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.

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.
   
   
   
   

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.

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.

 

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.