Microsoft Dynamics GP For Dummies E-Book

Renato Bellu

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 537

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

If you're accountable for accounting in a mid-level business, Microsoft Dynamics GP accounting software can be your best friend. Microsoft Dynamics GP For Dummies improves the friendship by highlighting the most useful and practical features, dispelling the most common misconceptions, and letting you in on the best tips and tricks -- all in plain English! Microsoft Dynamics GP For Dummies shows you how to set up and use this modular accounting program. You'll learn to customize Dynamics Great Plains, get around the program, create a company, build an effective chart of accounts, and maintain a general ledger. You'll find out how to: * Create invoices and bill your customers, manage receipts, and easily match payments to invoices * Set up vendors quickly and easily * Customize GP fit your business perfectly and make the home page more efficient * Work with the modules you'll use most often in the Purchasing, Sales, Inventory, and Financial series * Safeguard your database and set up a disaster recovery plan containing all the right steps * Use Professional Services Tools and utilities to find and fix data discrepancies * Get inventory under control * Close your books at year end and use shortcuts to easily print reports from all the data you've collected * Save keystrokes with Quick Journal and batch frequency * Leverage the interoperability between Dynamics GP and Microsoft Office applications * Make upgrading hassle-free Microsoft Dynamics GP For Dummies helps you make this sometimes-complex program do your bidding, which might account for your rising popularity in the office! Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Leseprobe

Microsoft Dynamics GP For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

What You Can Safely Ignore

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Great Things with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Part II: Daily Entry Tasks

Part III: Stuff You Do From Time to Time

Part IV: Administering & Extending Your Dynamics GP System

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Great Things with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Chapter 1: What Microsoft Dynamics GP Does Best

Introducing Microsoft Dynamics GP

Menus and toolbars

The Navigation and Content panes

Who, when, and where you are

At Home with the Home Page

Adding to and reorganizing the Home page

Changing the details of a Home page

Customizing the Quick Links area

Customizing the To Do area

Familiarity Breeds Affection, Efficiency, and Productivity . . . and a Pay Raise

Cards

Transactions

Inquiries

Reports

Routines

Utilities

Setup

Yellow sticky notes

Working with SmartLists

Reminders and tasks

Keeping Your CPA Happy

Chapter 2: Getting Started with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Preparing to Install Microsoft Dynamics GP

