gptip42day - FRx Account Type

Here's a way to do a 'quick and dirty' balance sheet or income statement in FRx.  Unless you use Advanced Financial Analysis for your financial statements, you may not realize that you can use GP Account Categories in FRx.  In an FRx row format, open the Link to GL window.

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Select the 'Account Type' radio button and note how the account definition window changes.  Select the Account Type (equivalent to GP Account Category) appropriate for the row.  In this example, we're setting up an income statement and making the first row 'Product Sales' so Account Type 31 is used.

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Note that the Link appears with '/A' at the end.  This identifies the entry as an Account Type as opposed to an Account Code.  One caveat with using the Account Type for report definition - your Account Categories in GP must be assigned properly when setting up you chart of accounts!

gptip42day - Upgrading to SQL 2008

I try to stay away from the technical stuff in this blog and keep it oriented toward daily transaction processing and reporting but in my opinion this is worthy of mention, especially if you do a lot of SSRS reporting.

One of my frustrations with SSRS in 2005 and previous versions of SQL is adding a subtotal to a column of data.  One would think it would be a simple matter of inserting a formula in the column, much like entering a formula in an Excel spreadsheet, but it's not nearly that easy.  You have to enter a significant amount of code to enter a subtotal in a report.

However, SQL 2008 provides more flexibility in grouping, totals and subtotals using the 'Tablix' data region, which replaces the previous Table, Matrix and List elements in prior versions of SSRS.

Going into the details is beyond the scope of this blog but I encourage you to have a look at the Tablix feature in 2008 if you use SSRS.  It makes entering subtotals a piece of cake.

gptip42day - SmartList Letter Writing Assistant (LWA)

If you need to send a form letter to your customers, vendors, employees, etc., SmartList provides the Letter Writing Assistant to help automate the process.  Let's say you want to send a thank you letter to your customers.  Open SmartList and choose the Customers SmartList.  Then, click the Word icon.  The following window opens.

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Choose the letter template you'd like to use then click 'Next'.  The Customer selection window opens.  In this window, you can Mark All or Unmark All to make your record selection easier.

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Click 'Next' to enter your contact information to close the letter.

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Click 'Finish' to complete the process.  MS Word opens with your completed letters which you can print and mail. 

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You could also use the output in Word's Mail Merge to email your letters but if you're going to use Mail Merge, you might as well just send the Customers SmartList directly to Mail Merge and use one of Word's letter templates to create the letters.

gptip42day - Autocomplete

GP provides Autocomplete capability in data entry fields to allow you to select from a list of previously used entries.  This functionality typically helps speed data entry.  However, after a period of time, Autocomplete can slow data entry because when the Autocomplete cache gets full, retrieval of Autocomplete values slows down.  If you experience this condition, here's how to rectify it.  Go

MDGP>User Preferences (GP10)
Tools>Setup>User Preferences (GP9 and previous)

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Click the 'Autocomplete' button.  A number of options are available in the Autocomplete Setup window -

1.  You can turn off Autocomplete suggestions by unchecking the box

2.  You can instruct GP to remove unused entries after 0 to 99,999 days (although I don't think any of us will be here 274 years from now)

3.  You can specify the maximum number of entries to store

4.  You can clear the existing entries by clicking on the 'Remove Entries' button

After entries are cleared, GP will begin saving entries again until one of the setup criteria is met.

For a shortcut to setting Autocomplete settings for all users, see my friend Mariano Gomez' blog on this here - http://dynamicsgpblogster.blogspot.com/search?q=autocomplete.

softwareadvice.com

Ever been curious about the differences between GP, Axapta (AX) , Navision (NAV) and Solomon (SL)?  Houston Neal of http://www.softwareadvice.com/manufacturing/ offers a concise overview here - http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/manufacturing/understanding-the-difference-between-gp-nav-sl-ax-1111709/.

gptip42day - Batch Approvals

GP provides a method to ensure that batch transactions are not posted without proper authorization - Batch Approvals.  Batch Approvals requires the person responsible for posting batches to supply a password to post the batch.  Here's how to set that up -

Tools>Setup>Posting>Posting

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Simply select the Series and the Origin, mark 'Require Batch Approval' and enter a password.  The next time someone tries to post a general journal batch, the password will be required to post.

Now, if you want to add a little more verification to the process, you can also select 'Verify Number of Trx' and/or 'Verify Batch Amounts'.  These do exactly what they state.  They require the posting person to enter the number of transactions in the batch and/or the batch total before the batch can be posted.

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Entry in the Batch Entry window will look as so -

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Enter the Actual number of Journal Entries, the Actual Batch Total, check the 'Approved' box, enter the Password, click 'OK' and the batch will post (assuming there are no errors in the batch transactions).

gptip42day - FRx Account Sets

If you use a lot of the same formulae in your FRx row formats, you might want to take a look at using Account Sets.  These can make setting up your row formats quicker and easier.  Here's how they work . . .

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Here is the GL Account Links row definition window using the standard row formula method.  This is all well and good if you'll only use this forrmula in one report.  However, if you'll use this formual in multiple row formats, then it makes sense to save it as an Account Set.  To do so, just click on the Account Sets 'Save As' button.  The 'Save As Account Set' window opens.

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Give the Account Set a name and a description and click 'OK.  The GL Account Links window opens.  Note that the individual account ranges are replaced with your new Account Set name.

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That's all there is to it!  Now when you create a new row format in which you need the same accounts on a particular row, just pull the Account Set into the Account Links window instead of typing all those individual accounts in again.