on the Real list.
26. Lori Pugh-Erdle – North American Manager-service accounts managers is her official title. That sounds pretty official but I’d guess everyone that knows her would say she’s just plain cool.
27. Lyndsey Creamer – If you know what the DYNAA is you know Lyndsey. She’s awesome.
28. Ashley Pecoraro – New DYNAA team member that pulled off an incredible preconvergence event for all the college professors using Dynamics.
29. Sandy Sigsbee – Our office admin that keeps me doing what I should be doing. I often get a call from her scolding me for wasting my time writing silly blog posts and not looking after the customer. Sorry Sandy is a common phrase that I’ve learned to repeat most believably
30. Doug Kennedy – He’s great and deserves to be on this list.
31. Chris Dew – He’s pretty cool. I sat with him during lunch at the Partner Event. I felt like I was one of the cool kids for a meal.
32. Nick Hoban – Moving Nick up on the list last year didn’t get me that MVP vote so I’m at a loss.
33. Frank Hamelly – Whenever I see an email come over from Frank to our team I always think “Is that the real Frank Hamelly?” So I guess he must be famous.
34. Chastidy Ruiz – Fellow consultant and technical support buddy. Whenever there is giggling in the office everyone knows we are talking serious consulting type business.
35. Terry Carlton – Terry told me about a motorbike accident he was in and how he has a bionic arm now. Anyone that has been in a bike accident (bmx or motorized) must be awesome.
36. Mohammad Daoud – A great resource to the MBS community and fellow blogging buddy
37. Mark Rockwell – Mark yelled at me this year during a presentation about the cloud. (OK, I’ll tell the truth. He strongly disagreed with my opinion). I still think he’s awesome.
38. Vaidy Mohan – Vaidy last year commented that it was “Heavenly” to be on the awesome list. He even submitted an official acceptance speech. If that’s not awesome I don’t know what is.
39. Cheryl Mortvedt – Fellow support person whom I usually team up with to beat up on unsuspecting Microsoft support people at the annual partner advantage meetings.
40. Todd Schultz- Chair of the DYNAA. One of the pioneers to use a cloud based solution in an academic setting.
41. Tami Jones – Alright I caved into peer pressure. This is her third listing on the awesome list. I had about 30,001 unique emails and over 400,001 votes confirming she should be on the Real list. With those statistics you can tell that this list is far more reliable than the Other list.
42. Dana Willmer – Anyone that is willing to guide me around any ski hill is down right cool. If that ski hill is Whistler you get a spot on the awesome list.
43. Mark Stuyt- He’s not as cool as Dana even though we skied Whistler together. OK, I’m just jealous because he’s a better skier than me and he mocked my Canadian accent.
44. Jennie Davis – The partner channel head hauncho. The Partner Event is being held in Tampa this year. Something must be going right to move the event from Fargo to…anywhere else. ha.
45. Mike Feori – This will probably be Mike’s last year on the list. He retired (which is awesome) but it’s hard to stay awesome while watching tomato’s grow all day is the bulk of your duties.
46. Beat Bucher- Blogger and MVP and fellow Canadian. Most Canadians are special so he gets automatic placement on the Awesome list.
47. Liane McIlraith – There’s always that one consultant everyone wants to work with. Liane is that consultant. I often try to get her opinion on things but she is usually booked until mid next year.
48.   Jeff Demaria – He’s low on my list as he almost got me into a fight as described above. He did let me drag him out until the wee hours of the morning the final night of Convergence then missed his flight because he passed out at 5 am. (I told you not to go to sleep). I banged on his door for 15 minutes then gave up and left him (not cool, I know). All the flights were booked from NO the next day so he rented a car and drove to Houston and flew out from there. That’s pretty awesome, right?
49. Jesse Byam – When I first moved back to Canada several years back he found my resume somewhere and tried to recruit me to be a part of his team. After knowing him for a long time now I’m glad I didn’t pursue that offer as I don’t think we’d get anything done. He’s too much fun and I’m a sucker for fun things.
50. John Espinoza – When I think of a man that will take charge of things he’s it.
51. Tim Cruickshank – Poor Tim lost his way and didn’t make it to Convergence. I had people asking me in the hallways where Rebecca was and if Tim was there to do some more breakdancing.
52. Christina Philips – How do you feel to be way more awesomer than Steve Endow, Christina?
53. Steve Endow – I’ve followed Steve’s blog for a long time. He’s usually pretty technical and has great insight into Dynamics issues.
54. Francisco Hillyer – I don’t know too many people as technical as Franky and his love of all things Dynamics. In fact, whenever I head off to a conference he drools and makes me promise to take a T-shirt and grab the autographs of everyone on this awesome list. I have collected autographs but am greedy so have kept the various T-shirt and hung them on my wall. Sorry Franky.
55. Anya Ciecierski – I’m impressed Anya is holding strong on the Other list. Her popularity is soaring. Her work with the ERP bloggers is no doubt doing wonderful things.
56. Richard Whaley – The professor is a likeable character. I questioned his inclusion on the list as he totally sold out and took out paid advertising on the Microsoft site. Although anyone with a Segway must be cool so I’m keeping him on the list.
57. John Lowther – I’ve seen him on stage at a couple of Microsoft type events so assume he’s a smarty pants. He referenced my awesome list on his blog so he must be awesome.
58. David Musgrave – I’m sorry to report David finally made the Other List. I’m sure his inclusion is a relief to all but it does nothing for his standing on the Awesome list. Take it as an honor to be the last person included on the Awesome list for 2013, David.