Addressing hardware and software needs

Planning your company setup

Creating a New Company

Setting up company address information

Setting up user-defined fields for your company

Setting up Internet information for your company

Reviewing Company Information

Setting up company options

Setting up your chart of accounts

Reviewing fiscal periods

Establishing opening balances

Setting up shipping methods and payment terms

Setting your posting options

Handling sales taxes

Keeping tabs via the audit trail

Part II: Daily Entry Tasks

Chapter 3: Paying Bills

Setting Up Default Information for Payables Management

Setting Up Vendor Classes

Setting Up Your Vendors

Adding vendor cards

Setting up vendor addresses

Placing a vendor on hold

When you don’t need a vendor anymore

Entering Beginning Balances

Entering Payables Transactions

Creating a batch

Entering a voucher

Editing or deleting a voucher

Writing checks

Posting batches

Voiding payables transactions

Chapter 4: Working with Purchase Orders

Setting Up to Use Purchase Orders

Setting Up Buyers

Entering Purchase Orders

Creating a standard purchase order

Creating a drop shipment purchase order

Creating a blanket purchase order

Automatically Generating Purchase Orders

Setting up to automatically generate purchase orders

Automatically generate purchase order lines

Managing Purchase Orders

Viewing the status of purchase orders

Editing purchase orders

Canceling purchase orders

Copying purchase order information

Releasing purchase orders

Clearing out those dusty old POs

Receiving Stuff

Recording a receipt

Recording vendor invoices without shipments

Posting receipts

Chapter 5: Billing Your Customers

Knowing Where to Do the Billing

Establishing Receivables Management Options

What Customer Classes Can Do for You

All About the Customer Card

Adding customer cards

Understanding the National Accounts feature

Placing a customer on hold

When you don’t need a customer anymore

Setting Up Sales Territories and Sales People

Entering Customer Beginning Balances

Creating Receivables Management Transactions

Letter Writing Assistant

Chapter 6: Using the Sales Order Processing Module

Understanding Document Types

Setting Up Sales Order Processing Documents

Setting Up the Sales Order Processing Module

Entering a Sales Order Processing Document

Sales Orders and Purchase Orders

Managing Sales Order Processing Documents

Modifying a Sales Order Processing document

Save data entry time — copy information

Transferring SOP documents

Deleting or voiding a Sales Order Processing document

Placing Sales Order Processing documents on hold

Chapter 7: Cash Receipts and Collections

Recording Customer Payments

Saving time with Auto Apply

Entering a payment

Applying payments after the fact

Getting paid faster with lock boxes

Keeping Customers in the Loop with Customer Statements

Aging customer accounts

Assessing finance charges

Printing statements

E-mailing statements automatically

Working with the Aged Trial Balance Report

Removing paid transactions

Printing the report

Collecting More Money Faster

Chapter 8: All Roads Lead to the General Ledger

Setting Up Defaults

Building Your Chart of Accounts

Adding accounts to the Chart of Accounts

When you don’t need an account anymore

Editing accounts

Entering Journal Entries

Déjà Vu: Reducing Keystrokes with the Quick Journal

Creating Budgets

Creating a budget in Dynamics GP

Creating a budget in Excel

Exporting and importing budgets

Chapter 9: Bank Recs (Not Bank Wrecks)

Setting Up the Bank Reconciliation Module

Working with Checkbooks

Establishing the opening balance

Creating a checkbook

Understanding Bank Reconciliation Transactions

Entering deposits

Transferring money between bank accounts

Reconciling a Checkbook

Clearing Checks Automatically with Electronic Banking

Chapter 10: Getting Inventory Under Control

Setting Up the Inventory Control Module

Maintaining Your Items

Understanding item types

FIFO, LIFO, and all that jazz

Setting up item classes

Creating items

Entering beginning balances

Standard pricing versus extended pricing

Understanding Inventory Transactions

Finding Out About Your Stuff

The Back-Ordered Items Received report

The Stock Status report

Item Inquiry

Performing a physical inventory

Part III: Stuff You Do from Time to Time

Chapter 11: Closing the Books

Period-End Stuff

Closing the Year

Closing inventory

Closing the Sales series

Closing the Purchasing series

Closing the General Ledger (the important one)

Chapter 12: Analyzing Information through Inquiries, SmartLists, and Reports

Making Inquiries

Getting Information at Your Fingertips with the SmartList

Selecting columns to display

Saving your own version of a SmartList

Setting search criteria for a SmartList query

Printing Standard Reports

Setting up report options

Selecting report destinations

Working with report groups

Setting up quick financial statements

Printing financial statements

Reprinting journals

Chapter 13: Using Utilities and the Professional Services Tools

Reconciling Sales Orders

Reconciling Payables Management

Reconciling Inventory

Taking Advantage of Professional Services Tools

Changing the previously unchangeable

Merging customers, items, or vendors

Part IV: Administering and Extending Your Dynamics GP System

Chapter 14: Safeguarding Your Database

Establishing Security for Your Dynamics GP Database

Setting system security

Setting up users

Creating security tasks

Creating security roles

Assigning users to security roles

Setting field-level security

Safeguarding Your Database

Checking table links

Making a backup

Recovering from a disaster

Chapter 15: Extending Dynamics GP’s Functionality with Modifications & Customizations

Creating Reminders

Working with Lists

Personalizing a list

Creating and customizing a list view

Customizing and Extending Dynamics GP

Customizations with the Modifier module

Seeing what’s installed and what’s been customized

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 16: Implementation Pitfalls

Though this be Madness, Yet There is Methodology in it

Size matters

Iterative approach

Methodology masters and slaves

Rewriting History (or Leaping Forward to the Past)

When Exceptions are the Rule

To-Be or Not to Be As-Is

Template of Doom (or the Dog Ate My Homework)

Nine Pregnant Women in a Room for a Month

Going Over Budget without Going Overboard

The Phone Book Syndrome

Back Office Is the Cart, Not the Horse

Bridges to Vaporware

Chapter 17: Most Useful Features

SmartLists

Recurring Batches

Transaction-Level Notes and Attachments

Originating Master Names and ID’s

Classes

Company Posting Setup Options

FRx Transaction-Level Reporting

FRx Trees

Excel-Based Budgeting

SOP Document Types

Appendix: Microsoft Dynamics GP Modules

Full access user licenses

Partial access user licenses

Business Essentials Edition

Advanced Management Edition

Microsoft Dynamics™ GP For Dummies

by Renato Bellu

Microsoft Dynamics™ GP For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Author

Renato Bellu has over 15 years of experience as an ERP implementation specialist focused on Dynamics GP (Great Plains), and has been the Dynamics GP “Thought Leader” for Avanade, a division of Accenture and joint venture with Microsoft, in addition to creating the first-ever Great Plains Practice for a Big 4 CPA firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Renato has been the lead designer on some of the largest Microsoft Dynamics GP projects ever implemented, and for this work has become a recipient of the prestigious Microsoft Pinnacle Award. He holds certifications from Microsoft in Dynamics GP including Financials and Integration Manager, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Delaware. Today, Renato is a senior consultant with RSM McGladrey’s Inner Circle and President’s Club Microsoft Dynamics GP Practice based in Philadelphia. Helives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife, Marie, and daughter, Clare.

