Microsoft Dynamics GP

Don't be fooled by the speculation going around about Merit Solutions' Microsoft Dynamics GP Risk Management Suite. Hear directly from Microsoft Dynamics Director of Product Management, Errol Schoenfish: Please Read: Official Risk Management Suite Transition Update

I am thrilled to take this opportunity to welcome the 500+ customers who currently license the Microsoft Dynamics GP Risk Management Suite to the Merit Solutions family!

Merit Solutions is the original developer of the Microsoft Dynamics GP Risk Management Suite (Audit Trails and Electronic Signatures). Microsoft acquired the product from Merit Solutions back in 2005, and since then, they have included it as part of their core Microsoft Dynamics GP offering. However, Merit Solutions has always been the company developing new releases and upgrades for Microsoft.

In an effort to simplify packaging and pricing, Microsoft has decided to remove quite a few OEM products from their core Microsoft Dynamics offerings (official announcements will be made Sept. 1). However, Merit Solutions is thrilled to have this opportunity to further enhance and improve the Risk Management Suite with a better focus on our partners' and customers' needs - enabling us to keep moving the product forward and get newer versions to market quicker. As noted above, Merit Solutions has already made the investment in getting the Risk Management Suite Certified for Microsoft Dynamics (CfMD) - the first GP based Audit Trails and Electronic Signatures products to receive such recognition.

Merit Solutions is committed to keeping all customer experiences with the Risk Management Suite consistent with previous Microsoft engagements, and all partners and customers can count on Merit Solutions to provide the same level of support, quality, and reliability that was experienced with Microsoft in the past. View our Customer Satisfaction Scores and check out some of our Customer Quotes online to learn about our satisfied customers!

If you have any questions at all about the future of the Risk Management Suite, or our commitment to your satisfaction, please don’t hesitate to contact Merit Solutions at any time to get the truth and learn more about the future of your product!

• Previously released Upgrades, Updates, Service Packs, Fixes and Regulatory/Tax Updates
• Self-Help Support through KnowledgeBase articles and online content
• Unlimited Online Training
• CustomerSource Community and Tools

Microsoft has also offered a Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Upgrade Promotion. With the release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, you can enjoy two great upgrade promotions! Receive a 20% discount on the NEW Express Update for Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 and receive a 10% discount on the Microsoft Dynamics GP Upgrade.

Learn more about this, and other Microsoft Dynamics Promotions, by visiting our Microsoft Dynamics Promotions and Incentives page.

Business growth can appear in many forms: increasing numbers of employees, customers, patients, members, or constituents; launching new products and services; entering new geographies, and more. Growth also can reflect increasing transaction levels driven by sudden spikes in sales or purchasing. Regardless of form, organizations need both the right people and the right business systems if they are to manage growth with confidence.

This white paper demonstrates how Microsoft Dynamics™ GP 2010 delivers a business system that can scale with growing organizations by successfully handling massive amounts of transactions and data by leveraging Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 and Windows Server® 2008. A leading solution for businesses across a wide range of industries, Microsoft Dynamics GP offers proven capabilities that enable companies to meet customer needs, build strong supplier relationships, improve employee satisfaction, and efficiently handle business processes and system requirements. 

Download the White Paper:
Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Scalability Performance Benchmark

We've been asked the same question from a couple of our customers, so here it is... How to get rid of the Dynamics GP Task “Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)” if you don’t want to participate:

First, click on the task as if you are going to perform the task:

Once the task window opens, click on the “Name”

This will open the Customer Experience Improvement Program participation window:

Click No, then Click OK. Once you are back on the Task window, click Delete to remove the task:

Then close the task window to get back to the main GP window. On the main GP window, click the “Refresh” button, and the task should be gone:

Task is removed (see example below):

We understand that you want your people to concentrate on your business, not on your IT systems. That’s why Microsoft Dynamics GP offers deep integration with other Microsoft products and technologies—including Office Excel, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft SQL Server. With this kind of system flexibility, integrated security features, and customization tools, Microsoft Dynamics GP gives you the ability to adapt the system to meet changing business needs with minimal cost. If you have existing IT staff, they will be instantly familiar with business software built on your existing Microsoft infrastructure, enabling them to support your people efficiently.

