Dynamics GP San Diego VAR News: ERP Reporting

Local Microsoft Dynamics GP Implementation, Reports design, Custom Programming in Dexterity, eConnect, SQL Stored Procs, Consolidated FRx reporting, including international SAP Business One Subsidiaries

If you are in reports design tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly this ERP application was known as Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise, please do know that older Great Plains Accounting for Dos, Windows and Macintosh is different from Great Plains Dynamics GP and is out of scope in this publication), we would like to give you small orientation article.  We will start with reports classification, then cover GP associated tools and then generic reporting tools:

1.       Report classification.  This first small step can save you a lot of time and potentially rework efforts.  Please, try to think about your report and in which category it fits: financial report, business logic specific (often referred as managerial reporting), other than pure financial (it is Sales, Purchasing, Project Performance and Timeline, Employee Per Plant, Manufacturing Budgets, etc), or if it is Business Form (Sales Invoice, Customer Statement, Purchase Order, Project Card, Picking Ticket, Bill of Lading), or if it is international reporting (when you have to design Great Plains reports in your country native language)

2.       Financial Reporting.  If in the first paragraph you decided to classify your report as Financials, likely that you will have to deal with Balance Sheet, P&L, Statement of Cash Flow, GL Trial Balance, or consolidated version of the reports mentioned above.  If this is the case, tool selection is simple - review FRx Financial Reporting, and if you are on Small Business Financials, review GP Advanced Financial Analysis Reporting (AFA is in our opinion less powerful and has more restrictions and requires more learning time, comparing to FRx, however it comes free with your Small Business Financials licenses).  FRx deals with GL Accounts, Budgets, it has direct link to Account Summaries table and allows you to combine Dynamics GP GL data with external Excel Worksheets (in the case, when you have smaller or international subsidiaries in Small Business Accounting packages, or something like SAP Business One, where BS, P&L export to Excel is very simple).  Consolidated reports, here you work with Reporting Tree, and you could slice and dice your reporting tree based report by Tree Unit, which might be account segment or separate company

3.        Managerial Reporting.  Here, you know that FRx is not the right tool.  Now, sensational news - probably this reporting tool you like the most - yes, Crystal Reports!  CR can do fabulous job in Dynamics GP reporting.  When you are back from excitement to the working routine, please note our recommendations, coming from multiple cases of records duplication in CR - try to separate reports SQL Selection side from CR design itself.  We recommend you to create report SQL base as SQL View or Stored Procedure.   In Stored Procedure you have the most of the flexibility, as here you can deploy intermediate steps, such as temporary tables (this is not possible in SQL View).  Plus, in our opinion, you can have similar to CR power in Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and even in MS Office reporting extensions: Excel, MS Access Reports, Microsoft Word Reports, however these topics are out of the scope

4.       Business Forms.  If all you need to do is to place logo on Sales Invoice, then turn your attention to GP Modified Reports and Report Writer.  RW is Dynamics GP Dexterity based module, meaning that you can call RW modified reports directly from Batch or individual Sales Invoice, Order, or Quote window.  ReportWriter is limited to Dexterity indexing, and in some complex Forms printing cases you may decide on switching to Crystal Reports or SSRS (where you base your report on real SQL Select statement)

5.       International Dynamics GP Reporting.  If your business subsidiary is located in the country, where the language is ASCII compliant: English Speaking Countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, UK; Europe: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Arabic Speaking countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, you can deploy GP Dexterity Reporting.  If you are in the country where Unicode characters are required: China, Korea, Thailand, Japan - please consider deploying Crystal Reports, SSRS

6.       International Consolidated Reporting, SAP B1 considerations.  If you have subsidiaries located in such countries as Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Europe, Philippines, India, China, where SAP Business One ERP and MRP is very popular and it is localized and certified by Government Tax Agencies, please consider combining your FRx reports with Excel export from your SAP B1 overseas subsidiaries

7.       How to get help?  Please, feel free to call us: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com