DYNAMICS GP FUNCTIONALITY | DESCRIPTOR |
| System Manager | System Manager incorporates powerful features that improve efficiency and increase productivity throughout Great Plains. It is the backbone of Great Plains' ability to deliver open access to information and the flexibility to work the way you work. When using Great Plains, this is a required module that includes features such as tax setup and calculation, User Security, Classes and much more. |
| Business Portal | Microsoft Business Solutions Business Portal will allow users throughout the company, and across the organization, to access the business information and processes they need to do their work, all from one Web-based portal. Business Portal leverages your company’s existing IT infrastructure to deliver the applications, information and processes employees need to do their jobs better. |
| Business Alerts | Business Alerts takes advantage of the query features of Microsoft SQL Server to monitor your data for specific conditions. For example, you may want to be notified when a customer’s credit limit has been exceeded. You can create an unlimited number of business alerts, combining information from any of the tables in company or system databases. Once you have created and enabled a business alert, the conditions will be checked according to the schedule you set up. Whenever the alert condition occurs, an e-mail message is sent to the people or groups you specified. |
| Field Level Security | Field Level Security can be used for any Field in any Product Dictionary (including 3rd party). It allows you to password, lock, disable or hide Fields as well as to password or disable Windows and Forms. You can also filter the contents of Scrolling windows. It has an explorer style interface to assign Field Security to Users/Companies and Classes. |
| Advanced Level Security | Control security easily through a multi-user, multi-company, and multi-dictionary Explorer-style interface. Manage form, window, table, and report access, as well as tools and document access, posting permissions, and SmartList Objects. Configure settings so that changes made to a user class automatically roll down to users assigned to that class. Assign security settings to an individual user and selectively apply those settings to an overall class. Easily copy security settings between users and companies, and between users and classes. Identify security errors quickly using interactive dialogs, with options to fix problems on-the-fly without needing to change the login user. |
| Process Server | If you are using the Distributed Process Server (DPS), you can choose whether you want to process some reports on your computer or send them to a designated process server on the network. Sending long reports to a process server allows you to continue working while the reports are being created. |
| Excel Based Budgeting | Excel Based Budgeting automates the process of sharing budgeting information between Great Plains and Excel. You can capitalize on the budgeting templates, spreadsheets, and graphical features in Excel, then combine that information with your financial reports in Great Plains for a complete financial picture. Budget modifications made in Excel can be used to update Great Plains budget fields. |
| Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) | Enable executives and business decision makers to assess the current health of your business and respond quickly when conditions change with Key Performance Indicators for Microsoft Business Portal. Format KPIs to draw attention to the most important aspects of information, quickly deploy KPIs that are critical to your business success, use role-based access to deliver the right information to the right people, and refresh KPIs as often as needed so information is always current. |
| Microsoft Office Solution Accelerator for Sarbanes-Oxley | Proactively manage compliance processes through integration with Microsoft Office Solution Accelerator for Sarbanes-Oxley, which offers a framework for managing disclosure and control documents and processes. |
| Electronic Document Delivery | Organize and schedule the e-mail delivery of invoices, credit memos, and other sales documents to your customers in XML, HTML, Excel, or PDF format, reducing administrative overhead and increasing customer responsiveness. Flexible capabilities help ensure you send the right document to the right customer at the right time, customize documents to meet specific needs, and schedule document delivery for specific times of the day or during off-peak hours. |
| Financial | |
| General Ledger | General Ledger is the hub for financial information across your organization, offering the flexibility to adapt to changing needs with process controls to ensure accuracy and consistency. Setup flexibility lets you define differing account structures for each company you control, and up to 367 fiscal periods can be defined for precise financial period control. Account setup allows you to define standard accounts, plus variable and fixed allocation accounts for streamlined processing of sophisticated allocations. Unit accounts can be defined to track non-financial or statistical information on your financial statements. |
| Advanced Financial Analysis | Advanced Financial Analysis (AFA) may be used to modify the default financial statements that are provided with Great Plains. If you are using FRx you would not typically use Advanced Financial Analysis. |
| Multicurrency Management | Multicurrency Management delivers a flexible solution that complies with FASB-52 and BASDA standards on the accounting and reporting of multicurrency transactions, helping you handle the often complex process of issuing and receiving transactions in numerous currencies. Great Plains delivers superior multicurrency flexibility with the ability to define an unlimited number of currencies and exchange rates per currency. Because exchange rates can change several times a day, each exchange rate's date and time is tracked, along with expiration dates to ensure the current rate is always available. |
| Multidimensional Analysis | Using Multidimensional Analysis (MDA), you can categorize and track specific transaction activity, increasing the value of your financial information without undue administrative overhead. MDA codes provide the means to analyze financial, sales and purchase transactions using definable groups and codes, adding multiple dimensions to transactions without having to constantly create or redefine chart of account codes. MDA enables you to define unlimited projects and associate those projects with affected revenue or expense accounts. |
| Analytical Accounting | Define the information that is important to your business and analyze financial data by whatever criteria you require with limitless user-defined transaction dimension codes and account classes. Achieve a detailed view into your accounting transactions and enable deep analysis with capabilities to organize data hierarchically for multi-level reporting. |
| Account Level Security | Account Level Security provides your organization with enhanced security and streamlined account views. Using information based on a user's position within the organizational structure, users can enter, edit and view information using a reduced account set, based upon the access granted for accounts. This filtered set of accounts streamlines inquiry windows and eliminates errors caused when entries are made to inappropriate accounts. In addition, productivity is enhanced as account lookup lists are filtered to show only those accounts of interest to the particular user. |