Developed with industry-leading Microsoft technologies.
Microsoft Dynamics GP provides the foundation and flexibility that help ensure smooth deployments, server-side updates, and efficient, cost-effective integrations and customizations. In line with Microsoft's mission to deliver people-ready solutions, our security model is tailored to roles and tasks within roles, enabling better auditing and reporting and simplifying administration.

Provide access to critical, timely information.  Through integration with SQL Server technologies - including extensive management and development tools - Microsoft Dynamics GP provides enhanced information retrieval and reporting. With Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, your company can increase the availability, performance, and ease of operation for business intelligence, data management, and developer productivity.

Open the flow of information across data sources and applications.
Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft .NET, eConnect, and Web Services for Microsoft Dynamics GP enable businesses to integrate data from virtually any source, connecting people with the information they need to make decisions and drive growth. By deploying Microsoft Dynamics GP with Microsoft SharePoint, you’ll also gain advanced search, collaboration, workflow, and business intelligence capabilities.

Connect front-end customer relationship management with back-end financials. Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM delivers a complete customer view and integrated sales, service, and accounting information—helping reduce data entry and streamline front- and back-office processes.

Improve financial management for your business by tracking, analyzing, and manipulating fixed assets to meet specific needs. Fixed Asset Management in Microsoft DynamicsTM GP delivers multiple features and reporting tools that help you manage company assets with minimal effort and tremendous flexibility.

With Microsoft Dynamics GP, you can:

• Put your information to work. Make changes to one or many assets easily and capture necessary asset data for tax or reporting purposes while performing depreciations, averaging, or comparisons across assets.
• Find the information you need. Access the data you need with an intuitive graphical user interface and convenient one-button access to userdefined information or other critical data, including asset maintenance, purchase, lease, and book information.
• Make depreciation easy. Manage asset depreciation with any of 16 depreciation methods, with the ability to back depreciation out, recalculate it, add additional depreciation, or project it ahead for any number of assets in your books.
• Integrate powerfully. Empower your business by combining Fixed Asset Management with other modules in Microsoft Dynamics GP, ensuring accuracy while reducing redundant data entry.

Save time and money by setting up assets quickly and easily. Use classes or account groups to optimize operations by setting defaults and making mass changes, such as retirement or depreciation, to large numbers of assets at the same time.

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 makes it easier for people to work faster and smarter. Employees can make rapid, informed decisions and take action with enhanced insight that is personalized, simple to access, and extended across the organization through familiar Microsoft Office applications. In addition, this release continues to remove barriers that get in the way of working effectively to better connect people, information, and processes across applications and systems.  

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 extends the reach of insight, productivity, and collaboration across your entire organization. Hear from 3 TAP program customers and their experiences using the latest features and functionality of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010.

View the launch video:
Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

We are happy to announce that Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 is now released worldwide in International English!

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 extends the reach of insight, productivity, and collaboration across your entire business, helping ensure that people are your most powerful asset. New capabilities deliver faster access to personalized business intelligence, enhanced ways to streamline business processes, and new ways to build better business relationships.

Existing Microsoft Dynamics GP customers using International English version of the product and active on Business Ready Enhancement Plan will have their accounts upgraded to GP 2010 automatically during the month of May, 2010. Product registration keys for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 will become available to customers via CustomerSource.

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010.

This demo showcases how Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 truly is the NEW way to do business.

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 will enhance insight for users throughout the organization, make it easier for users in the system to do routine or complex tasks, and extend connections to the applications and people that users work with every day. With Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, customers have unprecedented access to view and update data, while Executives are empowered to understand trends and performance like never before.

View the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Demo, or click here to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010.

We are excited to announce the new Microsoft Dynamics GP Sales Offer - Three Users for $1

This is a Microsoft Dynamics (U.S.) promotion for growing and medium-sized businesses that wish to take advantage of the rich functionality, low cost of ownership, and rapid deployability offered by Microsoft Dynamics GP. The promotion allows customers to purchase up to 3 Advanced Management (AM) or Business Essential (BE) user licenses for $1 (US).

This offer applies to new customers making their initial purchase of Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Contact Merit Solutions for more information on this Microsoft Dynamics GP offer, or visit our Microsoft Dynamics Promotions page for more information..

