Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Obama’s New Changing Landscape for Smaller Healthcare Practices: Can IT Create Cost Savings?

By Steve Hammett

Smaller healthcare providers are under pressure to lower costs, reduce their income or be replaced by more efficient smaller health care providers. The onus is now on the smaller health care providers to follow their bigger cousins and step up to the plate by using IT solutions that make sense and lower costs. Recent political posturing around a mandate for healthcare change creates anxiety for smaller healthcare practices. Understanding how IT can lower costs is imperative for the small healthcare practitioner.

Traditionally, smaller health care practices have been relatively independent providers. They usually have had one or two professionals, a few administrative staff and a mountain of paperwork. Clinical and economic information was difficult to access and frequently unavailable, which led to unnecessary costs. However, the size of these offices and traditional healthcare business climate landscape tolerated inefficiencies. This tolerance is changing as health care consumers are demanding better service while third party payers are discounting the fees paid for health care services.

Larger health care providers, such as hospitals and large practices, having been the “low hanging fruit” of cost containment and have utilized a host of management practices to lower costs. This consolidation is being driven by third party payers, such as large insurance companies and Medicare. They are demanding cost control, accountability and sweeping health care practice changes. These forces for change want providers to capture and share unprecedented amounts of information about their work and their patients. At the core of these changes is the use of information technology (IT) for patient record keeping, billing systems and practice management systems. (Financial management of receivables, payroll and cash flow and the subsequent analytics to evaluate efficiencies, but more on this later)

One solution is to outsource these business functions to third party firms that specialize in health care related business functions. These third party firms provides management, financial and information services to include financing, marketing, billing, personnel/human resources, accounting, management information systems, collections, coding, reimbursements and managed care issues. Practices can contract individually (billing for example) or have a practice-management firms handle all aspects of these functions, and in exchange for running the business, are paid 10% to 30% of revenues.

The best solution is to use IT and improved business processes to manage your practice without the financial overhead of outsourcing. This will involve the surgical use (no pun intended) of IT for practice management, billing and document management. What is important is that the processes and data be captured electronically, not necessarily that physicians do the input. Voice recognition, where the medical practitioner speaks into a voice recorder that immediately transcribes data into the system, eliminates the time-consuming data keyboard entry that many practitioners fear in a paperless office.

An immediate payoff for physicians will be the ability to access information electronically from their office, home or the hospital. The ability to consult, approve medications and work remotely will add convenience to the often brutal schedules that small office practitioners face. Most small office physicians spend “20-40% of their time…….not directly interacting with patients”. (AAMC Reporter, Vol 10, Num. 7, pp 44-56) These indirect patient functions can be done at the convenience of the physician, allowing physicians more “flex time”. A much more significant return to small healthcare practitioners is ability to analyze their business objectively using the powerful business intelligence tools built into practice management software. Billing trends, patient payment practices and profitability by codes make these smaller practices more profitable and nimble to changing marketplace trends.

One of the most flexible and affordable solutions is Microsoft’s Dynamics GP for billing and practice management. Familiar, easy to use screens make Dynamics GP familiar to staff (allowing for quick adoption) yet provide robust practice management analytics for the physicians. Most small healthcare practitioners don’t appreciate the return on investment (ROI) of IT systems, but Microsoft Dynamics has an affordable price point so even smaller practices can afford it.

Insurance companies, governments and other third party payers are demanding cost cutting in health care. The larger providers, nursing homes and hospitals have successfully implemented IT solutions to lower costs. The time is now for smaller health care practitioners to draw from their larger cousins’ experiences of health care IT and make it work for them.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP


Have you checked out the Microsoft Dynamics GP community site? Online community sites are where you’ll find more relevant expert advice, FAQ pages, tips, interviews, live chats, webcasts, newsgroup threads, and RSS feeds—all designed to help you do your job better. This is an unsecure site that are open to all. Visit the Dynamics GP Community.