| Intercompany | Intercompany transaction processing enables you to exchange funds or do business between companies in your organization, with complete multicurrency capabilities to handle multinational trades. Streamlined, automated transaction processing between two companies or among multiple companies reduces administrative work and increases the value and timeliness of information throughout your organization. |
| Bank Reconciliation | Bank Reconciliation is the intersection for all bank-related activity throughout Great Plains providing a straightforward, consistent approach to managing your bank transactions. Bank reconciliation processes can help you save time, lower administrative costs and give you tight control over this important business process. Bank-related transactions flow to Bank Reconciliation from other Great Plains modules, making it easy to group receipts for deposit and reconcile bank statements. In addition, transactions can be entered directly in Bank Reconciliation, allowing for adjustments and tracking transactions not recorded in the sub ledgers. |
| Cash Flow Management | Cash Flow Management, with its user-friendly calendar-based interface, gives you the ability to view the summary or detail of any given day's cash inflow and outflow. Using Cash Flow Management, you are armed with a better and easier way to analyze and answer the questions and concerns arising from your company's cash management. Accessing and navigating through Cash Flow Management, from day to day, or month to month, is as easy as clicking your mouse. Click on any date to review daily totals, and click on any entry to instantly review which payments and cash receipts are affecting your cash flow on any given day. |
| Payables Management | Serving as the link between General Ledger and your purchasing systems, Payables Management offers ease of integration and the ability to track the information most important to your business for billing and analysis purposes. You can track and analyze vendor information, efficiently process purchases, and make the most of vendor discounts while maximizing cash flow. Streamlined master record and transaction entry, flexible payment entry systems, in-depth analysis reports and detailed vendor inquiries allow payables personnel to turn knowledge into leverage when managing payables activities. |
| Receivables Management | Receivables Management is the critical meeting point between your financial system and your customer. Detailed customer and sales data provides the information managers need to fine-tune product and service offerings, predictable cash flow helps drive business decisions. Timely cash collection gives you the opportunity to invest in your future sooner. And satisfied customers increase business by purchasing more and by spreading the good news to an ever-widening circle of prospects. Receivables Management serves as the pipeline between your sales systems and General Ledger, helping you efficiently manage customer statement cycles and cash receipt processes, as well as gather customer and sales data for analysis. |
| Customer/Vendor Consolidations | Over the course of a business relationship, some customers become vendors and some vendors become customers. You can use Customer/Vendor Consolidations to transfer information between Receivables Management and Payables Management, so you can create a customer record using information that’s already in your system in a vendor record, and vice versa. Using Customer/Vendor Consolidations, you can consolidate balances in payables and receivables for a single company when you work with that company as both a customer and a vendor. |
| Refund Checks | If you’re using both Receivables Management and Payables Management, you can use Refund Checks to create receivables debit memos for customers who have credit balances, and print refund checks for those customers using Payables Management. |
| National Accounts | National Accounts enable companies who serve multi-entity customers to process cash receipts from the corporate office (parent) on behalf of sales made to a subsidiary (child). This “parent/child” functionality will eliminate redundant data entry and provide greater accuracy in customer account management. |
| Collections Management | Collections Management helps you improve cash flow and reduce bad debts expense. Collections activities are centralized and automated, maintaining detailed records of your customer contacts and allowing you to schedule follow-up actions, assign "To Do" items, print out documents commonly requested by the customer, target customers matching certain criteria, and track detailed contact notes for sales purposes. Collections Management also ensures prompt follow-up with your customers by assigning automatic follow-up actions and reminders, and streamlining the printing and faxing of collections letters, statements and invoices to customers. |
| Electronic Funds Transfer for Payables | Electronic Funds Transfer for Payables Management (EFT-PM) allows you to take full advantage of your banks electronic funds services to securely transfer payments to vendors and employees - even across accounts. When a payables check run (using Payables Management) is processed, an electronic file is generated which can be transmitted to the bank. |
| Electronic Funds Transfer for Receivables | When you post any sales batch with associated payments (Sales Order Processing, Invoicing or Receivables Management), EFT-RM generates an electronic file, which you then transmit to your bank. This allows you to quickly and securely receive payments from your customers. Electronic Funds Transfer for Receivables Management supports the ACH (Automated Clearing House) format, the United States bank-industry standard for describing the format of electronic funds transfers, including deposits and withdrawals. |
| Electronic Reconciliation Management | Automate reconciliation of transactions and adjustments with downloaded bank data, using tools that work with any bank that supports automatic reconciliation. Manage exceptions for transactions that aren’t in your records, such as deposit reversals and altered check amounts. Easily reconcile transactions and adjustments with electronic account information that integrates with the Bank Reconciliation module. Communicate with your bank over any communications link with transaction downloading for later viewing and auditing. |
| Electronic Bank Management | A single point of entry and reconciliation for all bank transactions. |
| Cash Book Management | A single point of entry and reconciliation for all bank transactions. |
| Safe Pay | The Safe-Pay module provides users the ability to utilize their bank’s Positive Pay service. Safe Pay generates an electronic file of authorized checks and voids for transmittal to the user’s bank. This allows the bank to confirm the authenticity of a check and amount before the check is actually paid. If there is a discrepancy between what you tell the bank about the check and what the check reads when presented for payment, the bank will notify you before making a payout. |