Notable exclusions:

• Colin Powell- One and done inclusion on the Real list. He was cool because he came and spoke at Convergence in 2012 but I haven’t heard from him since
• Bethany Eighmy – Decided to leave the DYNAA team for greener pastures. She’s still cool but her awesomeness certainly took a beating as she no longer hangs with the awesome crowd on a daily basis
• Barack Obama
• Elvis Presley
• Lebron James
• Charles Ramsey

Final voting has been done. Adjustments are anticipated and probably expected depending on future presents and bribes received.

Anyone on the above list can proudly use the DPO100MFATIDP for 2013 label on their email signature as desired.

Congratulations and have another great year of being Awesome.

A Dynamics GP Management Reporter Income Statement can easily be created from scratch.

You just need to create a Row Definition and a Column Definition, and then include them in a Report Definition, and print.

Simple.

These are the three components:

Here is a Row Definition:

 

Here is a Column Definition:

 

Here is a Report Definition:

 

 

If you’re used to FRx, Management Reporter will feel very comfortable to you.

Here is a quick video I put together that shows a glimpse of Management Reporter:

 

 

A good way to get started is to try the Report Wizard to create your first few reports. It walks you through the process of creating a report, and takes advantage of your chart of accounts and your account format.

This is a quick demo that shows this being used:

 

 

The drama is building. The countdown is on. I can hardly wait for the release of the “Other List” so we can enjoy another year of snarky awesomeness awards. The whole dynamics world is clamoring about the possible inclusion on the honored Awesome list  (who wouldn’t, it’s awesome) but some are still campaigning for the other list. Here are a few campaigns under way.

My favorite shameless plug is Leslie Vail’s. She mentions the “Other List” but firmly plants herself on the Awesome list. A good multipurpose advertisement. She gets my vote for both lists although I confess (ha) that I hope she is is in the low nineties on the other list so she has a chance at top billing on the awesome list.

http://dynamicsconfessions.blogspot.com/2013/04/i-want-to-be-on-doug-pitchers-list-vote.html

The professor wants to get in on the Other list. No mention of the awesome list here so that severely limits his admittance to the awesome list.

http://secure.campaigner.com/Campaigner/Public/t.show?5bx0b–2p5b2-9u56230&_v=2

Steve Endow goes all inclusive on his campaign strategy. I like his list. Most, if not all will get some Awesomeness love.

http://community.dynamics.com/gp/b/gpdynland/archive/2013/04/09/2013-top-100-most-influential-people-in-microsoft-dynamics.aspx

But probably the most ingenious strategy goes to Dwight Specht who is offering free beer for anyone that votes for him. That just might get him nominated to the other list if he’s not careful.

http://thedeathofreason.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/hey-look-at-me-im-potentially-influential/

In watching all the above strategies over the course of the past month I’ve come up with my own few pointers on getting on the “Other List” followed by a few tips that will increase your chances on getting on the 2013 Awesome list. Hope you enjoy.