At the Dynamics GP community site, you can get the latest inside scoop directly from the Product Management & Marketing team! The Inside Dynamics GP section has always been chock full of great posts such as
Everyone, stop using the old navigation, please, but they have just started a weekly “Did You Know” series focuses on features and functions that already exist in Dynamics GP. This week they focus on the Historical Inventory Trial Balance (HITB) report. Ron Gressley, our Senior Consultant out of our D.C. offices says that this is his favorite place to go for insider information that even he didn’t know about.

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 11






Fix Your Auto Complete


Auto Complete finishes your entries for you.

It’s great until you misspell something and are stuck with it forever.

To get rid of it, start typing until the error shows up in Auto Complete.

Right click and hit Remove from List.




Thursday, June 25, 2009

6 Things to look for in a Business Solutions Partner

Choosing a business solution can be daunting. Get it right, and you can increase efficiency; get it wrong, and your business may suffer. A good partner will work with you to develop and maintain the system that best meets the needs of your company. This partner helps create a system that works for your business now and accommodates for change and growth in the future. Here are a few important indicators of a good partner:

1. Is the partner a Certified Microsoft Dynamics Partner? Certified Microsoft Dynamics Partners are available worldwide to help companies of all sizes and industries select and implement the right business technology—and to provide support through future business change. To become certified, they must prove expertise in Microsoft technology and in specific business areas, such as financial, supply chain, or customer relationship management.


2. Will the partner provide references? Make sure the partner will supply you with a list of customers in your industry who will answer questions and provide written references to you. If not, the partner is not for you. If the partner does supply a client list, you might want to ask them the remaining questions.

3. Is the partner's business stable? Find out if the partner is a stable business organization with the technical infrastructure and staff to deploy a solution for your business within your time frame. After the partner implements the business solution, you want to make sure the organization supports your IT staff to fine tune the system and to address any problems that might arise.

4. Is the partner an expert in your industry? You need a partner who demonstrates a clear understanding of your business concerns and your industry, a partner who can draw from extensive expertise with multiple businesses in your industry. Your partner should suggest strategies and develop your business solution with you.

5. Does the partner clearly consider the features and components you need? The software solution proposed by the partner should be the right one to address your business requirements. If it isn't, the partner needs to be willing to rework the proposal until you have exactly what you need. For example, does the partner have expertise in working with the database, portal and business intelligence solutions you intend to use? Find out ahead of time about any hidden fees related to revising your solution.

6. Are the partner's consultants technologically proficient? Make sure the partner uses a proven implementation methodology and configuration tools that speed implementation, configuration, and upgrades. Ask the partner if the person(s) who will implement your solution has been certified by the software vendor on that solution. What kind of certification do they have? To become certified, Microsoft Partners must prove expertise in Microsoft technology and in specific business areas, such as financial, supply chain, or customer relationship management.

888-920-2784
Six Things to look for in a Business Solutions Partner
Get the full set of Business Solution Selection tools brought to you by BroadPoint, including:
1. Business Solution Early Assessment Worksheet
2. Business Issues and Scenarios Worksheet
3. Business Solution Selection Project Calendar
4. Business Solution Stakeholder Issues
5. Business Solution Questionnaire and RFP Template
6. Six Things to Look for in a Business Solution Partner
Call 888-920-2784 or e-mail info@broadpoint.net

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Skype

By Michael Dodd, Senior Consultant, Dynamics CRM, BroadPoint Technologies


For those who woke up late to the 21st century, Skype is a cheap VoIP service that allows you to make calls from your computer. So when your phone is dead or short on bars, you can still make those important business calls. I paired my Jawbone II to my laptop so that when I make Skype call in a public setting I get the added benefit of privacy and noise reduction.

But what's most impressive is the Skype add-on for Internet Explorer. With this add-on enabled, Skype will recognize any properly formatted telephone number and allow you to place a call with a single click:

image

To top things off, since Dynamics CRM is a web based application that runs on IE, you get the same functionality from any CRM grid view that contains phone numbers!

image

Think of how this tiny add-on can improve your productivity with Dynamics CRM. With more and more airlines offering WiFi, how great would it be if you could make a call on your next flight straight from CRM!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Budgeting and Planning In a Down Economy- Is it Really Necessary?