| Fixed Asset Management | Use the Fixed Assets module to provide comprehensive recording, tracking and analyzing capabilities for fixed assets, helping your organization gain the insight you need to make better, more timely management decisions. Setup and asset definition capabilities provide you control over asset maintenance and depreciation. Unlimited books help track assets for corporate, federal tax, alternative minimum tax, adjusted current earnings and more. A comprehensive set of depreciation methods and averaging conventions give you needed flexibility in defining asset attributes. When it comes to depreciating assets, Great Plains delivers both flexibility and automation. All predefined asset groups or individual assets can be depreciated in one or more books. |
| Revenue/Expense Deferrals | Revenue accruals and pre-payments processing are common activities in service organisations throughout the world. Revenue/Expense Deferrals automates the process of recognising deferred revenue and expenses in the appropriate accounting periods based on when the amounts are realised. Revenue and costs are distributed over a specified period by calculating and posting values across selected date ranges. This ensures more accurate accounting, recognising revenue and costs as appropriate. Revenue/Expense Deferrals dramatically simplifies the task of deferring revenues or distributing costs over multiple periods. |
| Lockbox Processing | Lockbox Processing automatically imports and applies customer payment information from a lockbox transaction file provided by your bank. Because the file is received automatically and applied to Receivables Management, Lockbox Processing streamlines manual data entry and cash application while reducing data entry errors. The results include reliable receivables information, improved funds availability, increased productivity and greater fraud protection. |
| Bank One Commercial Card Integration | Manage Purchasing and Travel Expenses with a single, Integrated Solution. The Bank One Commercial Card from Microsoft Business Solutions offers you a commercial credit card program that seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Business Solutions—Great Plains, and Microsoft Business Solutions—Solomon. With options for managing travel expenses, high-volume, low-dollar purchases or a combination of both, this comprehensive business tool provides the spending controls and Internet |
| eExpense Pro Integrator | eExpense automates each step of the expense management process – from expense report preparation and approval to policy compliance, reimbursement and data analysis. Expense reports are automatically delivered to approving managers, accounting departments, as well as budget and travel managers for streamlined processing, reimbursement, and data analysis. The expense report data is easily integrated into Great Plains Payables Management for reimbursement to employees. |
| Grant Management | Manage grants proactively, help ensure accountability to sponsors, and maintain tight control over project and funding success. Accurately track grant costs, remain accountable to your sponsors, and meet specific guidelines and regulations. Microsoft Great Plains Grant Management helps ensure budget integrity for every dollar spent and helps you increase your chances of future awards from new and existing sponsors. |
| Intercompany with Inter-fund Accounting | Manage single-use or recurring transactions between companies in your organization, with unlimited flexibility in defining inter-company relationships and streamlined account distributions per journal entry. Interfund Accounting streamlines and automates the transfer of balances between funds, eliminating the need to manually reconcile fund accounts. |
| Encumbrance Management | Ensure funds are correctly allocated by reserving encumbrances when purchase orders are first entered. Encumbrance Management provides checks and controls that ensure budgets stay within specified limits. Instantly alert users if budget limits have been exceeded when purchase order line items are entered. Maintain granular control over budget expenditures and monitor encumbered purchases from any point in time. |
| Intra-stat | Collects statistics on the trade of goods between countries of the European Union (EU). |
| Project Accounting | |
| Project Accounting | With Great Plains project accounting capabilities, cash flow is improved and costs are reduced. Full integration among Great Plains components streamlines invoicing, time and expense approvals, and reporting. Sophisticated security controls limit access to sensitive business records while allowing employees to access the information they need to get their jobs done. Project management decisions that are based on sound, up-to-the-minute project data are more effective. Informed decisions build confidence – and success. With an Great Plains solution, project managers have a wealth of information, the information they need to keep operations running smoothly and clients satisfied. |
| Project Series Time and Expense | By eliminating the task of entering time and expense data via mundane spreadsheets or office-based network systems, PS Time and Expense and PS TimeReporter empower your employees, improving productivity and accuracy. Integration to Project Series, Payables Management and Payroll allows employee time and expenses captured in PS Time & Expense and PS TimeReporter to be shared for project tracking, vendor payment, payroll and client invoicing. Employees can record their hours and expenses the moment they complete their work, or whenever it’s most convenient. |
| Project Time & Expense (with Business Portal) | Manage project details more effectively and increase accuracy and control of project-related expenses by enabling employees to enter time and expense records through Microsoft Business Portal. Project managers can easily review and approve time and expense reports online. |
| Human Resource Management | |
| Human Resources | Human Resources provides all the tools you need to make the most of your organization’s greatest asset—its employees. You can take control of hiring details and streamline the recruiting process by tracking open positions and prospective employees as they go through the interview cycle—giving you easy access to the information you need to make your hiring decisions. Human Resources helps you create and maintain employee records. |
| eEmployee | Your employees move, change phone numbers and get married. As a result, their personal information changes. Using eEmployee, your employees can easily maintain their own personal information in Human Resources and Payroll. eEmployee is a web-delivered application, so if your employees have access to the internet, they can enter their own changes, answer their own questions and resolve their own issues—quickly, easily and conveniently. Passwords, document approval and role assignments ensure that only authorized employees and personnel have access to the records, which assures confidentiality. You decide which change requests require approval before personnel files are updated, guaranteeing accuracy. |
| Payroll - US | Payroll helps you create and maintain employee records and employee classes, enter and edit transactions and print paychecks. Information compiled in Payroll is used to generate W-2 statements, wage and hour reports and other crucial payroll reports. |
| Payroll Direct Deposit | With Payroll Direct Deposit, you can automatically add payroll funds to your employees’ bank, savings and loan or credit union accounts through an electronic Automated Clearing House (ACH) file. Conforming to the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) specifications, Payroll Direct Deposit allows unlimited accounts and unlimited financial institutions for any employee’s payroll |
