In this article by Ian Grieve and Mark Polino, authors of the book, Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 Cookbook, we will see few features of Dynamics GP. Dynamics GP provides a number of features to better organize the overall system and improve its usefulness for all users; these recipes are designed for the use of administrators rather than typical users. This article is designed to demonstrate how to implement and fine-tune these features to provide the most benefit.

In this article, we will look at the following topics:

• Speeding account entry with account aliases
• Cleaning account lookups by removing accounts from lookups
• Streamlining payables processing by prioritizing vendors
• Getting clarity with user-defined fields

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Speeding account entry with account aliases

As organizations grow up, the chart of accounts tends to grow larger and more complex as well. Companies want to segment their business by departments, locations, or divisions; all of this means that more and more accounts get added to the chart and, as the chart of accounts grows, it gets more difficult to select the right account. Dynamics GP provides the Account Alias feature as a way to quickly select the right account. Account aliases provide a way to create shortcuts to specific accounts which can dramatically speed up the process of selecting the correct account. We’ll look at how that works in this recipe.

Getting ready

Setting up account aliases requires a user with access to the Account Maintenance window.

To get to this window perform the following steps:

1. Select Financial from the Navigation pane on the left. Click Accounts on the Financial Area page underCards. This will open the Account Maintenance window.
2. Click the lookup button (magnifying glass) next to the account number or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Q.
3. Find and select account 000-2100-00.
4. In the middle of the Account Maintenance window is the Account Alias field. Enter AP in the Alias field.

This associates the letters AP with the accounts payable account selected. This means that the user now only has to enter AP instead of the full account number to use the accounts payable account:

How to do it…

Once aliases have been setup, let’s see how the user can quickly select an account using the alias:

1. To demonstrate how this works, click Financial on the Navigation pane on the left. Select General from the Financial area page under Transactions.
2. On the Transaction Entry window, select the top line in the grid area on the lower half of the window.
3. Click the expansion button (represented by a blue arrow) next to the Account heading to open the Account Entry window.
4. In the Alias field type AP and press Enter:

1. The Account Alias window will close and the account represented by the alias will appear in the Transaction Entry window:

How it works…

Account aliases provide quick shortcuts for account entry. Keeping them short and obvious makes them easy to use. Aliases are less useful if users have to think about them. Limiting them to the most commonly used accounts makes them more useful. Most users don’t mind occasionally looking up the odd account but they shouldn’t have to memorize long account strings for regularly used account numbers.

It’s counter-productive to put an alias on every account since that would make finding the right alias as difficult as finding the right account number. The setup process should be performed on the most commonly used accounts to provide easy access.

Cleaning account lookups by removing accounts from lookups

A consequence of company growth is that the chart of accounts grows and the account lookups can get clogged up by the number of accounts on the system. While the general ledger will stop showing an account in a lookup when the account is made inactive, other modules will continue to show these inactive codes.

However, Dynamics GP does contain a feature which can be used to remove inactive account from lookups; this same feature can also be used to remove accounts from lookups in series where the account should not be used, such as a sales account in the purchasing or inventory series.

How to do it…

Here we will see how to remove inactive accounts from lookups.

1. Open Financial from the Navigation pane on the left. In the main Area page, under Cards, select Account.
2. Enter, or do a lookup for, the account to be made inactive and removed from the lookups:

   

3. Mark the Inactive checkbox.
4. Press and hold the Ctrl key and click on each of the lines in the Include in Lookup list.
5. Click Save to commit the changes.

Next time a lookup is done in any of the now deselected modules, the account will not be included in the list.

If the account is to be included in lookups in some modules but not others, simply leave selected the modules in which the account should be included:

How it works…

Accounts will only show in lookups when the series is selected in the Include in Lookup list. For series other than General Ledger, simply marking an account as Inactive is not enough to remove it from the lookup although the code can’t be used when the account is inactive.

Streamlining payables processing by prioritizing vendors

Management of vendor payments is a critical activity for any firm; it’s even more critical in difficult economic times. Companies need to understand and control payments and a key component of this is prioritizing vendors. Every firm has both critical and expendable vendors. Paying critical vendors on time is a key business driver.

For example, a newspaper that doesn’t pay their newsprint supplier won’t be in business long. However, they can safely delay payments to their janitorial vendor without worrying about going under.

Dynamics GP provides a mechanism to prioritize vendors and apply those priorities when selecting which checks to print. That is the focus of this recipe.