Author’s Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the following people:

My parents, Dr. Renato R. and Elena Bellu, whose guidance, support, and loving devotion has made my career possible.

Professor Clinton “Skip” White of the University of Delaware, a pioneer in the field of computerized accounting education, who inspired me to embark on a career focused on combining the disciplines of accounting and computer science.

Steve Ems, our practice leader, and the entire RSM McGladrey Dynamics team, the most brilliant, helpful, and talented group of folks I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

Hans Wulczyn, of RSM McGladrey, who served as technical editor.

Matt Wagner of Fresh Books, my literary agent, for making this project a reality.

Blair Pottenger, Wiley Project Editor, who managed this project with great aplomb.

Bob Woerner, Wiley Senior Acquisitions Editor, for giving me the opportunity to author this book.

Jenn Riggs, Wiley Copy Editor, for all the hard work on this book.

The entire Wiley team, including the graphics team for their adept work in bringing the text to life with their superb presentation skills.

And lastly, Elaine Marmel, without whom this project would not have been possible.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my loving and beautiful wife, Marie, and daughter, Clare, who are my greatest source of inspiration and joy.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

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Publishing for Consumer Dummies

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Introduction

Let’s face it— accounting can make anybody feel like a dummy . . . unless, of course, you’re an accountant. But even accountants can glaze over when looking at an unfamiliar accounting software package. I’ve written Microsoft Dynamics GP for Dummies to help you take the mystery out of using the software so that you can focus on reaping the benefits of computerized accounting.

“What benefits?” you ask. Well, read on.

About This Book

Here’s the situation: You’re an accounting or bookkeeping professional who has just started working for a company that uses Microsoft Dynamics GP. Or, your organization has made the decision to move to Dynamics GP. You’re already an expert in accounting and/or bookkeeping, but you need to get up to speed quickly on this unfamiliar accounting package.

Microsoft Dynamics GP For Dummies shows you how to get up to speed quickly by highlighting the most useful and practical features, dispelling the most common misconceptions, and letting you in on the best tips and tricks. This book assists you in setting up a company in which to store your accounting data and then shows you how to use Dynamics GP to pay bills, invoice customers, post information to the general ledger, produce financial reports, and who knows, maybe get a raise in the process.

Although Dynamics GP is a modular product (and you can purchase only those modules you feel you need), licensing for Dynamics GP is moving toward a per user license rather than a per module license. In the Appendix, I describe all of the modules available in Dynamics GP and I also describe the licensing plans available to you, which focus on enabling you to purchase the modules you need in common combinations.

Modules provide you with solutions that meet business needs, and, when using Dynamics GP, you work with a series that combines related business functions. For example, Sales series combines the functions of receivables management and invoicing.

Note: This book covers the Purchasing series, the Sales series, the Financial series, and the Inventory series. The Purchasing series includes purchase order processing, vendor invoicing, and payables management. The Sales series includes sales order processing, invoicing, and receivables management. The Financial series includes the General Ledger module and Bank Reconciliation module. The Inventory series includes the Inventory Management module.

But you don’t need to worry about what’s installed on your computer when you work in Dynamics GP, because you work by selecting tasks to perform that correspond to business functions such as creating an invoice for a customer or paying a vendor bill. The modules installed are transparent to you and Dynamics GP lets you work in a way that makes business sense instead of “computer” sense. You can read more about performing these task-related business functions in Part II.

What You Can Safely Ignore

The gray boxes that you see throughout the book are called sidebars. Sidebars contain extra information that you really don’t have to know but that I thought you might find useful and interesting. So feel free to skip the sidebars.

Foolish Assumptions

I’ll be honest — I had to assume some things about you to write this book. So, here’s what I assume about you:

You already know about the day-to-day stuff that you need to do financially to run your business — you know, write checks, send invoices to customers, record payments from customers, and so on. In fact, you’re probably an accounting or bookkeeping professional. I don’t assume that you know how to do any of that in Dynamics GP.

You have a personal computer (that you know how to turn on) with Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows Vista. I wrote this book using Windows Vista.

You are a Dynamics GP user or are interesting in becoming one.