By Steve Hammett

BroadPoint Technologies

Forecasting, budgeting, business planning; what is the big deal? In the past, some mid-sized and most small companies have managed to grow and be profitable without formal planning and strategic visions. For some executives, budgeting and planning seems like a lot of wasted effort to creating fictional numbers that are a guess today and completely irrelevant in six months!

However, changing economic landscapes such as today's recession demand that all organizations have a strategy and execute nimbly against that strategy. Small firms can manage this using Excel and regular planning sessions. But most mid-sized organizations cannot allocate the resources large companies have to planning and budgeting yet are not small enough to manage the process using stand alone tools. Because of these conditions, one of the most important skills of any business owner or C-level executive in mid-sized firms is the ability to envision a strategic roadmap that creates positive change in their companies by making their budgeting and planning more effective.

How do we do realistic budgeting and planning and marry it to strategic objectives?

Strategic Objectives, Forecasting and Budgeting

For some executives of mid-sized companies, "strategy" seems like a theoretical exercise better suited for large corporations with bloated staffs. But strategic planning is necessary for mid-sized companies in today's rapidly evolving business climate. Successful mid-sized companies implement strategies using a set of tactics to achieve objectives. To optimize results, the objectives of all business units and individuals must be consistent and aligned with strategy. A marketing department has objectives, individual sales executives have objectives and the finance and treasury people have objectives. However, without an overarching strategy, it is highly questionable whether these objectives are as coordinated, complementary and consistent as they should be.

A company strategy, at a minimum, should:

  • Chart a course of action that links company vision with an operational plan and resources
  • Analyze external alternatives in economic and competitive conditions
  • Define measurable objectives

One of the best ways to define measurable objectives is by using a budget as a planning tool linked to the company vision.

The Budgeting Challenge

When CFO Magazine1 examined the state of corporate budgeting and planning in mid-sized companies seven years ago, the only common ground between finance and operating units was that they all hated the process. Line managers saw budgeting as an irrelevant and time-consuming data-entry project. It was equally cumbersome for finance departments, which distrusted the results. Both finance and operations despised the ensuing numbers negotiations, which tended to reward the most politically savvy hagglers. How do we attack this historical negativity to produce meaningful budgets aligned to strategic objectives?

The purpose of a budget is to give you a visual description of the expected financial results of your business activities. The act of budgeting for your business forces you to think through all the important numbers and to develop a picture of what your business is going to look like in three, six, nine and twelve months. A budget is a powerful business tool that will help you make better decisions. It enables you to develop and maintain a thorough understanding of the internal financial workings of your business. Ventana Research2 has found companies that have successfully improved their budgeting process respond faster and with greater coordination to changes in the economy, markets and to their competitors. They have greater visibility and deeper insight into how their organization is positioned to address market challenges. So how does a company use budgeting as an effective tool?

The Budgeting Solution


To better understand if your budgeting and planning process is as effective as it can be, consider the following questions that require honest reflection:


  • Is the budget linked to the company's strategic direction? Are the objectives realistic given the allocation of resources, or is the budget just an extrapolation of last year's budget (which was probably driven by political clout, not strategic necessity)?


  • Is the budget accurate and trusted? Does the budget process itself become a burden to staff or create systematic errors? How many of these errors remain undiscovered?


  • Does the budget help with the company's agility? When changes in the economy or competitive landscape occur, can the company change its budget to support its strategic goals? When things are not going as planned, how well can the company respond in a coordinated fashion?


  • Does the budget provide insight into interdepartmental efficiencies? What assumptions are people making in forecasting revenues and expenses? Does the revenue forecast make sense given the sales budget? Are there too many or too few support personnel?



