Entries by Steve

This is the first part of a series of blog entries on costing in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0.

Microsoft Dynamics GP offers users the opportunity to manage product costs accurately. Accurate costing enables management to understand product costs, provide for fact-based decision making regarding product profitability, and ultimately reduce expenses, increasing profits.

For a business to realize these benefits, it’s important to understand the options available in Dynamics GP and the proper way to perform transactions so that costs may be captured correctly.

The biggest costing decision when implementing Dynamics GP is whether to use Standard Costing or Actual Costing for products. This is set on the item card, so it is possible to make this choice on an item-by-item basis. However, most companies settle on one method or another, depending on what is best for their type of business. For many discrete and some process manufacturers, standard costing is the way to go. Actual costing is often appropriate for businesses that buy, use, or sell items with frequently changing costs. Another type of business that uses actual cost is one where manufacturing is either “engineered to order” or uniquely assembled or configured for the end customer. Some examples from our customer base:

• Types of businesses using actual costing:
• A company that services & repairs medical equipment 
• Military contractor - manufacturing and retrofitting equipment
• Power generation – consuming coal to fuel generators 
• Food & beverage manufacturer
• Types of businesses using standard costing:
• Food & beverage manufacturer
• Aircraft instrument manufacturer
• Consumer goods manufacturer - sporting goods and lawn / garden items
• Consumer goods distributor

Once a costing method has been chosen, it's important to understand a few more key points:

• If you choose standard costing, how frequently will standards be changed? This may depend on how often suppliers change their prices, and has varied for our clients from once a year to as frequently as every month at month end. 
• If you choose actual costing, how will you process your cost layers – LIFO (last in / first out) or FIFO (first in / first out)? How do you make sure the correct cost is used in each step of your process?

Stay tuned for our next entry, where we'll explore the impact of these choices.

Until then, remember to join us on Tuesday, August 25, for a free MeritCare Training Session: Microsoft Dynamics GP Manufacturing Costing Tips and Tricks. Register now for this free event before it's too late.

There are several uses for Activity Tracking in Dynamics GP 10. One of the uses is to find out if users are trying to access features of GP that should be locked out. Here’s an additional use for it.

Sometimes, a user needs access to a particular menu option or report in Dynamics GP, but you can’t quite figure out what the window is called or how to find it in the new task and role security matrix in GP version 10. Granting access to a task in version 10 can be difficult if you don’t know what the window is called or the proper module or third party application.

To narrow down your search, you can use the activity tracking feature in version 10. Here’s a brief example of how it’s done:

To turn on activity tracking for the user, go to the Tools>>System Setup>>Activity Tracking menu option.

Once in Activity Tracking Setup: 

• Choose “Access Tracking” as the Activity Type. 
• Select Failed Attempts to Access a File, Failed Attempts to Open a Window, and Failed Attempts to Print a Report.
• Select the company or companies where the user is having issues. 
• Click OK

Note – the company name below is blanked out on purpose. Your screen should show your companies.

A question that sometimes comes from companies that are already using Dynamics GP for accounting and basic inventory processing is: How do I convert to lot control for my items if I’ve already been using GP for years without lot control? The short answer is that it is a lot of work. The longer answer is that it is possible, but it does require quite a few steps to prepare your system and go through the conversion. I’ve collected a draft list of the steps to turn on lot controls as follows.

Note – these are intended as guidelines and your actual steps may be different. In addition, these steps refer to using SQL scripts to update the tables. Ideally, the changing items to lot controlled would be entered through the GP user interface without using scripts. However, this requires having no open purchase orders and no open sales orders for the items. Sometimes it is impractical to remove all Sales Orders and Purchase Orders from the system due to the sheer volume of transactions. Therefore, we have done this at some of our clients using SQL Scripts. Please contact us for information regarding how we may assist if you would like help with your implementation.