| Federal Magnetic Media | The Magnetic Media module, purchased separately, records W-2 statement information electronically in compliance with IRS specifications. Employers with more than 250 W-2 Copy A forms are required to file those forms via magnetic media, and other employers have found it to be a convenient and efficient way to file W-2 Copy A forms with the Federal government. Magnetic Media also includes the ability to file W-2 Copy 1 W-2 statements for states that accept the MMREF-1 electronic file format. Local tax information can also be recorded electronically. |
| Payroll Connect | Payroll Connect is the right solution for businesses using both Great Plains and ADP PC/Payroll for Windows. This integrated solution helps improve operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness by connecting General Ledger with information from ADP. Not only will using Payroll Connect save you time and ensure accurate data, your company will also benefit from the leadership and expertise of ADP and Microsoft Great Plains. |
| eTimesheets for Payroll | eTimesheets for Payroll takes your time tracking processes to the Web. The time-consuming process of collecting, tracking, reviewing and approving timesheet data is quickly and easily automated via a secure environment. eTimesheets seamlessly integrates with Payroll, eliminating complex and error prone data validation and re-entry and streamlining the batch creation process. eTimesheets benefits everyone involved in entering and approving time—employees, managers and payroll personnel alike—by automating each step. |
| Canadian Payroll | Canadian Payroll provides a solution that helps businesses streamline their payroll processes and gain greater control over their payroll information. Canadian Payroll’s standard features include easy configuration of complex benefits and deductions, multi-bank direct deposit electronic file transfer functions, travel allowances, flexibility in defining pay code calculations, and automatic batch generation. For organizations with complex payroll and union requirements, the benefits of Canadian Payroll have rapidly resulted in significant time and cost savings. When integrated with Human Resources, Canadian Payroll enables you to store, analyze and integrate all employee information in one central system, allowing human resources professionals to focus on more strategic objectives. |
| Business Portal HRM Self Service Suite | Deliver employees and managers access to the tools they need to streamline human resource management tasks. Allow employees to view and change personal information, and enable managers to complete common tasks — such as, approving employee requests, accessing vital employee information, and creating and viewing status for internal job postings — that let them work more effectively with direct reports and make critical staff decisions. |
| Time & Attendance | Enables employees to submit timecards, request time off and review their leave balances, and enables managers to review and approve timecards and requests for time off. |
| Employee Profile | Enables employees to review and modify their personal information, dependent records, and emergency contacts. Enables managers to view emergency contact and other personal information for direct reports as well as anyone in their reporting chain. Employee Profile must be installed to use any other application in the HRM Self Service Suite. |
| Employee Pay | Enables employees to view paystubs, benefits, and company-related expenses via Microsoft Business Portal. |
| Recruitment | Enables employees to review and apply for job openings in the company, and enables managers to review applications for open positions and accept applicants for hire. |
| Skills & Training | Enables employees to review their and update their skills, education, tests and training information, and enables managers to review team members’ skills and training. |
| HRM Self Service Suite - Canada | Deliver employees and managers access to the tools they need to streamline human resource management tasks. Allow employees to view and change personal information, and enable managers to complete common tasks — such as, approving employee requests, accessing vital employee information, and creating and viewing status for internal job postings — that let them work more effectively with direct reports and make critical staff decisions. Integrates only with Human Resources, not with Canadian Payroll. |
| Inventory & Order Management | |
| Sales Order Processing | The hub of the Distribution Series, Sales Order Processing provides a comprehensive ordering and invoicing solution. Flexible setup ensures process controls that fit your business needs, while streamlined transaction entry helps increase sales while lowering costs for both you and your customer. Multi-departmental order processing workflow lets your business efficiently create and manage quotes, orders, back orders, invoices, and returns.You can design highly efficient sales order processes with unlimited document type IDs and unlimited process holds, defining business rules and applying them to each type of quote, order, back order, invoice and return. |
| Sales Order Processing w/Advanced Invoicing | By managing the order to fulfillment process with pinpoint accuracy, Sales Order Processing with Advanced Invoicing helps you serve your top customers more effectively, monitor fulfillment and invoicing more accurately, and minimize shipping and labor costs. Control your sales with discount management, drop shipping, kit items, sales quantity status, and online sales tracking. Speed time to delivery with multiple ship-to addressing and allocation of inventory from multiple sites for a single order. Tailor all stages of the sales cycle to meet your needs. |
| Purchase Order Processing | Purchase Order Processing provides a solution for controlling spending while streamlining business practices and improving access to accurate information you can use to shape buying decisions Purchase Order Processing. Throughout the process, Purchase Order Processing reduces activities to their necessary steps, improving employees’ productivity, eliminating inefficiencies that can lead to backlogs and inventory shortages, and improving profitability by reducing administrative overhead on purchasing tasks. With Purchase Order Processing, you can use drop shipments to ship orders directly from your vendor to your customer. When goods arrive, you can receive line items against multiple outstanding purchase orders in a single transaction. |
| Purchase Order Enhancements | Purchase Order Enhancements includes Purchase Order Commitments and Purchase Order Approvals. Purchase Order Commitments allows you to track committed details against budgets and include these commitments in your financial reports. Purchase Order Approvals includes a variety of flexible features to maintain approval information for each company. |
| Landed Cost | Landed cost works with the Purchase Order Processing and Inventory Control modules to accurately reflect the true costs of procured materials. Landed costs are the additional costs that might be associated with purchasing a product such as the amount you must pay for freight costs or duties for purchases from another country. |
| PO Generator | The Automated Purchase Order Generator creates suggested purchase orders based on predefined rules, to be edited and transferred to Purchase Order Processing for replenishment. To use the Automated Purchase Order Generator, you must also be using Inventory Control and Purchase Order Processing. |