Making budgeting more strategic, accurate, agile and efficient means having a collaborative process that encourages dialog. In practice, this means eliminating as much of the pure mechanics of pulling the numbers together so that the following results:

  • Greater participation
    - Every manager with budget authority participates in budgeting and planning to encourage buy-in and promote responsibility at the lowest levels of the company.
  • Improved coordination
    - Cross-functional dependencies are explicit. For example, manufacturing knows well ahead of time precisely when engineering and development plan to complete product testing, and what promotions marketing has planned – or plans to change – over the next several quarters.
  • More transparency
    - senior managers get a clearer picture of all facets of the enterprise. Making budgeting more efficient means the time and resources saved by eliminating roadblocks can be dedicated to activities that will improve performance, something those involved in the process are "too busy to do" right now.

Ventana Research2 has found companies that adopt dedicated budgeting software are better able to make their planning process strategic and more accurate, are able to respond to changing conditions with more agility and are able to increase their insight into how well their business and individual employees are performing. Companies find that using spreadsheets to budget are error prone, cumbersome and tend to be static. Companies that have not yet incorporated budgeting software should make it a priority to consider it.

By using dedicated budgeting software, organizations can transform what for most is a very static process into a tool for dynamic management. Research shows companies that use electronic spreadsheets for planning and budgeting have to devote too much time to the mechanics of the process, while the information they collect is too narrow and static to be as useful as it could. However, while adopting new software can help companies improve their understanding and insight of trends and changes in their business, management must use the capabilities of dedicated budgeting tools to achieve full value from them. Dedicated software also eliminates the barriers that spreadsheets create. These barriers make it difficult to create an environment that fosters insight and perspective. Companies need to expand participation and iterations in the process as well as focus everyone's efforts on thinking and analyzing on the right level of detail rather than spending time on the mechanics of communicating numbers back and forth. Mid-size companies in particular should be able to achieve a significant payback from using this kind of software because it can address some of the structural problems of being "stuck in the middle."

Here at BroadPoint Technologies, we have seen great success in using Microsoft Dynamics Forecaster, the budgeting software of Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains (GP), helping our mid-sized organizations integrate budgeting into their strategic vision. Because of the ease of use and single database, budgeting can be rolled out of finance into the rest of the organization to measure outcomes and outputs aligned with strategic plans.

Conclusion

Budgeting and planning activities are very important to the duo goals of growth and profitability for mid-sized companies. Dedicated budgeting and planning software is the key to making the process strategic, accurate and agile. Ventana Research2 has found mid-size companies linking their strategic vision to operational activities by using budgeting software increase their insight into the business, enabling them to react faster to changes in their company or environment and make decisions to improve their performance.

1 –CFO Magazine, "More Companies are Writing Budgets that Reflect Strategy and Reduce Frustration", Tim Reason, July 1, 2005

2 – Ventana Research "Making Budgeting and Planning a Tool for Success", Whitepaper, 2004

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Friday, June 19, 2009

BroadPoint co-hosts panel at the Microsoft Not for Profit Summit

Yesterday BroadPoint attended the Not For Profit Summit at the Ronald Reagan building in D.C. Tina Featheringham of BroadPoint organized a panel for the event. Entitled Non profit doesn't mean no profit the panel was moderated by Mark Bisnow of the popular online publication, Bisnow.

Speaking on the panel were American Association of Blood Banks CFO Mark Conheady, Search for Common Ground CFO Jack Deeds, Association of Public Health Laboratories COO Carol Clark, and American Israel Public Affairs Committee CFO Chrystal Kern.

The audience was encouraged to learn from their peers how they are making changes in their organization to not only survive this economy, but to prosper. This includes giving financial visibility to every level of your organization, holding your employees accountable, and cutting the fat!

For more see the coverage on Bisnow!

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 10



Track Use Tax in Payables or P.O.’s


If you are not charged sales tax by a vendor and need to self-remit use tax for a P.O. use these steps:

Let the system calculate Sales Tax.
Offset the tax amount in the Trade Discount field.


Point the trade discount Amount to an accrued use tax account.
Point the sales tax Amount to the appropriate expense or tax account.
The Vendor gets paid properly because of the credit and tax gets recorded.