Getting ready

Setting this up first requires that the company figure out who the priority vendors are. That part is beyond the scope of this book. The Vendor Priority field in Dynamics GP is a three-character field, but users shouldn’t be seduced by the possibilities of three characters. A best practice is to keep the priorities simple by using 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C. Anything more complicated than that tends to confuse users and actually makes it harder to prioritize vendors.

Once the vendor priorities have been determined, the priority needs to be set in Dynamics GP. Attaching a priority to a vendor is the first step. To do that follow these steps:

1. Select Purchasing from the Navigation pane. In the Purchasing area page under Cards, click Vendor Maintenance.
2. Once the Vendor Maintenance window opens, select the lookup button (magnifying glass) next to Vendor ID.
3. Select a vendor and click OK.
4. Once the vendor information is populated, click the Options button. This opens the Vendor Maintenance Options screen.
5. In the center left is the Payment Priority field. Enter 1 in Payment Priority and click Save:

How to do it…

Now that a vendor has been set up with a priority, let’s see how to apply that information when selecting checks to print:

1. To use vendor priorities to select invoices for payment, click Select Checks from the Transactions on the Purchasing area page.
2. In the Select Payables Checks window enter CHECKS to name the check batch. Press Tab to move off of the Batch ID field and click Add to add the batch.
3. Pick a checkbook ID and click Save to save the batch.
4. In the Select By field, click the drop down box and select Payment Priority. Enter 1 in both the From and To boxes.
5. Click the Insert >> button to lock in Payment Priority as an option:

   

6. Click Build Batch at the top. If there are any transactions where the vendor is set to a priority of 1 this will populate a batch of checks based on the vendor priority:

How it works…

Since priority is one of the built-in options for selecting checks, it’s easy to ensure that high priority vendors get selected to be paid first. All of this is easily accomplished with basic Dynamics GP functionality that most people miss.

Getting clarity with user-defined fields

Throughout Dynamics GP, maintenance cards typically include at least two user defined fields. User-defined fields can be renamed in the setup screen for the related module. This provides a great mechanism to add in special information. We’ll take a look at a typical use of a user defined field in this recipe.

How to do it…

For our example, we’ll look at using a user-defined field to rename the User-Defined1 field to Region in Customer Master:. To do so use the following steps:

1. From the Navigation pane select Sales. In the Sales area page click Setup, then Receivables, and finally Options.
2. In the User-Defined 1 field type Region and click OK to close each window:

   

3. Back on the Sales area page click Customer under the Cards area. On the bottom left above User-Defined 2 is the newly named Region field ready to be filled in:

How it works…

Changing the field name only changes the display field; it doesn’t change the underlying field name in the database. SmartLists are smart enough to show the new name. In our example, the description Region would appear in a SmartList, not User-Defined 1.

User-defined fields like this are present for customers, vendors, accounts, sales orders, fixed assets, inventory items, and purchase receipts among others. They can each be renamed in their respective setup screens.

There’s more…

All user defined fields are not the same; some have special features.

Special User-Defined 1 features

User-Defined 1 has special features inside of Dynamics GP. Most of the built-in reports inside of Dynamics GP allow sorting and selection with the User-Defined 1 field. These options aren’t provided for User-Defined 2. Consequently, administrators should carefully consider what information belongs in User-Defined 1 before changing its name since the effects of this selection will be felt throughout the system.

Company setup user-defined fields

On the Company Setup window there are two user defined fields at the top right and there is no option in Dynamics GP to rename these fields. The Company Setup window is accessed by clicking Administration on the Navigation pane, then clicking on Company under the Setup and Company headers.

Expanded user-defined fields

Certain areas such as Fixed Assets, Inventory Items, and Purchase Receipts have more complex types of user-defined fields that can include dates, list selections, and currency.

Summary

So in this article we covered few features of Dynamics GP such as speeding account entries, cleaning account lookups, and so on.For more information on Dynamics GP, you can check other books by Packt, mentioned as follows:

• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Cookbook: https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/microsoft-dynamics-gp-2010-cookbook
• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 Cookbook: https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/microsoft-dynamics-gp-2013-cookbook
• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Implementation: https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/microsoft-dynamics-gp-2010-implementation

Resources for Article:

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Further resources on this subject:

• Code Analysis and Debugging Tools in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 [article]
• Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 with Visual Studio [article]
• MySQL Data Transfer using Sql Server Integration Services (SSIS) [article]

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