Our new location has many great new benefits — perhaps the best one… Our new training room! We are putting it straight to good use and running a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Administration class for customers this week. It’s a full house in there and they are getting their training fix!

We are running a full calendar of training events - in our new West Fargo facility, as well as classes in Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City for the first time! And don’t forget our full schedule of webinars, too!

What better way to gear up for fall than by getting yourself some of that much needed training on Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft SharePoint, and others!

Check out the new training schedule today:
http://www.summitgroupsoftware.com/php/training.php

Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/downloads/taxupdates/usgptu10.htm?printpage=false

Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/downloads/taxupdates/usgptu9.htm?printpage=false

If you choose to install this service pack, IT WILL NEED TO BE INSTALLED ON EVERY SINGLE WORKSTATION RUNNING MICROSOFT DYNAMICS GP.  After installation, the version will read 10.00.1424 for version 10 or 9.00.0375  for version 9.

In addition to the changes to the 941 for Q1, there will be additional changes in Q2, 2010.  There are also a couple of employer credits that the system will need to track.  Microsoft will be releasing the Service Pack for the Q2 changes in mid June.  Again, this service pack will need to be installed on every single workstation running Microsoft Dynamics GP.

If you typically fill out the 941 form “manually” (and do not print it out from GP), you may be able to skip the installation of the Q1 service pack altogether.  For the Q2 changes, however, it may benefit you to apply this service pack, since it is actually tracking new information.  The information on the Q2 changes is listed below:

2010 U.S. Payroll Tax Update for Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 and 10.0

Microsoft will release a mid-year tax update in June 2010 that will comply to the recent Hire Act changes required for Quarter 2 reporting.  This will be supported for the following versions: Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, 10.0, GP 2010, and SBF 9.0.

The following items are anticipated changes:

1.  There will be a data model change on the Payroll Tax Information Master (UPR00300) to add a checkbox to mark an employee qualified.

2.  The 941 quarter end report will be modified to comply with the Q2 reporting and will include the changes needed to apply the payment for qualified employees from Q1.

3.  Another impact of this change is the W2 and W3 forms.  These changes will be released in the 2010 year end update later this fall.

Link to the IRS website regarding the changes:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=220326,00.html

This is a good blog article that highlights the different strategies available, and how many companies choose those strategies, along with their success ratings.

It’s worth a look if you are thinking of implementing or changing your Enterprise Resource Planning, or any sort of technical/software-based change.

http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/manufacturing/erp-implementation-strategies-1031101/

On occasion, we have had customers whose payroll print and post checks process bombs.  More often than not this is due to a corrupt Reports.dic.

From the front end of Microsoft Dynamics GP 10, it is difficult (if not impossible) to get the interrupted posting cleaned up, because there are so many things that may or may not have hit the various UPR tables.  Here is a way you can correct this from MS SQL:

1. Take a backup of the Company Database– take note of Vacation Information so that you may be able to return this to where it needed to be after performing all of these steps.

2.  Recreate the Reports.dic (if this is what appears to be causing the problem… you will know this if your Payroll Batch bombs every time it gets to the posting state and reports won’t print out of the system)

3.  Remove all of the Work information with the following delete statements:

Delete UPR10200

Delete UPR10201

Delete UPR10202

Delete UPR10203

Delete UPR10204

Delete UPR10205

Delete UPR10206

Delete UPR10207

Delete UPR10208

Delete UPR10209

Delete UPR10213

Delete UPR10301

Delete UPR19900

Delete UPR19901

(Note, our payroll batch was no longer in the “posting mode” but it also did nothing to print out the gl posting reports.) 

To correct all of the “jumbled mess” in the UPR tables and the Checkbook Register:

1.  Find the audit trails of the pay run that bombed  (In our example we’ll use the following:  UPRCC00001144).

 2.  Run the following MS SQL statements individually against the Dynamics GP company database (the select statement is there so you can see if there is data in that table that relates to the failed pay run):   

select * from dd30100 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

delete dd30100 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

select * from upr30100 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

delete upr30100 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

select * from upr30200 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

delete upr30200 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

select * from upr30300 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

delete upr30300 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

select * from upr30400 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

delete upr30400 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

select * from upr30401 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

delete upr30401 where auctrlcd=’UPRCC00001144′

After running these scripts run Reconcile on all of the Employees with GP Tools>Utilities>Payroll>Reconcile

Check the Employee Summary to see if everything looks ok (as it would have been prior to running this pay run)

Rebuild the batch and going through check printing again. 

You will also need to take steps to correct any Checks that have hit the Bank Rec module.

Who cares?? I dare you to find one company for whom time and money are not a consideration. Even the largest companies with the deepest pockets have some sort of ownership or shareholders to which they are accountable for those little details like time and money.

Of course we want it all and we want it for as cheap as possible. Those are sometimes (not always) opposing desires. So what’s a company to do in making their decisions… simple — prioritize. I see companies struggle with prioritization everyday in my role managing implementation projects of CRM and ERP software for businesses. The catch though, is that prioritization really isn’t simple. It comes with… ugh… tradeouts.