Use SmartLists to track and report use tax data for later remittance [Company > Tax Detail]














Wednesday, June 17, 2009

BroadPoint is one of the founding members of the ERP Software Blog

BroadPoint announced today that it is part of a brand new exciting blog. The erpsoftwareblog.com is compilled of ERP solution providers. Specifically each of the founding members of the blog is a Microsoft Dynamics GP provider and a Microsoft Partner.

We are very excited to be part of this exciting and dynamic group of thinkers! Visitors to the blog can recieve tips and news on how to select an ERP system and what kind of modules, programs, and ad ons different organizations should consider.

The blog is already off to a running start with accolades on many tech sites and Microsoft itself.

Check it out!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Have you checked out the Microsoft Dynamics GP Setup Checklist?

 

By Ann Lehew, Raleigh Office

BroadPoint Technologies

Have you checked out the Microsoft Dynamics GP Setup Checklist?

This is a great way to setup your Great Plains system, whether you are starting from scratch, adding a new company, or implementing a new module.

To get there, click on Microsoft Dynamics GP-Tools-Setup-Setup Checklist. You will see a graphical list of the modules you are registered for. When you expand each category, you will see the list of tasks for each category in the suggested order of completion. For an example, here is what you see when you expand Company:

clip_image002

You can assign tasks to Great Plains users, even giving them a due date. When they login to GP, bring up the Checklist and click on the “My tasks” button, it will show them only their assigned tasks.

clip_image004

The Project Manager can select tasks, and see who is assigned to it, the status, and when they started the task:

clip_image006

The best thing about using the Setup Checklist is this: When you double click on a task, it takes you right to that screen! When you close the screen, it asks you to update the status:

clip_image008

In addition, a concise, interactive setup guide appears for the selected task.

clip_image010

As you can see, the Setup Checklist is a great way to stay on top of your GP implementation.

Check it out!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 9


Speed up the Population of the JE numbers on the Correct / Copy Journal Entry Screen

Looking up Journal Entry corrections is slow because of the number of transactions.

GP provides an index for that table that can speed look-ups.

A small SQL Script to apply a non-clustered index to the GL20000 and GL30000 tables and this solves the problem.





Before running this Script make sure that you have a complete backup copy of the database that you can restore if a problem occurs.


1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and then click SQL Server Management Studio.

2. Click Connect.

3. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Query with Current Connection.

4. Copy the following code in the query pane.




CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [SEE_GL30000PerformanceCustom] ON [dbo].[GL30000]
( [Back_Out_JE] ASC,
[HSTYEAR] ASC ) ON [PRIMARY]
go

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [SEE_GL20000PerformanceCustom] ON [dbo].[GL20000]
( [Back_Out_JE] ASC,
[OPENYEAR] ASC) ON [PRIMARY]
go



5. In the database list, click the company database that you want to use, and then click Execute.

6. Repeat step 5 for each company database in which the problem occurs.

Scott Stevenson joins BroadPoint Technologies Director of Professional Services

June 12, 2009

Washington, D.C.

BroadPoint Technologies

BroadPoint Technologies is proud to announce a recent addition to their executive team. Scott Stevenson will join BroadPoint as Director of Professional Services.

Stevenson joins BroadPoint with 15 years of consulting experience related to financial applications, primarily Microsoft Dynamics GP. Before joining us Stevenson accumulated 9 years of experience from his ownership of competing consulting firm, Evolutionary Business Solutions, Inc.

Stevenson plans to further develop a consulting/support team that is scalable in the market space, and increase efficiencies in how we provide services to our clients.

BroadPoint looks forward to the benefits that clients will receive from the addition of Stevenson.


Wednesday, June 10, 2009

BroadPoint can help you find a FastPath to Security with Microsoft Dynamics GP

These days most customers are accustomed to working with ISV (Independent Software Vendors) for functionality that may not be currently included in Dynamics. Recently I had what seemed like a simple request from a client whose parent company was out of the UK. They wanted to use their network username and password for Dynamics GP so they could enforce password policies such changing a password every 45 days and forced complexity such as 12 characters including at least one number. Besides, then their users would only have to remember one username and password.

