Find out how you can use customizations, configurations, and User settings in Microsoft Dynamics GP to improve efficiencies across your organization.
Originally published in H1 2019 GPUG Magazine
Microsoft Dynamics GP continues to improve and grow with each release. Many of these improvement suggestions come directly from us! As Users we are in Microsoft Dynamics GP every day and give honest feedback on what improvements would be most helpful and what works for US in the meantime! By having hands-on experience, it becomes more and more valuable to share with each other the tweaks and customizations we do to make Microsoft Dynamics GP ours.
Customizations, configurations, and User settings can be simple or complex. Some of these examples may require assistance from your IT team or Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner, but others are just a click away!
Our sales/customer service team uses customizations to reduce errors and save
TONS of time with processing hundreds of orders each day. As an example, we put all our orders shipping for the day into a single batch. Based on that batch, we’re able to print labels, shipping documents, AND a call-in sheet to schedule trucks for any number of orders with just a few clicks! The details are derived from custom, User-defined fields we complete when entering a sales order. Documents, reports, and labels can come from Microsoft Dynamics GP navigation lists, SmartLists, SSRS reports, or Report Writer modified forms.
All of these made it easier to ship orders out the door. But what about getting orders in the system? Use integration!
Whether you are a made-to-order manufacturer or just billing for services, integrations can reduce keystroke errors and the amount of time data entry consumes each day. While there are many options for integration, such as IM, macros, replicator, and many EDI providers, we chose to use a third-party service that works well for our customers’ data and how we generate our sales orders.
By having integrations, both for entering orders and sending documents back to our customers (acknowledgments, invoices, ship notices, etc.), we can import and export large batches of documents instead of one at a time. It also eliminates doublekeying of line items, addresses, tracking information, etc. as it reads directly from Microsoft Dynamics GP back to our EDI interface!
We continue to use simple tweaks across other modules such as inventory, purchasing, and manufacturing. In any system, you will always be scrubbing and updating to ensure you have data integrity. In doing so, it can be helpful to know what was proofed/updated and when. Why not use Userdefined fields for that? We added a date field, proofed by, and verified by as we continue to review our inventory items and their BOMs/routes. It’s easy to know when a task was completed as well as which ones still need to be done.
When scrubbing some data, it can be difficult to analyze from within the native Microsoft Dynamics GP window or even more difficult to get it into Microsoft Excel.
We invested in a couple intricate SSRS reports to make this easier! An indented BOM and a “where did I miss a component” makes proofing and analyzing inventory and BOMs much more efficient!
On every purchase order, we strive to hold ourselves and our vendors accountable. By using the date fields on a PO, we can state when we want the PO delivered, when our vendor acknowledges, and when they promise to deliver. With this information, we can create dashboards, scorecards, and more to analyze issues with our vendor performance.
One of my favorite parts of Microsoft Dynamics is how easy it can be to make updates to your data. There are many tools, but our go-to has been running a mail-merge macro. They can be effective for inventory, customers, vendors, GL, etc. Like any other business, we’re constantly making changes and improvements or need to add information. No matter how quickly you can type, it can be time-consuming and leave room for errors by doing anything manually. Be sure to always create a back-up before running any scripts or macros!
By making the most out of every window, in every active module, and utilizing reports that work for YOU, Microsoft Dynamics GP has the structure and ability to be one of the most reliable and effective systems available.
From simple to complex, you can create any customization to improve efficiencies across your company. Microsoft Dynamics GP is here for the long haul to provide a customizable, buildable ERP system to suit your needs!