• Add an “Other List” link to your email signature. Surely someone you communicate with cares about you and will vote for you
• Get office mates to put an “Other List” link for you in their email signature. Why not flood the world with your name. For example, It’s amazing how many “please vote for Linda Rose. Page 9 on the “Other List”” emails and discussions that have been sent around our office.
• Get your spouse or significant other to put an “Other List” link in their email. That will keep you somewhat at arms length but still tap into your ancestral pool of potential voters. If your grandma and grandpa or mom and dad won’t vote for you, who will
• The goldmine is to get your kids to start a social media campaign for dear old Mom or Dad. You bought them a smart phone. Why not put them to work? They are on it all day anyways and you can’t tell me that’s not a better use of time than texting during class. You can even send them a note to school that they have your permission to use their phone for that sole purpose.
• Hire a temp worker to vote for you. Believe it or not you can vote as many times as you want for yourself. Right now each vote is worth about .01%. I tested this out by voting for Leslie a hundred times. I moved her up a full 1%. Your welcome Leslie.
• I guess if you can find a sucker like me to vote a hundred times for you there is no need for a temp worker. Maybe the relative approach is the lest expensive way to go. Think of how valuable Grandma or Grandpa would feel if you told them to keep pushing that button or the world is going to end (ha, Lost reference for those that caught that)
• Consistency is key. Keep blogging and mentioning how much it will mean to be on the “Other List”.
• If you haven’t started blogging, you better. Everyone I know is voting for David Musgrave like fifty times just because he’s a famous blogger and also in the attempt to get him finally nominated to that “Other List”. (I wish there was a way to take off nominations, like a minus one vote. I have no idea who some of these candidates are and if I don’t know them shouldn’t that decrease their influence?)
• Finally, if all else fails, cheat. Surely there is some type of script that could be developed to vote automatically. Come on, David Musgrave, if you can’t develop an automated approach to this maybe you don’t belong on the “Other List”.

Ways to get on the Doug Pitcher’s OFFICIAL 100 most famous, awesome and totally influential Dynamics people for 2013:

• Be Awesome
• Write a blog saying you wish you were awesome. I excluded Patrick Roth last year from my awesome list only to have him follow up with “I’m so depressed, I’m not awesome this year” post. To be honest, I didn’t know Patrick even knew I thought he was awesome
• Or let me know you care by introducing yourself. I’m pretty sure half of the people I meet are secretly trying to bump their chances on my most prestigious list
• Send chocolate
• Please don’t send too much chocolate. Unlike the “Other List” I’ll know if you are padding the odds in your favor

Thought I’d throw this out as I ran across this last week. After running a Greenshades update a client was getting this error:

I hit up Greenshades support and got this back:

*******************

Thank you for your email. Wanted to allow you to know that the error message that is being seen is a new issue dealing with our current update. We are currently investigating this issue, but we do have a work around in order to allow the client to proceed. At this point, have the client try to launch GP as Admin (Right Click GP icon > Run as Administrator ). Once GP launches, and the client signs in. Have them try to launch the Greenshades Center and see if the error message comes up. We should have a resolution for this issue soon, but right now these instructions should resolve the issue for the moment. We should be addressing a fix in a near future update.

*********************

Easy workaround.

Last year I worked closely with customers that performed data dumps into excel from Dynamics GP.

There are the easy exports where they just publish the report in text mode and then open the same in excel and I’ve seen customers that love formatting data in excel, spending countless hours formatting and at the end they have to do it again because data was refreshed.

 

There are others that are more complicated but yield better results, like Excel Reports, SSRS or plain T-SQL extracts and just very few who take advantage of the Export Solutions but that will be a subject of a future post so stay tuned.

 

Smartlist is a very useful tool within GP but some customers find it confusing because of the filters and how data is stored in GP.

One of the questions that made me write this post for you is, How can I sort data in Smartlist using more than one field, so I don’t have to do this in Excel?

 

The solution is simple but believe it or not, I learned that not many people know about this, I queried my own colleagues and I was shocked.

Here is my revelation for you, hope I can save you some time …

Use the Order By feature in Smartlist. Let’s go thru a sample:

Step 1.- Open Smartlist

Step 2.- Open Financial > Account Transactions

Step 3.- Double click on the * named smartlist

Step 4.- In the Search Account Transactions window click on the Order By button

Step 5.- Add the sort rules/levels from the list on the left, by using the Insert button

in my sample I am sorting by Account, then by the amounts, but I want all debits  from highest amount to the lowest, then I want all Credit postings same rule and lastly I want to sort by the Series.