How This Book Is Organized

Every great book needs a plan. I divided this book into six parts, each made up of two to eight chapters so that you can easily find the information that you need.

Part I: Great Things with Microsoft Dynamics GP

If you’re new to Dynamics GP, you probably want to read this part. I introduce you to Dynamics GP, explain how to get around in it, how to create a company, how to build an effective chart of accounts, and how to set up default information that saves you lots of time later.

Part II: Daily Entry Tasks

In this book — in this part, in fact — I cover the modules you use to do the stuff that you do on a regular basis (remember, while you work, you think business functions and user roles, not modules):

In the Purchasing series, the Purchase Order and Payables Management modules to buy and pay for goods from vendors

In the Sales series, the Sales Order and Receivables Management modules that you use to create sales orders and invoices for your customers as well as collect your money and identify who hasn’t paid an invoice

In the Financial Series, The General Ledger module where you make changes to your chart of accounts and make journal entries for transactions such as recording depreciation, and the Bank Reconciliation module to balance your check book against your bank statement

In the Inventory series, the Inventory Management module, where you manage inventory items

Part III: Stuff You Do From Time to Time

In this section, I cover a variety of topics that you typically don’t do every day. First, I show you how to close your books and print reports — after all, you put information into Dynamics GP, so you should be able to get it out and see the effects of your business habits.

I also show you how to use utilities and the Professional Services Tools module to find and fix data discrepancies and quickly make mass changes to your data.

Part IV: Administering & Extending Your Dynamics GP System

In this section, I show you how to easily keep your accounting information safe — a very important chapter. Why? Because you spend so much time putting stuff into Dynamics GP that it would be criminal to lose it just because your hard drive crashes or your office is robbed. I also show you how to modify and customize Dynamics GP to extend its functionality.

Part V: The Part of Tens

If you’ve ever read a For Dummies book before, you’ve seen the Part of Tens. This part contains a collection of ten-something lists. My Part of Tens includes ten common implementation pitfalls and the Top Ten most useful features in Dynamics GP.

In the Appendix, you’ll find a short description of each Microsoft Dynamics GP module available, and you’ll also find a description of the licensing plans available.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout the book, you notice symbols in the margin. These symbols, or icons, mark important points.

This bull’s eye appears next to shortcuts and tips that make your work easier.

When you see this icon, something could go wrong, so make sure that you read the paragraph. This icon warns you of common mistakes and ways to avoid them.

This icon marks any point that you want to be sure to remember. You might want to reread paragraphs that are marked with this icon.

Where to Go from Here

Just getting started with Microsoft Dynamics GP? Turn the page. Do you have a specific topic of interest? Use the Index or the Table of Contents to find the topic and turn to that page.

Part I

Great Things with Microsoft Dynamics GP

In this part . . .

If you are just getting acquainted with Microsoft Dynamics GP, this part is the place to start. In this part, you find out about common Dynamics GP lingo and how to navigate in Microsoft Dynamics Microsoft Dynamics GP. In Chapter 2, you read about creating a company, designing the Chart of Accounts, and establishing some common setup functionality.

Chapter 1

What Microsoft Dynamics GP Does Best

In This Chapter

Familiarizing yourself with the Microsoft Dynamics GP window

Understanding Dynamics GP terms

Knowing how Dynamics GP keeps your CPA happy

Microsoft Dynamics GP is a robust accounting package that can meet the needs of any number of types of organizations. All installations of Dynamics GP have certain characteristics in common. In this chapter, I describe these common characteristics and, in the process, introduce you to Dynamics GP lingo.

Introducing Microsoft Dynamics GP

Familiarizing yourself with the Microsoft Dynamics GP window is the first order of business. You’ll find it much easier to perform tasks if you know how to find them.

In Figure 1-1, you see a typical Dynamics GP opening window. Dynamics GP uses a Navigation pane down the left side of the window, similar to the one found in Microsoft Outlook. The Navigation pane enables you to, well, navigate to various places in the program. In Figure 1-1, I clicked Home in the Navigation pane.

The Home page you see in the Content pane when you open Dynamics GP on your computer might not match the one shown in Figure 1-1 because you can customize the Home page — and you can read about customizing your Dynamics GP Home page in the section “At Home with the Home Page,” later in this chapter.

Figure 1-1: A typical opening window in Dynamics GP.

Along the top of the screen, you can use the Address bar to type locations within Dynamics GP and then press Enter or click the Refresh button at the right end of the Address bar to view those locations. But most people use the Menu bar, which appears just below the Address bar, and the Navigation pane to move around Dynamics GP.