| eRequisition | eRequisition allows employees to enter their own purchase requisitions using a web browser over a corporate intranet. The requisition is routed to the appropriate individuals for review and approval, before it is entered in the Purchase Order Processing system. eRequisition eliminates the need for a paper-based requisition system in your company, and gives all employees an easy and efficient way to enter requisitions. |
| Requisition Management | Reduce paperwork and automate approval processes for purchases by enabling users throughout the organization to enter and approve purchase requisitions via Microsoft Business Portal. Create flexible approval hierarchies that include line-item level approval, provide role-based access to information and processes, and ultimately gain greater visibility and control over the purchasing process. |
| Inventory Control | Improve control over your inventory and pricing and you improve control over your entire business. Inventory Control lets you implement pricing, cycle counting, and ABC analysis, helping you track quantities, costs and prices, while letting you easily adjust prices and other product details. As a sub-ledger component of Great Plains, Inventory Control lets you track inventory according to your business needs, while integrating easily with your General Ledger. When it comes to inventory pricing, Inventory Control delivers flexibility with multiple pricing methods, unit of measure pricing, and customer-level pricing so specific customer types, even individual customers, can be given their own pricing structures. |
| Bill of Materials | Bill of Materials provides a solution for tracking the components and subassemblies used in light manufacturing and similar production and assembly operations. Bill of Materials allows you to track multi-level bills up to 10 levels deep, control when inventory stock is allocated, and automatically track any differences between actual and planned usage to spot inefficiencies in the assembly process. |
| Invoicing | Invoicing provides a rich, full-featured invoicing environment for updating inventory and customer accounts through the issuance of invoices and returns. Its single-window invoice processing workflow delivers efficiency and complete control to your invoicing systems. This module is not as robust as Sales Order Processing, and would not be used if you are already using Sales Order Processing. |
| Extended Pricing | Modify customer-specific pricing and rules quickly and easily and enable your sales team to personalize pricing to meet customer demand and beat the competition with Extended Pricing. Maintain your prices with easy-to-use tools and wizards that give you the flexibility to offer promotional prices, change pricing lists on the fly, or set date-sensitive restrictions when needed. Personalize prices for individual items, customers, or groups of customers, while maintaining standard pricing elsewhere. Help secure customer contracts by meeting customer demand for personalized pricing, while maintaining the ability to change prices as needed. |
| Advanced Distribution | Harness the pick/pack/ship process with user-defined procedures for more consistent, accurate workflow and improved control. Manage inventory more effectively with customized rules for shelf life and minimum stock levels. Improve customer communication by linking your inventory and individual customer item codes to speed inquiries from service representatives and customers. |
| Advanced Picking | Advanced Picking capabilities provide you with the flexibility needed to minimize handling processes and costs for both single and multi-site operations. Improve multi-site operations by determining preferred bulk and individual picking methods. Tailor site-level operations with configurable picking rules. Increase picking productivity with shorter pick journeys and goods sent straight to the loading bay. Save time and effort with consolidated (bulk) picking lists across numerous orders for common items. Increase operational efficiency with individual picking lists generated in bin/bay sequence. |
| Available to Promise | Available to Promise helps you ensure that customers receive firm delivery promises. Provide fast answers to customers by calculating earliest ship date with a single click. Pinpoint inventory availability and out-of-stock risks with information on inventory, real and projected sales, and the sequence of anticipated delivery. Make accurate commitments to customers based on forward-looking inventory projections that include outstanding sales and purchase orders, unposted inventory, bills of materials, and manufacturing projections. Cumulative Available to Promise represents quantities available after satisfying future commitments, helping ensure that delivery promises are accurate and firm. |
| Quality Assurance | Define quality assurance processes that fit precise product demands to refine and optimize testing of incoming raw materials. Flexible quality sampling, accurate tracking of destructive testing, and process revisions are easy to implement and administer—an advantage when quality counts. Enable suppliers to respond quickly and effectively to your needs by providing them with fast, accurate information regarding quality assurance processes. Quality Assurance provides clear, concise reports to facilitate this collaboration across the supply chain. |
| Direct Debits and Refunds | Assists you in collecting and refunding amounts due from customers electronically by direct debit. |
| Sales Configurator | Deliver fast, accurate, and customized product configurations that meets customer demand and improves satisfaction — without adding work or stress to your customer-facing personnel. By presenting a single bill of materials in a form that is easy to access and understand, Sales Configurator helps eliminate the confusion of working with multiple configurations and part numbers — making it easier for sales personnel to answer queries and provide direction to customers. |
| Sales Forecasting | Integrate with Material Requirements Planning module so sales forecasts are accurately reflected in material requirements plans. Allows you to create forecasts for a range of items or salespeople and to combine these forecasts into a Master Forecast. |
| E-commerce | |
| eOrder | eOrder helps you build secure, business-to-business ordering systems over the Internet. With eOrder, established customers can securely enter orders directly into the Sales Order Processing system, and then check on the status of their orders—any time, day or night. eOrder is also ideal for businesses employing remote-office or traveling employees, who can use the system to enter orders directly into your system at their convenience, without requiring you to duplicate order entry efforts. |
| eCommerce | eCommerce enables secure, easy-to-implement online business-to-consumer order processing. A powerful set of Internet technologies, eCommerce offers enormous advantages for businesses seeking to expand into new markets via the Internet. eCommerce simplifies electronic store creation, giving you the opportunity to build a powerful new sales channel without the traditional brick-and-mortar investments and expensive overhead. Seamless integration between Great Plains and your electronic storefront means customer, inventory and pricing information are all accurate and up-to-date on your web site, eliminating the need to maintain two systems. Enabling your customers to enter their own shipping and billing addresses, plus credit card and purchase information gives them the ability to make sure the information is entered the way they want, saves you time and reduces data re-keying errors. |
