Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 15

Protect yourself with Account Security

• Account Security limits the accounts that users can access.
• It requires setup via Organizational Structure.
• If you don’t set up Organizational Structures prior to turning this on, it appears that the chart of accounts has been wiped out.
• Know what you are doing before activating this.

Account security is designed to work with the Organizational Structure feature to limit access to certain accounts. Some organizations have a very complex account structure and it makes picking the right account easier if you limit a department to only be able to see their own accounts.

Organizational Structure provides information to define as many as four layers of structure within your business, and then to set up specific divisions, departments or other organizational groups. You can create relationships among different groups. You can assign accounts and users to different parts of the organizational structure.

Account Security is turned on with a check box in Tools->Setup->Company->Company.

You can see in the example below that this user is only allowed to see Department ‘200’ only.

What is xRM?

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What is your x?

"The key question is: -do I need to track the information and activities related to this entity? If the answer is -yes, Microsoft CRM deserves some serious consideration.”



Check out more here with a white paper on what xRM can mean for you.

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 14

Backup, Backup, Backup

If you are not backing up use the built in backup functionality in Microsoft Dynamics GP. This won’t get everything, you will still need to backup custom reports and forms, the Integrations Manager database and FRx reports, but backing up the database is a good start.

Dynamics GP 9.0 and 10.0 allows you to schedule backups from within the application. You'll need to be logged in to GP as an administrator and you'll need to be on the server.

Go to File> Backup [v9] / Maintenance > Backup [v10]

Enter the system password if you've set one.
When the backup window opens, pick Schedule.

• Name the backup schedule
• Pick the database to backup or backup the system databases
• Enter the backup path (this must be a path on the local server)
• Select the days to backup and the time. The time is entered is in a 24 hour format
• Pick how often to delete old backups
• Click Save. SQL Agent MUST be running when you click save
  
  

  

This process creates a job in the SQL agent with the information entered. You'll still need to move the backups off the server for real protection, that's easy with today's portable hard drives. There's no excuse for not backing up your Dynamics GP installation now.

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

By Todd Fleming, BroadPoint Technologies Senior Consultant

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 extends the standard toolset of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to any mobile browser for online data access. The release is

· Compatible with any HTML device

· Browser independent

· Managed with metadata

· Delivers information in a dynamics, role-based UI

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is an important part of the Power of Choice message Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers customers and is ideal for mobile scenarios in businesses with always connected environments, high speed networks and occasional access, and broad CRM usage.

This release has been built, tested, and now is supported by Microsoft.

Entities Available in Mobile Express

The following list describes the complete set of Microsoft Dynamics CRM entities that may be available in Mobile Express and how you can work with them in Mobile Express:

· Accounts: Enter a new account or review an existing account, which contains information about companies that do business with your organization.

· Addresses: Enter a new address or look up information for an existing account or contact.

· Appointments: Review existing appointments. An appointment does not include service activities or check for conflicts, and you cannot search for available times.

· Campaigns: Review existing campaigns.

· Cases: Review existing cases.

· Competitors: Review existing competitors.

· Contacts: Enter a new contact or review an existing contact.

· Contracts: Review existing contracts.

· E-mail Messages: Review sent, received, and pending e-mail messages.

· Faxes: Review faxes that have been entered into the system.

· Invoice Products: Review products associated with an invoice.

· Invoices: Review existing invoices.

· Leads: Enter a new lead or review existing leads.

· Letters: Track when a letter has been sent or received.

· Marketing Lists: Review existing marketing lists.

· Notes: Add a new note to an activity or a record, or review an existing note.

· Opportunities: Enter a new opportunity or review an existing opportunity.

· Order Products: Review products associated with an order.

· Orders: Review existing orders.

· Phone Calls: Track when phone calls have been received or made. You cannot dial a phone number directly from this form.

· Quote Products: Review products associated with a quote.

· Quotes: Review existing quotes for opportunities, accounts, or contacts.

