“Under Budget & Over Deliver” on your ERP Software implementation with the “Buy 1, Get 3 Microsoft Dynamics ERP Special.

“Under Budget & Over Deliver” on your ERP Software implementation with the “Buy 1, Get 3 Microsoft Dynamics ERP Special.

Microsoft is excited to announce the “Buy 1, Get 3” offer – a Microsoft Dynamics promotion targeting 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 ERP.  The promotion includes new customers purchasing either the Advanced Management (AM) or Business Essential (BE) Foundation Pack.

Contact us at ktougas@dynamicmethods.com or 949-333-5380 and reference the GP Blog.

CFO of the Year Award Honorees and 2 special Nominees

The 2010 CFO of the Year Award event has come and gone and the start of the new year is well under way with Year End reports starting to appear. But with all that said we need to continue to recognize the CFO’s that received awards and a couple special nominees that are true and dear to our hearts.

We would like to congratulate 2 of our very own customers; Eric Chiusolo, CFO of American Career College and Richard Wheeler, CFO of Clean Energy Fuels for being nominated. We have had first hand experiences interacting with these two individuals and can speak very highly for their dedication to the companies success, drive for excellence and commitment to their teams.

And the remaining honorees are included in the story below:

 CoreLogic’s Piszel, Other CFOs Honored

Dynamic Methods and AEG Worldwide at Club NOKIA February 17th 2011

Dynamic Methods and AEG have partnered to host the MICROSOFT DYNAMICS CRM 2011 release party  in Club NOKIA’s VIP lounge at LA LIVE.

Bring Dynamics CRM 2011 and ”The Power of Productivity” into your company and your competitors to their knees.

Come join us to learn all the new cool features and tricks of the trade including BPOS and Microsoft Office 365 at CLUB Nokia for this amazing 3 hour event you will not want to miss.

Thursday Feb 17th, 2011

8:30 (Registration) 9:00 am—11:30 am

CLUB NOKIA: 800 West Olympic Blvd, LA 90015

Invite a guest and be entered to WIN Amazing Prizes 

Register Here

For additional information contact:

Kevin Tougas, ktougas@dynamicmethods.com – 949-333-5380

or

Jodi Herman, jherman@dynamicmethods.com – 949-554-9131

Trade Secret for Dynamics GP – Email Attachment Options

Feature of the Day: E-mail Attachment Options DynGpTeam 27 Jan 2010 6:40 AM

DM Convergence 2010 has finally arrived

The day you all have been waiting for, DM Convergence 2010 is finally here. Tomorrow Wednesday Oct 13th from 8-4:30 at the local Microsoft Office. A day filled with fun learning activities, interacting with the people that care deeply about your success and an opportunity for you to hear about “Whats Next with Technology and Social Networking” by GoldenComms CEO, Jason Lavin and also food, we wouldn’t want you to go hungry so we will feed you as well.

If you are like me and forget to RSVP to events,  it is not to late to join this once a year “Hyped Up” event with one of Microsoft’s Premier Partners in the Dynamics GP and CRM space. Please find the final invitation below, you can just show up, the door will be open with smiling faces to greet you……

Dynamics GP 2010 Performance/Scalability Benchmark

Hello Dynamics GP Community!

As with every release of Microsoft Dynamics GP, our test team has been hard at work creating the latest and greatest performance benchmark tests to help illustrate the incredible scalability and performance that Microsoft Dynamics GP can deliver. The latest benchmarks prove yet again that even under the most strenuous of environments, Microsoft Dynamics GP continues to perform! 

Recently, the Microsoft Dynamics GP team completed 3 separate performance benchmark tests:

1. 500 constant concurrent users in the rich Microsoft Dynamics GP client, all engaged in heavy transaction processing or analysis activity across various functional areas of the solution.

2. 500 constant concurrent users in the rich Microsoft Dynamics GP client in addition to 10 instances of continuous (synchronous) integrating Web Services clients creating Sales Order transactions.

3. US Payroll testing, including both check processing and payroll reporting for a 30,000 employee organization.

Summary results:

As you can see from the results below, the performance benchmark numbers are very impressive:

You can download the complete White Paper detailing these three tests and their results here (https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/marketing/marketingcollateral/whitepapers/MSD_GP2010ScalabilityPerfomance),

500 vs. 1,000 Concurrent Users

You may question why this test focused on 500 concurrent users as opposed to the previous 1,000 concurrent user tests. The answer is quite simple.  Previous benchmark tests for Microsoft Dynamics GP were done in a 1,000 concurrent user environment, and were focused on proving the user scalability potential of the system. Based on real-world customer feedback, Microsoft’s goal has shifted to focus more on transaction throughput in a user environment more in-line with Microsoft Dynamics GP’s target market. In addition to this change in focus, a new test has been added to simulate common real-world environments where customers are leveraging Web Services for Microsoft Dynamics GP to import data from external systems.  As a result of this change in focus and the continuing evolution of the testing hardware and environment, readers should not compare outcomes of these tests against previous versions of performance benchmark results.

Please Welcome the Newest Member of the Dynamics Methods Family…..

Blake, a beautiful 7 lb 10 ounce baby girl was just born to one of our great Project Managers, Todd Boerger and his wonderful wife. Baby girl and Mom are doing great. Please share in welcoming Blake to the world…. Congrats Todd, welcome to fatherhood.

Communication Tips for Effective Trainings

 Want to become a Training Hero?

Have you ever been in a training where you were on the edge of your seat the entire time (Exhausted because your brain was so full) and so motivated to go off and become a champion in what you learned.

Or in a training where you had the ”Head Bobs” because the trainer should have been a bedtime story teller or meditation instructor? (Exhausted because it was boring and you were not engaged).