 

And here is the result, so no more single column sorting!!!

Step 6.- Click OK twice and see your results

 

Here is another sample where I am sorting by Journal entry then Highest Debit Amount to lowest and lowest Credit Amount.

 

 

Until my next post!!!

Francisco G. Hillyer

Hello all, I would like to provide you with some information on what to look when Dynamics GP seems to be working slow. As you may already know Dynamics GP is a process driven application and you may experience slow performance when specific processes are performed in GP please take a look:

 

· While posting might be due to the PJOURNAL table as you know checks post too or remittance is being printed separately

· Client workstations should have a default printer setup and online, remove invalid printers

· While opening windows, the autocomplete feature may cause performance issues and if not used can be turned off

· While login into Dynamics GP or utilizing 3rd party dictionaries as well if Menu Master table (SY07110) became too large.

· The location of the modified dictionaries other than local workstation

· Certain Smartlist reminders might interfere with login into Dynamics GP

· You may have shortcuts to network locations that are no longer mapped or available

· Printing to file directly into the client/remote computer instead of the hosted server user folders

· OLE Notes path in Dex.ini

· SQL AutoClose and AutoShrink options not set to false

· Virus scanner setup not excluding the following extensions (CNK, DIC, CHM, SET, INI, DAT, IDX, VBA, LOG, LDF, MDF)

· The Dynamics GP homepage smartlist favorites

· The Dynamics GP homepage outlook integration

· Enabling tracing options in DEX.ini

· Bad user defined triggers in SQL

· Bad configuration of SQL server memory allocation

· SQL server or Dynamics GP server available disk space

· SQL server log file is full and is not set to Autogrow

· TNT*.* files, your %TEMP% folder has not been cleaned

· Non-compliant SQL server/GP Server/Client hardware

· Different DB owner than DYNSA

· Little or no SQL server maintenance (Table Fragmentation)

· You might be missing table indexes or statistics

· When exporting a budget, thru the budget wizard it seems locked (if you are using the excel wizard to export, make sure the “save as” dialog is not on the background, Alt-Tab to it as it must have been opened and its behind your main GP windows.

· Too much history (You can archive historical years, specially if you have large tables like Item Master, Customers, Vendors) Believe me I ran reconcile one time and it took 6.5 days on a company with more than half a million SKUs and 5 years of sales.

 

I have witnessed how few administrators that in order to preserve enough disk space they have a tendency of running SHRINK on the SQL server, this obviously will fragment tables affecting performance. I have a post that covers that here.

 

If you want us to take a look at your environment don’t forget to contact us, and as always when troubleshooting record answers for the following questions:

1.- Can you replicate the issue? write down steps that let you reproduce the issue.

2.- If its related to posting, please note the module( s ), how many transactions are in the batch, how long does the process last? how long did the process last before?

3.- On a Server/Client install, can you replicate on the server?

4.- Can you reproduce on all or other clients?

5.- Are there any 3rd party products running on the same SQL/GP server or together with Dynamics GP?

6.- Are there any customizations in GP?

 

Until my next post and let us know if we can help!!

Francisco G. Hillyer

Hello all, here is something I was asked recently:

“I have processed my 2012 payrolls for the year, my IT is always on the latest and greatest regarding service packs, hotfixes, updates etc, and they installed the 2013 payroll tax tables update, and I have not executed the Payroll Year End, can I close it anyway?”

Short answer: Yes you can close it, but it will be incorrect.

Please if this happens to you, make sure to restore the Dynamics DB prior to the install of the payroll tax table update because I am sure you always do a backup of your databases prior to any updates installed right?

Leslie Vail has a post from 2011 where she explains how FICA/S wages and withholding is calculated Leslie’s Post

NOTE FOR LESLIE (Step 5b says “he year-end” instead of “the year-end”)

But I wanted to provide a graphical representation of it

 

Until my next post…

 

Francisco G. Hillyer

So just like every year we go thru similar steps, I am providing some help along the way, many of the processes described here belong to a published KB from Microsoft as well links to posts from other resources but I wanted you to have them all in one place.

Please note that some of the links require you to have access to Customersource/Partnersource.