My advice on tackling prioritization is to start at the very top. Assess the high level strategy as determined by the leadership. These strategies can help guide what is important down to some of the most tactical things. For example — is the strategy to ‘grow’? Then the priorities that should be emphasized in a software implementation are ones that support expanding the infrastructure, scaling out capabilities like access and reporting, and support flexibility or the ability to change processes as the organization grows.

Once you understand the high level direction of the company, those strategies need to be applied to the decisions around solutions that will support those goals. And then finally, those high level strategies serve as the directionality when making decisions about what that system needs to do, how customized something needs to be, and/or where tradeouts may need to be made.

This can guide decisions on everything on possible integrations with other systems to the depth of a customization. If a trade out over convenience and complexity has to be made taking cost into consideration, I will always challenge the decision makers I am working with by asking those questions about what is acceptable or not in the context of their short and long term business goals. And challenge assumptions about the both the cost of the software or services as well as the cost associated with their people, processes, etc.

Again, it isn’t simple. Even if you can gather consensus on the highest level strategies — interpretation of what that means for a team, department or an individual is often up for debate. This is the tricky part that often involves a little soul-searching on the part of the groups I am working with.  In the ’storm’ of the implementation, it is very hard to cling tightly to the highest level strategic priorities when the noise and pressure from individual users or teams is often not only loud - but legitimate. Open communication and a fair assessment of those true priorities, along with transparency (as much as is possible) to those affected by a prioritization decision helps garner support for those tradeouts when they have to be made. Good luck! Happy Prioritizing!

With spring — comes Convergence! Microsoft’s annual Microsoft Dynamics Customer Conference is held April 24-27, 2010 in Atlanta, GA.

Here’s why I love it:

• Lots-O-Learning - concurrent sessions galore — some highlights for sure this year are going to be the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 launch, Sharepoint 2010 and cool integration info for Microsoft Dynamics, and the next release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Networking - It is incredible the number of businesses out there that use Microsoft Dynamics. Talking to other people who use Microsoft Dynamics, understanding what they do, how they make their living, and how Dynamics fits in is fascinating. AND - there are bound to be companies right in your industry with businesses like yours that you can network with and learn from. You can never have a deep enough network…
• EXPO!! And — SWAG!! (Stuff we all get ;-)) The Expo is full of ISV and third party providers that have amazing add-ons to Microsoft Dynamics. They will have what you need…
• Warm Temperatures! Who am I kidding… We all love a warm weather destination - double it with a fantastic learning opportunity and it is a winner.

AND FINALLY — Summit Group clients on Managed Services Plans have an additional financial incentive to attend… talk to us for more info…

Are you registered? Check it out:
http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/convergence/atlanta10/default.aspx

The order of closing all other modules in Dynamics GP is important.  The modules need to be closed in the folllowing order:  Inventory, Receivables, Payables, Fixed Assets and General Ledger.

Probably the single biggest change to Workflow for Dynamics GP will be the technology that Workflow sits on.  With Workflow for Dynamics GP 10, users were able to install Workflow for free, provided that they had the high-end version of SharePoint, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise.  Although some organizations either had a need for this or already had it implemented, for the smaller organizations that could really take advantage of Workflow in GP, it presented a huge obstacle.

With GP 11, Workflow no longer needs to reside on the high-end version of SharePoint.  Instead, it can now be installed on Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), the free version of SharePoint that you can download and install as long as you are running Windows Server 2003 or newer.  This clears the way for a number of organizations who want to utilize Workflow, but do not have a need or budget to go with a full Microsoft Office SharePoint Server implementation.

Along with the change to the foundation of Workflow for Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft will be introducing a number of new workflows for GP 11.  Among them are a Customer Approval workflow, a Vendor Approval workflow, and workflows for the addition or removal of employees from the Dynamics GP system.  The new version will also include functionality for what is called a “step workflow”, in which the user to whom the task is assigned must complete a number of steps for the workflow to move on, rather than having approval workflows only.

Some good changes coming for Workflow in GP 11.  The addition of Windows SharePoint Services functionality and some new workflows are going to make this product well worth the upgrade.

For 2009, there have been very few form changes to the w-2.  This is great news for Dynamics GP users!

Below are the detail changes around 2009 year end for payroll.  If you are affected by these changes, then you should install the latest GP update.

• 1099-R - New Distribution Code U, for distributions under IRC 404(k), has been added
• 1099-R - Distribution Codes B and U are a valid combination. (not required to be used together)
  • Add country code Kosovo - KV
    • Add country code St Barthelemy - TB
    • Add country code St Martin – RN
      • Updated country code Serbia, changed from RB to RI

• Enforce Password Policy
• Enforce Password Expiration
• Change Password Next Login

How does SQL know what Password Policy to set and Enforce Password Expiration? 

The Policy comes from the Local SQL Machine’s Windows Policy. 

How can you verify the settings of the Local Windows Policy?

Type secpol.msc from Start>Run.  This opens the Local Security Settings.  Go to Security Settings>Account Policies>Password Policy.  This is where you will find password policies that will be applied if utilizing Advanced SQL Server Options.

If you are having issues with Microsoft Dynamics GP user logins, KnowledgeBase article #919345 has some great information as well.