Microsoft Dynamics GP routinely makes it onto the “short list” for companies investing in new business management systems. And depending on the customer’s needs, a revolving cast of other solutions will also rise to the short list, meriting serious consideration and evaluation from all aspects before the final decision is made.

Occasionally included on the short list along with Microsoft Dynamics GP is NetSuite, especially for smaller companies with limited IT resources and a substantial e-commerce component to their business model. With heavy discounting and promises of low upfront costs, customers can be tempted to make a short-term economic decision and sign on the dotted line.

But, ultimately, when making a decision of this magnitude and importance, companies must consider the full range of potential issues that may impact their long-term interests.

View the 2010 white paper now:
Microsoft Dynamics GP versus NetSuite: Key Reasons Microsoft Dynamics GP May Be a Better Fit for Your Business

This is the second of an (intermittent) series of blog entries on costing in Dynamics GP. Our previous entry reviewed the first choice you have to make – whether to use standard or actual costs to value your inventory. In this entry we will explore the impact of choosing standard vs. actual costs.

Dynamics GP offers users the opportunity to manage product costs accurately. Accurate costing enables management to understand product costs, provide for fact-based decision making regarding product profitability, and ultimately reduce expenses, increasing profits.

For a business to realize these benefits, it’s important to understand the options available in Dynamics GP and the proper way to perform transactions so that costs may be captured correctly. During your implementation, you will choose a costing method for each and every individual item in your system. For any given item, you can choose between different varieties of either standard or actual cost. Either method requires attention to detail during setup. You have to make sure you get the settings and GL accounts correct on the item classes and items so that GP will process journal entries the way you expect.

Standard costing means exactly that – you set a cost for an item that does not change until you change it by setting a new standard. All transactions will use the standard cost – regardless of whether or not the actual cost is different than the standard. Any differences between standard and actual cost for an item will be booked as variances.

For transaction processing, standard cost tends to be a bit more forgiving to end users than actual costs, especially in a manufacturing environment. Once you set your standards correctly for an item, all transactions happen at standard cost. This means that if users accidentally entry transactions out of order, the system will still get the costs right. For instance (assuming you allow overrides to inventory to let quantities go negative), if you issue an item to a manufacturing order in the system before you have received the item into inventory from a Purchase Order, both transactions will happen at standard cost and the MO will accumulate costs for the raw material as soon as it is issued.

In addition, standard costing is a bit easier to reconcile between the General Ledger and the Inventory module. Since all transactions occur at standard, and the value of inventory is simply the standard cost times the quantity on hand, inventory valuation is a fairly simple task.

Actual costing means the system will use the actual transaction cost for valuing inventory. If something is being received, typically this means either a cost from a purchase order or from a manufacturing order. Another example / alternative is the cost a user keys in on a positive inventory variance or adjustment transaction. For usage transactions, the actual cost used is applied to the transaction automatically by the system. It will retrieve the appropriate actual cost of the inventory receipt “layer” being used. It does this in order of receipt – either in FIFO (first in-first out) order or LIFO (last in – first out) order depending on the costing method chosen.

Actual costing is a bit less forgiving than standard cost for timing mistakes on the part of users. For instance, if you issue the material to a Manufacturing Order before it is received against a PO and invoiced, then it will go to the Manufacturing Order at zero cost (because there is no cost for “zero” inventory). If the MO is subsequently received before the PO receipt happens, then the actual cost of the manufactured item won’t include costs for the material – because it was issued at zero cost. So, this is a cautionary note to anyone considering actual costs. Actual costs work very well in GP – but you have to have user procedure discipline to make sure transactions are entered timely for it to work properly. GP can adjust and post cost variances and adjusting entries up to a point, but there is no substitute for good procedures and disciplined, timely transaction entry.

Actual costing is a bit more difficult to reconcile between the General Ledger and the Inventory module. Since all transactions may occur at different actual costs (even for the same item), the value of inventory is more challenging to compute since one has to review the value of every inventory layer to reconcile inventory to the General Ledger. In addition, to look at the value at a point in time requires calculating the value based on the value of the transactions that occurred up to that point in time (or back to that point in time in history. Luckily, there are some reports available in Dynamics GP to help with this task – but it is still more challenging than standard costing.