As consultants, advisors, developers and educators of Microsoft Dynamics GP and CRM software, our success is truly determined by our ability to communicate. We do not have tangible products to help you learn and training manuals, 300+ pages long, who has time to read through all of these-I can’t even seem to find time to sit down and sponge up a good book due to life’s commitments; work, family, community involvement etc. (Can you relate). So it relies almost completely on the “We Tell, We Show, You Do, You Learn” mentality which the success relies on our ability to communicate effectively with each person walking away an expert (or at least extremely knowledgeable in their respected area.) 

 With our goal of continuing to become better we invited Cathy Geigle, a Highly Accomplished Communications Trainer for Sr Executives of Hewlett Packard to come in and teach us her secret ingredient for success. She communicated effectively the tips and tricks she has used in the past to help these powerful figures in this powerful company become much more effective communicators every time whether in front of a big or small audience or with individual people.

Cathy taught some very basic tactics that if you honed in on, sharpened and implemented, you would be the talk of the room or town:

1-       Anyone can become an effective trainer- just need to “Believe”

2-      Know your audience to understand how your information will be interpreted.

3-      Story telling or visual aids such as cartoon clips/commercials leads to good teaching points (As long as it relates to the audience)

4-      Preparation, Preparation, Preparation;

• The better the modeling or discovery session the better the training session.
• Anticipate questions and have answers but if you don’t,  be honest and get back to them. Don’t try to “bull” your way through.
• Practice out loud and in front of a mirror.

5-      Engage the Audience; 30 seconds to win or lose them. Be Personable-Bring Treats-Use Power words like “Exactly, Right On, You are correct” all work.

6-      And lastly, remember the training is for them, not you. Tailor to them, not you.

If you would like more information please reach back to Kevin Tougas at ktougas@dynamicmethods.com or subscribe to this blog for future tips/insights to for us to “Grow Together”

How to track Use Tax in Dynamics GP

Many clients wonder what the best method is to collect use tax.  Use Tax are taxes that you owe the government for goods that your vendor never charged you sales tax on.  It only applies to goods that you are consuming, not reselling, since the end customer pays the sales tax.

So here is our scenario – We bought 100 rolls of  toilet paper for $100 but the vendor didn’t charge us tax.  While we are creating our AP invoice,   you can select the OC tax schedule to auto add the 8.75% tax to the invoice.  But since I’m not paying the vendor the $8.75,  I want to offset the amount in the Payment Discount field so my invoice is still $100.

Accounting Overview:

When sales taxes are calculated by Dynamics GP, a debit entry is created for the tax amount. The tax amount can then be recorded in the Terms Discount Taken field, offsetting the sales tax amount for accounts payable. Since the Terms Discount Taken field is a credit, the corresponding account should be configured with the Use Tax Liability account from the General Ledger.

This option allows the recording of use tax amounts as a liability in General Ledger without requiring a payable transaction. This can be useful when use tax amounts are frequently adjusted prior to remitting payments to the taxing authority.

Details

Process AP Transaction

1. Process a Payables Transaction via Transactions->Purchasing->Transaction Entry.
2. Enter sales tax as you normally would. This should automatically calculate based on the assigned tax schedule.
3. Enter the sales tax amount in the Terms Discount Taken field.

Tax expense can be recorded in a separate expense account or assigned to the same account as the transaction. Tax liability is assigned to a use tax liability account. During the tax remittance process, a Smartlist or General Ledger Detail Trial Balance report can be used to show the balance in the use tax liability account to facilitate processing and remittance. Any adjustments to use tax are made via journal entries. Finally, an accounts payable transaction must be manually entered for the taxing authority and the expense line must be assigned to the use tax liability account to relieve the liability. This will keep the General Ledger balanced.

The benefits of this method are:

1. The payables subsidiary and vendor records hold the correct transaction amounts.
2. The liability is recorded in General Ledger, allowing for later review, adjustment and remittance.
3. There is easy tracking of the amounts due to the taxing authority via GL account drill back capabilities.
4. Detail is available via Inquiry, reporting and Smartlists.
5. Tax can be routed to the same location as the expense.

Potential issues with using the Terms Discount Taken field include:

• Unavailability of the Terms Discount Taken field for its intended purpose.
• User still needs to review liability and create payment transaction.

I hope this clears up how Use Tax can be tracked while we wait for a Use Tax field to show up in future versions of GP.   Feel free to read more details  as well as the credit card method in this guide below.

GP 2010 is coming- Check out some of these sweet new enhancements!

There are so many new features to Dynamics GP 2010 I coulden’t possibly list them all this morning, but here are some of my favorites that i’ve seen so far.

Employee Onboard Workflow

Why this feature is cool!

When an employee is added to Payroll, there are a lot of setup steps and many departments involved.  There are tasks within Human Resources and Payroll, from pay codes to benefits as well as tasks outside of HRP.  Items like building security, ordering a computer or scheduling new employee training.

In Dynamics GP 2010, an Employee Onboard workflow has been added which can be configured to leverage the step workflow functionality to notify all departments about the new employee.  The workflow submit process has been added to both Payroll Personnel Maintenance and to the Human Resource Applicant Hire window.

• Onboard tasks are displayed in GP, Outlook and SharePoint.
• The Onboarded employee can be routed one or more people for approval or to complete an actionable task.
• The conditions in which an Onboarded employee can be routed can be specific to each business.
• If users are out of office, their approval tasks can be automatically routed to another user to act on their behalf.
• The workflow history of an Onboarded employee is consolidated and easily visible within Great Plains or SharePoint.
• When an employee is approved, the person submitting the Onboarded employee (an originator) will receive a notification that the employee has been approved.
• If a user does not take action on their task, there are various options for escalating the Onboarded employee for approval.

What does it look like?

Workflow List