| Field Service | |
| Service Call Management | Service Call Management allows you to lower your costs while increasing your overall efficiency by providing the information needed by service managers, dispatchers, and technicians in a single easy-to-manage user interface. With Service Call Management, the right technician gets assigned to the right job with the right parts, preventing wasted time and travel. Service calls can be created through various channels including e-mail, telephone, remote dial-up connection, the Internet or directly through the Service Call Management application. |
| Manager Assist | Service managers and dispatchers need a graphical dispatch board that will allow them to quickly and accurately determine in real-time where their service technicians are deployed. Manager Assist utilizes the data maintained within the Service Call Management module to fill this need. In addition, dispatchers can move service calls among technicians or to different times throughout the day or week, allowing them to better balance the load across all the available field resources. |
| Contract Administration | Contract Administration has the tools you need to effectively manage complex, multitier contracts, quotations and warranties, putting you in a better position to maximize your service revenue. Tracking customer contracts, quotes and equipment histories becomes a point-and-click process. You’ll know everything you need to know about your customers when they call, instantly locating their equipment and service contract status and history. |
| Preventive Maintenance | Preventive Maintenance manages the details of your service agreements, ensuring you deliver on your contract obligations. Preventive Maintenance tracks and schedules preventive maintenance calls, ensuring the right parts, the right consumable supplies and the right technician are in the right place at the right time. The system can even provide directions by integrating to many widely available map applications. |
| eService Call | Empower your customers to help themselves with online access to comprehensive account information, and with the ability to log service requests and check service status anytime, anywhere. |
| eReturns | eReturns allows you to provide your customers with a convenient, easy to use interface through which they can initiate and monitor the returns process. After logging into a secure website, your customers will be able to create new Return Materials Authorization (RMA) documents. The status of these open and historical RMA documents will be available through eReturns, keeping your customers informed of how the return process is progressing at all times. |
| Returns Management | Returns Management brings order to the complicated returns process, streamlining the process for tracking and processing repairs and providing a central management point for part returns. You’ll be able to support high-volume repairs and rapid turnaround, while creating levels of service tailored to individual customer needs. |
| Depot Management | Depot Management helps companies manage the internal repair process, minimize costs and improve repair turnaround time by streamlining the receipt, repair and disposition of returned products. You’ll be able to manage high volume repair facilities at multiple sites promptly and efficiently. As the internal side of Returns Management, Depot Management directs the repair process of both serialized and non-serialized items. A single RMA document tracks an item through all phases and paths of the repair process. Depot Management links your company’s customer support, field service, inventory, and shipping/receiving departments, devoted to shipping, storing, sorting and preparing for the repair of products. Depot Management is integrated with Returns Management, Inventory Control, and General Ledger providing you with the tools you need to understand and analyze the effect the return and repair process has on your entire financial picture. |
| Tech Assist | Improve service technician performance and help them to deliver the best customer service possible by providing online access technical and customer information and helping to enable them to manage, update, and close service calls while working in the field. |
| eTech | The eTech module provides a solution that allows remote technicians to enjoy the benefits of the Service Call Management system, even while operating in the field. A web based product that allows the ability to update service tickets real time. |
| Job Costing | Analyze information maintained for each job against estimated costs — such as labor, machine use, material, overhead, and shipping — and help reveal unacceptable trends that contribute to costs. Collect job costing data with greater flexibility, speed, and accuracy. Streamline data entry and make it easy for your employees to assign transactions to jobs when entry is required, eliminating redundant and error-prone duplicate entries. |
| Demand Planner | Generate reliable future demand forecasts based on your company’s historical data with a library of selected forecasting algorithms that are applicable in many business contexts, such as stable or seasonal demand or increasing or decreasing sales trends. Gain deep, multi-dimensional visibility into customer buying patterns by mapping your business data to the most relevant elements that drive forecasting — product, time, and markets. |
| Manufacturing | |
| Manufacturing | Great Plains provides a powerful, yet easy-to-use suite of manufacturing applications designed to help mid-size discrete manufacturers plan for and manage production. Full integration with other Great Plains business management components ensures instant access to critical information such as forecasts, sales, human resources and purchasing information to those who need it. Great Plains provides mid-size manufacturers the breadth of solutions they need, along with comprehensive implementation planning services that allow businesses to be up and running in a fraction of the time it takes to implement traditional ERP applications. |
| Manufacturing Bill of Materials | Enables more precise management of materials, components, and assemblies, including their costs, locations, and routing sequences. Create different types of bills that meet the specific needs of your products — engineering bills, manufactured bills, configured bills, archived bills, even super bills that manage all options on the configurable products you produce. |
| Manufacturing Order Processing | Track productions costs in detail and manage work orders, the shop floor, and even outsourced processes. By directing the entire cycle of order processing, you can build a business that is both customer-driven and profitable. Integrated sales and production processes support flexible, efficient make-to-order environments. Integrating forecasting processes with production significantly improves planning in build to forecast or hybrid environments. |
| Master Production Scheduling | Provides a flexible solution for managing high-level production requirements. Drawing information from sales forecasts, Master Production Scheduling nets them together to form a single, comprehensive production schedule. Sales forecasts can be refined and manufacturing orders automatically created to meet expected needs. Simply review the manufacturing orders, and you’re ready to begin production. The make-to-stock features offered by Master Production Scheduling dovetail with the sales order-driven functionality of other Manufacturing modules, providing a broad-based solution for a wide range of production environments. |