 

Difference between Year End Update and Payroll Tax Table Updates

The Year End Update download contains software changes to allow you to comply with 2012 filing requirements as well as the most recent fixes for your Dynamics application.

The 2013 Payroll Tax Table Updates contains updated rates and tax changes as well it might contain FICA/Medicare changes to be applied when processing 2013 payrolls.

Here is the link for the 2012 US Payroll Year End Update: Click Here

Here is the link for the US Payroll Tax Updates: Click Here

It is important to mention that you can install the Year end update prior to your last payroll for 2012, however do not install the Tax table updates before your last 2012 payroll as you might end up with a wrong calculation.

Always backup your data, your .DIC files as well.

 

Setting up / Adjusting Fiscal Periods in GL

Microsoft provides a KB article number 871679 KB871679

 

Closing Dynamics GP GL

STEP 1: CLOSE ALL OTHER MODULES

Complete the posting/closing procedures for the modules in the suggested order prior to closing GL, please note that if you are not using a particular module, just skip it:

Follow the instructions provided in each KB

Inventory: KB 872713

Receivables Management: KB 857444

Payables Management: KB 875169

Fixed Asset Management: KB 865653

Analytical Accounting:

For Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 Service Pack 2 and greater, functionality was added to consolidate balances for dimensions in Analytical Accounting. Please review KB 960356 to make sure you have properly marked the dimensions that you want to be consolidated  during the year-end process. Please note that there is no separate year-end process that needs to be run in the Analytical Accounting module. When the year-end close process is run for General Ledger, it will automatically consolidate the balances and move the transactions in Analytical Accounting for dimensions that were properly marked.

PAYROLL year end procedures are independent of the procedures in other modules and are usually performed at the end of the calendar year. Please see this KB 850663

STEP 2: POST FINAL ADJUSTING ENTRIES

Adjusting entries are considered most of the time as entries that allow you to correct errors that were made when transactions were recorded as well they might be utilized to assign revenues or expenses to period or periods in which revenues were earned or expenses incurred.

If you need to in setup or adjust your fiscal periods in GP, please review the section “Setting up / Adjusting Fiscal Periods in GL” at the beginning of this article.

STEP 3: VERIFY ACCOUNTS POSTING TYPE

The posting type helps Dynamics GP determine whether an account will be closed to the retained earnings account or if the account balance will be brought forward to the next fiscal year.

Follow these steps to print an account list:

1. On the Reports menu, point to Financial, and then click Account.
2. In the Reports list, select All Accounts, and then click New.
3. In the Option box, type all accounts.
4. Click to select the Inactive Accounts check box. (if you want to delete inactive accounts)
5. Click Destination to specify a report destination, and then click OK.
6. Click Print.

STEP 4: CLOSE FISCAL PERIODS FOR 2012 (OPTIONAL)

Use the fiscal periods setup window to close all fiscal periods open for the 2012 year. This will prevent transactions from posting to the wrong period or the wrong year.

NOTE: If you still use Microsoft FRx, keep one period in the most recent historical year open to prevent the error: “FRX Print Engine Failed to Load the Company Calendar” see this KB 874932

STEP 5: PERFORM MAINTENANCE ON FINANCIAL SERIES (OPTIONAL)

Run the check links procedure on the financial series group of modules.

Make sure that you always have a backup and that you can confirm you can restore from it.

STEP 6: VERIFY SETTINGS IN GL SETUP WINDOW

If you are like me and always want to keep historical records, you must enable the checkbox next to Accounts and Transactions in the Maintain History area of the General Ledger Setup Window.

NOTE: If for some reason you have the checkbox enabled for “Close to Divisional Segments” and you are no longer closing to Divisional Segments or by mistake someone else enabled it and not using it pay attention:

I have discovered in the past a BUG in dynamics GP that is still there as I reported in this blog in August 14, 2012, if you would like to read more about this important step please click here: YEAR END CLOSE BUG 64711

STEP 7: MAKE ANOTHER BACKUP (OR BACKUP IF YOU HAVE NOT)

Make sure all users are out of the system

Remove stranded user sessions, you can follow this post Removing Stranded Sessions

Backup DYNAMICS database

Backup all company databases if you are unsure which databases to backup you can query the company master table (SY01500) and retrieve the names, the following script can help you determine that information.

select INTERID, CMPNYNAM from dynamics..sy01500

Make sure to backup as well the Dynamics GP code folder

STEP 8: PRINT A TRIAL BALANCE REPORT (OPTIONAL)

Use the Trial Balance report window to print a year end detailed trial balance report. Even when this step is optional it is highly recommended to be followed.