What? Dynamics GP doesn't do this out-of-the-box?

After a bit of research it turns out there is only one way to do this and it's by a company called Fastpath out of Denver (www.gofastpath.com). They have a product called Configurator AD/SSO that integrates Dynamics GP with Active Directory which provides security administrators the means to create, change and delete ERP users from a right click menu in Active Directory.

Why do we recommend this to our clients?

Single Point of Maintenance

Within Active Directory a security administrator can create network users as well as ERP users in the Microsoft Dynamics products. This allows the organization to consolidate the maintenance responsibilities for "Help Desk" or IT support users which cuts administrative costs and improves security.

Synchronization of Credentials

Fastpath Config AD makes it possible to synchronize security credentials across all Dynamics applications. The most critical result of this is increased user satisfaction in that they only have one user id and password combination to remember. The impact on security costs comes in a simplified environment which will mean less password reset responsibilities and general support calls on user names and passwords.

Less Security Permissions Needed for the Administrator

The administrator needs no special access permissions to the ERP and does not even need the application on the desktop for user maintenance. This eliminates a large audit concern in that IT staff will not need access to a "super" user for security configuration and will not have access to the application to commit any kind of fraud or have access to sensitive information.

Reliance on Standard Roles

With security being configured from Active Directory, the security administrator will have to pick from the available roles in the ERP system. This will lessen the possibility of role proliferation as the creation of additional roles will have to be done by an ERP system user with the appropriate credentials. The end result will be better defined roles and more adherence to the available roles.

Contact me at kowens@broadpoint.net for more info.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Reporting Shootout – Which reporting tool is best for each situation

Wednesday, June 24th at 11:00 am

You have a lot of valuable data within your business systems. But how do you get it into the hands of the right people to make the best decisions for your company? The greatest value your business solution can provide is the easy transformation of your data into meaningful, valuable information. Microsoft Dynamics GP provides a broad range of flexible, customizable analytics, business intelligence, reporting, and budgeting options to meet your company's needs—from advanced consolidation analysis to the simplest reporting requests.



Crystal? FRx? SQL Reporting Services? Reduce the time it takes to create reports—and take full advantage of your data – by using the right tool for your business at the right time. At the end of this one hour session, you will be able to improve your ability to analyze and report financial data, and share information across your organization. Highlighted during this session will see an overview of:

  • Report Writer
  • Excel Reports
  • SmartList Builder
  • Crystal Reports
  • Microsoft FRx
  • Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services



Register Today

Take advantage of Microsoft Dynamics GP SmartList Template Library

Microsoft has just released over 100 SmartList templates for Dynamics GP 10.0! You can save the hours of time required to create your own SmartLists by using one of these templates. From here they can be imported and modified with Dynamics GP SmartList Builder. The most overlooked out-of-the box functionality of Microsoft Dynamics GP – SmartList, can be an effective tool for extracting and reporting, and analyzing data about accounts, customers, employees, vendors, and more. Visit the template library today to take advantage of this great resource. Highlights from the library:

  • Account Summary
  • Account Transactions
  • Bank Transactions
  • Multidimensional Analysis
  • Exchange Rates
  • Cash Receipts
  • Commissions
  • Customer Addresses
  • Customer Items
  • Customer Period Summary
  • Customer/Vendor
  • Receivables Transactions
  • Sales Line Items
  • Sales Transactions
  • Invoicing Lines
  • Payables Distributions
  • Payables Transactions
  • Vendor Addresses


You will need access to CustomerSource to access the SmartList template library. If you are not familiar with CustomerSource it is a major benefit of the Enhancement Program, it’s a secure website that provides an incredible amount of valuable information, tools and resources that will help you be more productive. Please contact your Account Manger to arrange a personalized tour, if you don't know how to access CustomerSource contact: Nadia in DC Metro area, Tunesia in Virginia, or Kim in North Carolina.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 8


Reconcile Bank Account Daily



  • With today’s internet access, there is no reason not to balance the bank account daily.