| Materials Requirement Planning | Customize your resource planning schedule to use actual or projected sales, or minimums and maximums. Define run spans, bucketing options, material requirements, and production planning specifications. Broaden or narrow the forecast view and improve your response to exceptions generated by previous Material Requirements Planning runs. Easily combine material requirements into a minimum number of purchase orders with Purchase Request Resolution. |
| Capacity Requirements Planning | Offers an effective solution for addressing your capacity monitoring and planning needs. By displaying available capacity and load percentage information for all work centers in a single view, Capacity Requirements Planning makes it easy for you to manage your production and resources efficiently. Capacity Requirements Planning provides the summary information you need to spot situations where capacity is short or long. This makes it easier for you to shift production smoothly as needed, with detailed information a single click away. You can view capacity information by day, week, or month, as far into the future as necessary. Using Capacity Requirements Planning, you can view both firm and planned requirements, allowing side-by-side “what if” analysis of actual and projected capacity demands. |
| Engineering Change Management | By providing an easy means to collect, organize, and review changes before authorization, Engineering Change Management helps you ensure that engineering change requests are strategically sound before they become orders. Identify affected items resulting from engineering change orders with advanced query capabilities. Detailed historical records of engineering change orders (ECOs) help management understand why changes have been made—and their impact on profitability. |
| Customization Tools | |
| Field Level Security Scripting | Field Level Security Scripting works with the Field Level Security module to provide record level security, auto generation of customer and vendor IDs, automatic defaulting of field values, and other custom business logic. |
| Modifier with Visual Basic for Applications | This comprehensive set of customization tools provides you with everything you need to tailor the business management system to your exact needs. VBA is a special version of Visual Basic that’s imbedded directly into the Grreat Plains family of products. However, instead of building stand-alone applications, VBA is intended to customize an application. We’ve combined the power of VBA with the screen customization tool, the Modifier, to provide an overall set of customization tools you will immediately be able to use, with little training. |
| Integration Manager | Integration Manager allows you to safely and easily integrate data to Great Plains back office applications, eliminating the need to manually re key data into the system. This product includes the Integration Manager Engine, Dynamics/eEnterprise Adapter, Dynamics/eEnterprise SQL Optimized Adapter, Text/ODBC Source Adapter, and Direct to Tables (ODBC Destination) Adapter. Several different versions of this product are available, including Integration Manager for Dynamics/eEnterprise Financials, Integration Manager for Dynamics/eEnterprise Distribution, and the Integration Manager for Dynamics/eEnterprise Financial and Distribution Bundle. |
| Integration Manager - XML Edition | Integration Manager XML Edition can be combined with other Integration Manager offerings to add XML in and XML out capabilities. As a standalone product, the XML edition can quickly and easily transform XML data without the custom programming required by XSLT transformations, or can generate XML data from any ODBC compliant database. This product includes the Integration Manager Engine, the Text/ODBC Source Adapter, the XML Source Adapter, and the XML Destination Adapter. |
| Integration Assistant for Excel | The Integration Assistant for Excel enables you to integrate data to Great Plains without leaving Microsoft Excel, and ensures data integrity by performing full validation as part of the import process. The Integration Assistant for Excel also provides the ability to query General Ledger data directly from Excel – you no longer need to look up account balances inside of Great Plains. The Integration Assistant for Excel is the easiest way to integrate Microsoft Excel business applications and reporting tools into your financial management system. No knowledge of ODBC or the Great Plains system tables is required. |
| eConnect | eConnect offers “outside-in” integration to businesses with a non-Microsoft platform data source, such as a point-of-sale system, the ability to integrate to Microsoft Great Plains business management solutions. eConnect utilizes the power of industry-standard technologies such as BizTalk, COM, MSMQ, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and XML. Microsoft Great Plains eConnect reduces your costs by eliminating data re-entry, improving your return on investment. eConnect offers one-way integration, sending data, documents and information into Great Plains. In addition, eConnect can deliver specific one-by-one requests to Great Plains to view specific documents in the outside data source. |
| Dexterity | Dexterity is a client/server application development tool with the power to deliver scalable business solutions across multiple platforms and databases. Dexterity has the power to add significant functionality to Great Plains, adding individual functions where needed or creating entirely new applications that seamlessly integrate with the Great Plains modules. Dexterity provides you with the complete set of components, including a forms builder, a database manager, a report builder, a 4GL scripting language and debugger, and an embedded macro system. |
| Continuum for Visual Basic or Continuum for Delphi | The Continuum family of products provides intuitive, comprehensive tools that let you quickly extend Great Plains with existing or new business applications written in Visual Basic or Delphi. Continuum provides you with an intuitive wizard-like interface that generates all the code necessary for integration, eliminating significant costs associated typically associated with learning any complex programming interfaces or database schema. |
| A4 | Ensures that graphic reports print correctly on A4 size paper. |
| Software Development Kit (SDK) | Work directly with data tables to create extended customizations and integrations via the SDK. Comprehensive documentation includes an outline of the Great Plains data model, while essential tools further help developers to make customizations and integrations. |
| Analytics & Reporting | |
| Crystal Reports | Crystal Reports allows you to easily create, modify and save a custom report with just the information you want to see. You can build a report using data from multiple tables and files that you might not otherwise be able to join in one report. Tables and files that are not predefined in Great Plains can be identified, linked and formatted in Seagate Crystal Reports, allowing you to create an unlimited number of reports for your organisations analysis needs. |
