This post will introduce the concept of period allocation keys, show how they are setup with the Period Allocation Key Wizard, and how they are integrated with the budget.  

Budgeting is important because companies need to know their actual versus predicted forecasts for the year. Period allocation keys in Dynamics 2009 make the budgeting process easier by allowing users to create budget models that can be used over several budget time frames. Not only do period allocation keys duplicate the allocation data for multiple budgets, they can also help reflect fluctuations brought on by season. 

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The CRM E² team released a new whitepaper a few weeks ago titled CRM 4.0 – xRM Application Scalability Study. The paper goes into detail about the multi-tenancy and xRM capabilities of Dynamics CRM 4.0, the virtualization features of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, and more.

If you want to view the related blog on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog, click here to go to the site.

If you want to go ahead and download the whitepaper, click here to go direcly to the Microsoft Download Center.

If you missed our Free Webinar on Electronic Bank Reconciliation and would like a copy of the media to view contact us at apardue@ibis.com 

Find out what the advantages are to using Dynamics GP E-Reconcile.  How you can improve your business’s bank reconciliation method.  As well as, see how to setup and use E-Reconcile. 

Electronic Bank Reconciliation
Date: 7/27/2010 11:00-12:00 EST
Speaker: Abby Moore, Consultant
eReconcile advantages, setup and usage.

During my time as a CRM Consultant, I’ve realized something very important. However troublesome the journey, there’s always a silver lining – experience. So even though I’ve only been in the game a short amount of time, I’ve come up with a few best practices that I prefer to follow when implementing Dynamics CRM. For those who know me, I tend to be…opinionated is a good way to put it. So, yes there may be other ways to utilize CRM and still get by.

It’s known that each process flow – sales, marketing, service, SOP – requires a different path, but these should provide you with broad and useful guidance inside of CRM. Do note that the list below is by all means incomplete (Oh yes, I have plenty more…). These statements are an example of the tips that have given my clients – regardless of industry and business practice – the ability to enjoy clean, useful, and more importantly, valuable, CRM systems.

• For DATA ENTRY…Before importing data into the CRM system, spending a little bit of time running through and shaping the spreadsheet. Cleaning up the rows and columns will save you hours of data cleansing down the road. CRM is only as good as the data that is placed into it. And who knows – you may have missed a column that you need inside of the system.
• For PROJECT MANAGEMENT…Document, document, document. There is no such thing as “documenting too much.” Clients love nothing more than to see a clean, printed, color document with their logo on the front (who doesn’t?) and all the CRM information they could need. Documenting too little, however? That (unfortunately) exists.
• For PROCESS FLOW…When converting to Customer records (in the situation where the Customer does NOT exist in the system yet), I always recommend converting to at least an Account and a Contact. This is not only a time saver, but it is proper structure. After speaking with and qualifying a Lead, you are always going to have a company and a person in the system (Who signed the Contract? What organization did you type into Hoover’s before meeting with them to do a demo?). The one exception may be the Opportunity. If there’s no potential revenue to begin working within the next 6 months (depending on your average sales pipeline time and size), you can probably hold off on the Opportunity until you see it in the pipeline and can properly document what is necessary.
• For ATTRIBUTE ADJUSTMENT…When renaming fields, rename from the Attribute level the majority of the time. The main time renaming from the Form level comes in handy is when you have more than one field that needs to be named the same. (Example, “Date”). You can rename them in a unique manner on the Attribute level, and make them uniform on the Form level. The reason for this is mainly due to Advanced Find search capabilities. If you name everything the same, you will have more than one field in the AF search on that particular entity (causes much confusion).
• When CREATING FIELDS…When creating a new field, once you save the record after creation, you CANNOT change the type. So always be sure that you have the correct field type selected, otherwise you will have to create another field. So after I create a Picklist, I cannot “change” it to a character field. Same thing with the schema name – once the field is created, the schema information set in stone. To “change” the field, you would only be able to create a new field and remove the old one. I always document exactly what I need to create BEFORE creating them in the system. If you’re working for a client, create a spreadsheet of the fields (Display Name, Field Type, Requirement Level, Number of Characters (for Nvarchar fields), Potential Values (for Picklist or Bit fields), and any additional information) – this is important for proper generation and understanding. Nothing’s worse than realizing you’ve made a dumb mistake and having to delete and recreate 100 fields. And then justifying (or more accurately, trying to justify) the additional work to the client…
• For WORKFLOW…Always map and plan your workflow first before building the structure: this will help you just in case you make a mistake in the structure. Plus, mapping it out allows you to understand exactly what needs to happen. You may need a wait condition instead of a check condition – you can’t change this after you build the workflow.
• For WORKFLOW…You can’t change conditions in the logic, so always make sure that you’re creating the workflow properly from top to bottom. This statement certainly ties in with the workflow best practice listed above. When adjusting the structure of a workflow, if you are removing/adjusting part of the basic structure, deleting one step will remove everything after it.
• For ADMINISTRATION & TROUBLESHOOTING…Never delete a used security role. I know, you have the ability to do it, but I wouldn’t. Especially if a CRM user (or more than one CRM user) currently has the role. Deleting a utilized security role will kick those respective users out of the system. If you do want to get it out of the system, do this. Copy the role and plan on using the new role. Rename the old one to say “UNUSED” or “OLD.” Spend some time making sure all of the users are not assigned that particular security role. Run reports, AF views, whatever will help you verify that no one currently has that particular role. Then remove it from the system. This will keep you from getting dozens of angry, frantic emails.
• A CRM/OUTLOOK TIME SAVER…Utilize CRM shortcuts from inside of an email. After you track an email or Contact from Outlook inside of CRM, there are two buttons inside of the individual Outlook record that will take you directly to the respective records inside of CRM: View Record and View Parent (this will take you to the actual CRM record). This is really handy if you’re converting an email to an Opportunity.