STEP 9: PRINT YEAR END FINANCIAL STATEMENTS (MR, FRx, Other)

Print any year end financial statements that are required. The most common are:

• Balance Sheet
• Profit and Loss Statement
• Statement of Cash Flows
• Statement of Retained Earnings

STEP 10: SETUP A NEW FISCAL YEAR

Before you can perform the year end closing routine, you must setup a new fiscal year, please follow the instructions on the section at the top of this article to Setup or Adjust Fiscal Periods.

STEP 11: CLOSE THE YEAR

• Click on the Microsoft Dynamics GP Menu > Tools > Routines > Financial > Year End Closing.
• If its not specified, you can key in the Retained Earnings Account.
• Optional: Specify the Starting Journal Entry
• Click on Close Year

STEP 12: BACKUP YOUR SYSTEM

Make another backup of the Dynamics DB and all the company Databases.

 

Thank you for reading I would like to mention that this post enhances Microsoft KB 888003 

 

Until my next post

Francisco G. Hillyer

Hello all, it has been quite some time since my last post, kind of missing all of you, specially with the holidays approaching etc.

This time I would like to share with you something that I recently learned “the hard way” obviously on a support case.

First of all, I want to express the importance of validating your information and that the engineers/partners that are/were involved in your company setup of Dynamics GP were bound to the best practices established by Microsoft and supported by many of my colleagues.

In my case, a customer did a side by side upgrade of SQL, with this came the issue of not having the DYNSA login in the new SQL instance, we followed certain processes to make sure DYNSA was the owner of the Databases Dynamics GP is using.

But you may ask who or what is DYNSA? my friend Mariano Gomez has a post very complete about this subject and you can find it here: Mariano’s DYNSA Info since I am not reinventing the wheel take a look at Mariano’s blog its packed with information for all audiences (GP related !!).

So when I was working on this customer DYNSA setup, I suddenly remembered another case where I was having issues with a third party, I jumped into their environment (literally) and started investigating this DB configuration, to my surprise the owner of the databases was an AD account not DYNSA. I proceeded to replace the owner and then certain SQL reports started working and producing results. I am still intrigued on why, but I will do a full research on spare time.

So back on the game for this customer issue I was having while trying to archive data, just imagine a SOP30300 table with 11 million records and a huge base of customers.

The queries running were taking countless hours to execute not even mentioning the impact on the processor. memory and of course user experience.

I learned that the customer had a “Maintenance Plan” where they executed the Shrink process on SQL, as you may know I am a SQL enthusiast and I recalled an important blog post from another noted resource Mr. Pinal Dave aka “The SQL Authority” here is his post about why is BAD to shrink a DB Shrink is Bad for you… there is one section in the article that explains that Shrinking a DB to obtain disk space will actually fragment your tables, obviously to reduce fragmentation you rebuild indexes. So this maintenance plan was being executed to reduce disk space, then to improve performance, and the disk space was gone again. Wise words from a mentor that prefers to be in the shadows once said “with current prices on storage why waste time shrinking when you can focus on performance”.

I ended up tweaking some SQL scripts to automate a SQL job on finding fragmented tables in the DB and executing that as part of DB maintenance, as I said “go buy another disk drive and add it to your server, move the logs to this new disk and keep data apart from the logs and you will be better than now”.

If you need help, let us know, our team at RoseASP and RBS we have experience in solving this type of issues.

I hope my experience helps you for a better community.

 

Until my next post

Francisco G. Hillyer

Dynamics GP 2013 includes new functionality that allows you to create prepayments in accounts payable and assign them to specific purchase orders. You can easily do this from the Purchase Order Entry screen. You can enter a prepayment amount that you can then generate a check for using the regular computer check functionality in GP. Or you can create a manual check transaction that is associated with the purchase order.

Lorna Link at InterDyn BMI covers this topic in much more depth at the ERP Software blog, here: http://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/2012/10/gp-2013-new-feature-purchase-order-prepayments/

I created this short video to show this new functionality in action: http://youtu.be/RXB7-xmf_jo