| Explorer | Explorer allows you to create, display and, save favorite views, and even export data from your Great Plains business management system to Microsoft Word of Excel. You can then use this information in Excel or Word to easily create mass letter mailings, or other analysis you require. |
| Report Writer | With Report Writer, you can modify existing Great Plains reports to suite your purposes or create entirely new reports that address specific to your organization. Report Writer enables you to pull data from multiple data tables for a single report, create restrictions to pinpoint the specific information you need, perform calculations on the data, and create new sorting methods to see the information the way you want. Report Writer's graphical user interface enables you to easily change report fonts, colors and sizes to create presentation-quality reports tailored to individual needs. |
| Enterprise Reporting | Enterprise Reporting delivers global control with the flexibility for planning, budgeting, reporting and analyzing your financial information. Enterprise Reporting is designed for sophisticated group reporting and consolidation needs, and includes advanced multi-dimensional consolidations, eliminations and multicurrency capabilities. It has an unlimited number of tree structures which allow intuitive graphical manipulation with reporting structures and flexible 'what if' analysis for any changes in structure and roll-up reporting. Additionally, Enterprise Reporting allows you to collect information from virtually any financial system, creating a flexible consolidation environment for your organization. |
| FRx Financial Reporter | Multiple company consolidations, multiple currency translations and the unique ability to drill down from Web-based financial statements back into General Ledger make the combination of Great Plains and FRx Financial Reporter strategically important to your organization. FRx Financial Reporter uses a spreadsheet-like interface to deliver report design flexibility. Powerful row, column and reporting tree 'building blocks' make it easy to construct new reports and shed new light on your financial picture. And, because FRx Financial Reporter seamlessly integrates with Great Plains changes to the chart of accounts are instantly reflected in the financial statements, reducing costly errors and expensive maintenance. |
| FRx Forecaster | Armed with FRx Forecaster, you can use the Web to collaborate with managers in the next office or around the world, compare budgets to actuals in real time, and gain dynamic control over expenses by integrating your budget information with Great Plains financials, purchasing and sales applications. FRx Forecaster enables you to automate operational expense, personnel, capital and revenue planning, so you can roll out plans in less time, with unprecedented accuracy. Managers can participate directly in the budgeting process from anywhere over the Internet, your corporate intranet or LAN. |
| Business Intelligence with Proclarity | Using Microsoft SQL Server OLAP/Analysis Services, this analytical platform can be used to create custom solutions to meet the specific analysis needs of a wide variety of business decision makers. Individuals can view information in a multidimensional graphical format that allows for effortless exploration of the multiple dimensions your data contains. For example, sales executives can easily review in a single display sales by month, region, business unit, product family, dollar volume and any other dimension you define. Analysis can include multiple dimensions, such as sales for three months by region for each product family. Proclarity enables decision makers to easily explore complex information, helping them visualize trends, patterns and relationships within Great Plains-allowing them to make better business decisions. |
| FRx Professional | FRx Professional Edition makes it easy to gain immediate control of your financial reporting process by making it easy and fast to build and maintain complex financial reports. FRx helps companies achieve marked improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, timely and accurate information and accelerated decision making. FRx Professional includes FRx Financial Reporter, FRx WebPort, FRx Report Server, and FRx Currency Translation. |
| FRx Desktop | FRx Financial Reporter Desktop Edition makes it easy to gain immediate control of your financial reporting process by making it easy and fast to build and maintain complex financial reports. FRx helps companies achieve marked improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, timely and accurate information and accelerated decision making. |
| FRx Report Designer | FRx Report Designer allows you to create, generate, and maintain boardroom-quality financial reports from the convenience of your desktop, without the assistance of your IT department or a database professional. Powerful and flexible Row Format, Column Layout, and Reporting Trees building blocks ensure that all relevant account information from a variety of data sources is contained within your reports, and that you can quickly and easily respond to changes in your business. |
| FRx WebPort | FRx WebPort allows you to quickly publish, store, and manage FRx reports and non-FRx documents on a security-enhanced Web site. Authorized users can access the FRx WebPort Web site using only a Web browser. No additional hardware or software is required. Access requires a log-in, and additional security can be set at the Reporting Tree level, ensuring that each recipient can access only the information appropriate to their job responsibilities. |
| FRx Report Server | FRx Report Server helps you automate the production of reports you run and distribute on a regular basis. Reports can be scheduled to run overnight or during off-peak hours, resulting in minimal impact on your server resources. You can also select when and how specific reports should be generated and distributed—via e-mail (in a compressed and encrypted DrillDown Viewer file), published on the Web, or in a shared directory. |
| FRx Currency Translator | For companies who do multinational reporting, automatic currency translation is a requirement. The sophisticated Currency Translation feature in FRx fulfills this need. You can create multiple exchange rate tables using FRx, or you can access the exchange rate table information maintained in your general ledger. |
| FRx Drill Down Viewer | FRx DrillDown Viewer allows users to review detailed reports while working online or offline, without accessing the general ledger or company network. By “drilling down” on a report row, users can access multiple layers of information—all the way down to transaction-level detail—giving them greater insight to the numbers, which means fewer questions back to you. |
| FRx Report Launcher | FRx Report Launcher helps finance professionals and executives select pre-existing reports, specify output options, and generate the reports they need, all on an on-demand basis. Users are able to click or “drill down” to the transaction detail level while maintaining the format and integrity of the original report design. FRx Report Launcher is recommended for executives, managers, and anyone else who needs quick access to up-to-date information contained in commonly used, previously created reports. |
| FRx Report Manager | FRx Report Manager makes it easier to pull together all the documents you need to deliver customized, comprehensive financial information to recipients across your organization. A clear and simple use |