Do you have any tips or tricks that you use when implementing CRM? If you do, I’d love to hear them!

If you work with Dynamics GP Payables Management (PM) and Receivables Management (RM) modules you will notice a difference between how fully paid transactions are handled. 

• In Payables Management a vendor invoice that you have paid in full will be automatically transferred to History.  The Dynamics GP inquiry window will show “HIST”.  
• In Receivables Management the Sales Invoice that you have received full payment and have applied the full amount of the payment to the Sales Invoice is still in “OPEN” status.   

Why does Dynamics GP Receivables Management handle fully paid documents differently?

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If you missed our Free webinar “Best Practices for General Ledger” and would like to view the video contact us at apardue@ibis.com we’ll send you the link.

What are the best practices for General Ledger?  Watch our new Best Practices series to find out. 

Best Practices “Series” – GL
Date: 7/13/2010 11:00-12:00 EST
Speaker: Lisa Price, I.B.I.S. Principal Consultant

Discover how to drive More to the Bottom Line with Brent Grover, six-time bestselling distribution management author and 20+ year veteran/executive in the distribution industry, presented by Advanced Distribution Partners (ADP).

Move beyond the analysis paralysis to drive More to the Bottom Line!

Join us for this exclusive webinar with distribution industry expert, Brent Grover.  He provides insight on how to outperform the pack, providing distributors with practical advice to:

• Optimize margins with more accurate costing
• Make more money in this muddled economy
• Achieve a new level of sustainable people productivity

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I was watching “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” this weekend (sub titles and all).  At 2:22 into the movie, during a scene where an imprisoned Mikhail reviews some document Lisbeth delivers to him, I was stunned to see a Dynamics GP AP entry window appear as a screen shot in one of the documents.  Technically it was an Alternate Dynamics GP window as the MC2 logo was clearly displayed in the center of the screen. 

And they say GP isn’t an international product…

While installing Reporting Central’s product, The Closer, we ran into an interesting problem.

After a seemingly normal install, the product started up and prompted us for the login credentials to be used to access the SQL server.  This is completely normal.  We entered the credentials, tested them successfully and clicked Accept.  The system paused for 15 seconds then returned the below error:

Since we were using the sa login and were confident the server name was correct, we knew that the server side of this was fine.  After a couple of quick emails to Shane Hall at Reporting Central, we found the problem:

• In the program files directory, an XML config file is found.  The login information you enter is in this file.
• When I tried to edit the file, I got a file permission error when saving.  The file wasn’t read only – this was a windows security issue that was not letting me edit or write a file.
• The machine was Windows 7.  The user was a local Admin, but UAC was activated.  By default, this denied write and modify permissions to the Program Files directory in which the Closer was installed. 
• So, Closer would collect the data for the login, but be unable to write to the config file.  When we started Closer and entered the login info, it assumed it stored it and, when the app went to use it and it wasn’t actually there, it threw the above error.

We were able to easily solve the problem by right clicking the executable and choosing “Run as Administrator”.  Everything worked just fine at that point.

As an aside, I love this product.  If you don’t own it, buy it.  Especially if you use Purchase Orders and have to deal with reconciling Accrued Purchases.

Microsoft just released a new Service Pack for GP 2010 for mid-year tax updates

CLICK HERE to link to Partnersource

CLICK HERE to access Customersource

Tax Update

(Includes the 2010 US Payroll Tax Update and Hire Act changes and 2010 Canadian Payroll Mid Year Tax Update)