Microsoft Dynamics GP: Great Plains Recycling Business Automation

 by: Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains could be considered as generic ERP platform to be tailored to fit specific industry and market niche. Being mature MRP system and so having a lot of third party modules, Great Plains could fit the unique industry requirements combining these third parties and custom coding. New version: Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains 9.0 will have more options for C#/VB.Net developer, including more exposure to .Net XML web services and Visual Studio. However the GP workstation client code is Microsoft Dexterity written application and we will be focusing on Great Plains Dexterity customization.

• Industry Specifics. Recycling containers are rented to customers and based on the balance customers might become vendors – we send customer or vendor invoice and receive or send payments. Clients typically pay for container rent and at the same time – we pay to the client for the recycled materials collected

• Service Module. We can use GP Service Advantage Suite or WennSoft Service module to account sending service crews onsite.

• Fixed Assets. We also could deploy Great Plains Fixed Assets module to account and depreciate leased and insured equipment. Fixed Assets serves as assets depreciation tool, so it might not be enough to track assets by projects

• Invoice/Credit Memo. Based on the net results for the month – we should issue invoice or credit memo to the customer and the challenge is – it should be all originated in one screen to automate the user interface. The best way is – Dexterity screen where you get Service Invoice/Order from WennSoft or Service Advantage Suite (in some cases you should send it first to Great plains SOP). In this screen you should be able to enter positive and negative quantities and net it to either invoice or credit memo.

• Customer/Vendor Consolidation. In Great Plains in order to return money to the client you should use customer/vendor consolidation and transfer credit memos to vendor invoices. Please note that Customer/Vendor consolidation module is available for Great Plains Professional (it is not available for Great Plains Standard)

• Payroll and Contractor Expenses. Great Plains Business Portal has employee self service and you can have your contractors and employees to enter their expenses, such as driver tolls and mileage. Another way is to use Great Plains Integration Manager to feed expenses into Payroll or Accounts Payables module

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