  • Daily balancing provides up to date cash position, float information and speeds month end processing since bank balancing is simply one more day.

  • Download your bank info from your bank’s website.

  • Start bank reconciliation process and reconcile it to zero.

  • DON’T push the reconcile button.

  • Save the reconciliation and come back tomorrow.

Depending on the size of your company and if you own Electronic Reconciliation module you have different options so that everyone can Reconcile their Bank Account Daily.


Option 1:
Use the Electronic Reconciliation module and get a daily file from your bank.


Option 2:
Using your bank's website download the daily transactions and manually clear the files in the Bank Reconciliation module.


Steps:

  1. Go to your bank's website, get today's posted balance and print out the daily transactions back to when you last got your statement.

  2. Start a bank reconciliation process in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

  3. Enter today's posted balance for the bank statement ending balance and use today's date for the dates.

  4. Check off cleared items and balance the statement to a zero difference.

  5. When finished, click OK. DON'T CLICK RECONCILE! Clicking OK will save the reconciliations.

  6. On the next day, repeat these steps for 1 day's worth of transactions.

  7. At month end, verify the totals with the statement and then click reconcile. The month end bank reconciliation process is now minutes, not hours.

Hints:

  1. There may be a few days at month end where you can't reconcile into the next month until you have received the final statement. In this case you can either rely on the website as the final reconciling document or have a few days to make up early in the next month. Both options have problems, I've seen banks have website issues that cause the statement and website to not match, but this is pretty rare. However, delaying a few days tends to break the nice daily balancing rhythm you develop. There's no perfect option, pick whichever one fits your business requirements.

  2. Make sure you know where you left off from the day before. Often bank websites won't let you print just one day, you have to print the whole screen which can overlap days.



Thursday, June 4, 2009

Upcoming webcast from BroadPoint: Doing More With Less - 10 Ways to Recession Proof Your Organization Using Technology


June 16th, 11:00 am

Member, donor and service organizations face unique challenges in today's economic climate. More and more they are being asked to do more with less. In this one hour webcast, we will share 10 important survival tips on how you can streamline your operations, maximize performance and build stronger relationships with supporters utilizing technology.

Click here to register
You will learn how to increase productivity and gain maximum efficiency throughout your organization by implementing new tools or by expanding the use of your existing technology to bring together key business processes.


Using case studies drawn from our experience implementing and supporting business management software for hundreds of nonprofits, this complimentary webcast identifies solutions that are helping today's most successful organizations enhance their capabilities, control costs and enjoy continued growth.


Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Using more of your CRM solution can save your organization money

By Todd Fleming

Senior Consultant

BroadPoint Technologies

I'm sure you are probably wondering how using a CRM solution can save your organization money. If you are only using CRM for Sales Force Automation and are limited to just managing Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Quotes and Orders then you may only be utilizing about 25-35% of your software investment in CRM. If your business fields customer service requests or support cases in another system or even on paper, you can save money by using the Microsoft CRM Service functionality in order to manage Contracts, Cases, and Service Scheduling while taking advantage of a searchable Knowledgebase and workflow automation.

When trying to reduce costs and create efficiencies within your organization you should start by analyzing your business process and business applications identifying what roles they serve in your organization. Most of these applications will have ongoing costs associated with them such as licensing costs, annual software enhancement fees, upgrade costs and the labor costs of dual and triplicate entry of data.

Look at the following costs:

  1. What are the annual software enhancement fees for your customer service applications?
  2. What is the upgrade cost including software, hardware and labor?
  3. What is the labor cost of managing customer data in multiple different systems?
  4. What is the training cost associated with managing multiple different systems?