For each choice (standard or actual), you can further choose whether you are going to use receipt layers of your inventory on a FIFO (first in / first out) or LIFO (last in / first out) basis. Dynamics GP tracks every receipt made for every item and/or item/lot combination. These receipt layers are “used up” through sales, issue to manufacturing orders, negative item adjustments and variances, or usage on service calls or projects. The order in which the layers are used depends on the FIFO or LIFO choice made with the costing method. For standard costs, this does not make much difference from a cost perspective because all layers are valued at standard cost. For the actual costing choices, it makes a difference because each receipt can be valued at a different cost depending on the actual cost applied at receiving time.

By actively managing the integration and balance of compliance requirements within the organization as a business improvement activity, you can realize the benefits of reduced risk, increased operational efficiency, and the continued building of a foundation on which to grow.

In the face of laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, along with increased scrutiny of long-standing government compliance requirements following a rash of corporate scandals, executives are challenged with the seemingly contradictory goals of compliance adoption and organizational agility.

View the white paper:
Help Achieve Compliance Objectives with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Business success depends on insight. From ad hoc queries into customer records to a detailed analysis of performance, people need faster, easier access to information in ways that make sense for their particular jobs. Microsoft Dynamics® GP 2010 delivers insight that fuels a new way to do business—with information that’s personalized, simple to access, and extended across the organization. Whether people are drilling down to specific data sources from KPIs, accessing real-time reports through a Web browser, or performing sophisticated analyses with new options for Microsoft® Office Excel®, everyone can contribute more to the decisions that fuel business performance.

For example, more than 27 roles have personalized views of data from multiple sources within a single window or role-based dashboard. People can take that information and create virtually any report they need—and refresh data at any time with a single click—with more than 220 Excel and Microsoft SQL Server® Reporting Services reports.

It’s also easy to quickly build Excel reports and even a predictive analysis that includes data from multiple companies. Reports can be accessed and refreshed through the ERP system or a SharePoint® portal—extending the power of information across your organization, without the expense of a full access user license. Just as important, this latest release takes full advantage of data connections that automatically connect Microsoft Dynamics GP data with Microsoft Office applications. This makes it even easier to deliver business intelligence through the tools people use every day.

With Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, we’re delivering on organizational needs that go well beyond basic reporting, and at the same time giving people tools that are affordable, personalized, and familiar. It’s all part of what we call the RoleTailored experience—and key to the new way to do business.

The term “business as usual” simply doesn’t apply in today’s marketplace. Organizations need systems that help their people orchestrate routine tasks and complex processes—all in the course of a day’s work. Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 offers capabilities that help people work faster and smarter. This latest release fuels efficient task management and teamwork, simplifies setup and IT administration, and offers built-in tools for meeting specific business needs.

Microsoft Dynamics GP is already well known for rich integration with Microsoft® Office system applications—without leaving the ERP solution, users can take full advantage of Microsoft Office Outlook®, Microsoft Office Excel®, and Microsoft Office Word. We're enhancing that connection so that people can quickly create customer and vendor-facing documents using Word forms. They can also send batch and individual e-mail messages for invoices, orders, and check remittances. The result? People get more work done in less time—and the work looks more professional and polished.

There's more. Teams can now work more efficiently, with precise tracking and accountability, by using new workflow approval processes and improved capabilities for documenting sign-offs. In addition, simplified system access includes default logon settings that can save users valuable time. Just as important, Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 offers straightforward tools that ensure fast installation, setup, and data migration from applications such as QuickBooks and Peachtree.

The latest release also makes it easier to meet unique business needs with built-in personalization tools. For instance, people can stop juggling customer and vendor information stored in multiple sources such as Microsoft Office Access® and Excel. Without writing new code, administrators or users can create a mini business application in Microsoft Dynamics GP that consolidates the information for easier tracking and management by multiple people, for multiple tasks.

Finally, we've paid close attention to customer requests for enhancements that improve business efficiency and performance in highly specific areas—including analytical accounting, budget tracking, payables and receivables, payroll, field services, manufacturing, and distribution in a complex marketplace.

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. We're making it easier to do business.