Some of the benefits of consolidating applications within CRM include:

  1. Decreases labor cost by eliminating or reducing duplicate and triplicate entry of customer related data
  2. If you can eliminate an application you will reduce software, hardware and any labor costs associated with maintaining those applications
  3. Workflow automation can eliminate repetitive tasks such as providing automated email notifications, automating case assignments and handling case escalation
  4. Provides better visibility for all customer's interactions with your organization and therefore increase cross-sell opportunities

In order to get the most out of your CRM implementation, find champions within your organization that will continually analyze your CRM solutions capabilities and uncover features and functionality that can help create efficiencies and cost reductions within your business. You should also make sure your staff is trained on the CRM solution in place and is knowledgeable about features and functionality in new releases that can benefit your organization and increase your CRM ROI.


 

Monday, June 1, 2009

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 7


Limit Records to Speed SmartList Processing


If you look at the bottom of a Smartlist it tells you the number of records returned (notated in the bottom left). If that's a round number, like 1,000, you've probably hit the limit (notated in the bottom center) and don't have all the records you need.



This can be changed on a case by case basis, go to the Search button and change the Maximum Records field. For instance on the Account Transaction if you know you will have under 5,000 records you can change the Maximum Records to show 5,000. You can then save this view as a Favorite and it will always search for the new maximum amount.


You can also make a global adjustment to limits, go to the Microsoft Dynamics GP menu > Tools > Setup > System > Smartlist Options. For instance change the Maximum Records to 5,000. This will be the new default for the Account Transaction SmartList.

You can also mark what fields you want to default in the SmartList View.



This can be used to limit the number of records that default in until you have the correct information then you can manually change the Maximum afterwards on a case by case basis. This can be helpful with performance if you have these limits too high to begin with.


iMIS 15.1 is here!

Questions? Contact Allison Brown at BroadPoint Technologies (301) 634-2420

As an iMIS provider, BroadPoint Technologies is proud to announce that iMIS 15.1 is now available! iMIS 15.1 provides unprecedented flexibility by providing a platform for web publishing of any existing iMIS functionality to provide all your users a unique web experience.

Important Payflow Pro Notice
Upgrade Now! Credit Card processing may stop working in September. If you use iMIS Credit Card Authorization modules (Service Central, Credit Card Authorization, e-Series, or iBO) then you MUST be on 10.6.30.17 or iMIS 15 by August 31, 2009. PayPal is removing support for v2/v3 of Payflow Pro in August 2009.

iCreate — The Power to Simply Extend iMIS
iMIS 15.1 introduces iCreate, a new suite of tools for tailoring and extending iMIS. iCreate combines existing and new tools into:

iCreate Standard Tools (included with iMIS 15.1)

  • Site Designer – Tailor iMIS navigation and menu options.
  • iMIS Query Architect (iQA) – Create complex queries and reports accessible from anywhere in the iMIS system.
  • Customizer – Add custom fields and screens to the iMIS system.
  • Document System – Administer iMIS system folders and objects.

iCreate Advanced Tools (included with iMIS 15.1 if you are currently on iMIS 15 or upgrade to iMIS 15 in 2009)

  • Content Designer – Publish iMIS functionality to your website and tailor iMIS Staff and Public Views, regardless of the web content management system you use.
  • Business Object Designer – Create new views within iMIS to meet your organization's unique requirements.

More Great iMIS 15.1 Improvements

  • Web Content Management - Create, categorize, and manage web content across multiple websites with this pure ASP.NET replacement for e-Content Manager.
  • Communities – Provide forums, document libraries, blogs, and wikis with this pure ASP.NET replacement for e-Communities.
  • Microsoft Reporting Services (SSRS) 2005 & Integrated IQA Reporting - iMIS 15.1 supports Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 and ships with several sample reports. This free reporting tool allows dynamic reporting directly from IQA.
  • iBO for .NET - iMIS 15.1 includes formal support for iBO for .NET. iBO for .NET enables you to develop .NET-based applications that interact with the iMIS 15 database while conforming to iMIS business rules, thereby ensuring the integrity of your data.
  • Public View Updates – Public View updates include company roster view and edit, new directory and committee listing options, online donations, and backorder support.

To learn more about what's new with iMIS 15.1 download the release documentation or view the What's New with iMIS 15.1 Recorded Webcast.



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