· Service Activities: Review service activities.

· Tasks: Create a new task or review an existing task.

· Users: Review or search for people who have an active user account in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Referral Program offers customers $50 AMEX Gift Cards

Our BroadPoint Referral Program has kicked off this week!

You remember what it was like not to have instant access to information through Smartlists, how long it took to close the books each month and how many clicks it took get to the transaction.

You probably have friends and associates that are still struggling with those same issues that are looking for solutions.

If you want to help your connections enjoy the same benefits that you do, we’ll thank you for a referral with a $50 AMEX gift certificate. If they are not currently a BroadPoint client and are interested in talking to us, you will have 50 thank you’s to spend.

If you have a contact that would benefit from working with BroadPoint Technologies, then let us know at www.Broadpoint.net/connections. We'll contact you & if your contact is interested in hearing from us then we will thank you with a $50 AMEX Gift Card.

The Evolution of Paper

Kim Owens, Account Manager, BroadPoint Technologies

Humans first started documenting information on stone. Egyptians then created paper made from the reed of the Nile River. Thousands of years later, we are evolving away from our dependency on paper because of the time and the costs involved.

We have seen this evolution before with the introduction of computers to the workplace. They allowed offices to operation efficiently by eliminating mistakes caused by human error and reducing overhead costs because of time intensive tasks. We can now print out reports on demand which once took hours to produce. So why are we still spending hours performing manual tasks when it comes to managing our paper? Wouldn’t it be easier to manage the documents essential to our business electronically?

According to the October 9^th, 2009 issue of The Economist, the paperless office is finally a reality. In order to understand the reason for the push to paperless, let’s look at some staggering statistics:

• We spend 20-30% of our time each day is spent filing, search and retrieving information
• It costs $20 to file a document, $120 to find a misfiled document and $220 to replace a lost document
• The average document is copied 19 times in its live
• It costs $25,000 to fill a four drawer cabinet
• 1 out of 10 documents is lost or misfiled

How much money is pushing paper costing your company and how much is the technology to correct it? Just like the introduction of computers, new affordable technology is also driving the paperless revolution. Storage space on servers is inexpensive compared to 30 years ago and the costs of scanners have dropped significantly in the past decade. For example, you can store 400,000 documents on $80 of disk space compare to $75,000 in 1973.

Document Management and Electronic Workflow software doesn’t have to be expensive either. PaperSave delivers a seamlessly integrated solution with Dynamics built on SharePoint starting at only $5,000 for the first 3 users. So manage the information that drives your business, not the paper. To learn more on PaperSave and how affordable document imaging and electronic workflow is for your company, register for a webcast on July 16^th or July 30^th.

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 13

Sub-Ledger Reconciler

Having issues reconciling the Payables Management or Receivable Manage sub-ledgers to the General Ledger? Version 10 has a new feature that helps with this.

Benefits:

• Automatically match transactions for users
• Identify any transaction discrepancies between the sub-ledger and the General Ledger
  

The Feature DOES NOT automatically do any of the below task to balance the sub-ledgers to the General Ledger:

• Fix imbalances between the sub-ledgers and the General Ledger
• Correct posted transactions
• Back out posted transactions
• Void existing transactions
• Recreate new adjusting transaction
  

Reconcile to GL

You can select one or more Accounts Receivables or Accounts Payable Accounts from the General Ledger that hold the posted outstanding balances. The balance of all the accounts entered in this window is the amount to which the Sub-ledger balance is reconciled against.

For example you could have the Accounts Payable account and the Purchase Discounts Available Accounts.

Reconcile Process

The balances Include:

• Beginning balances
• The difference between the beginning balances
• Transactions entered during the date range specified
• The total ending balance
• The difference between the ending balances

Microsoft Dynamics GP matches transactions from Payables or Receivables Management to the distribution line in the General Ledger.

• Transactions that exist in both ether sub-ledger and General Ledger
• Transactions that exist in either the sub-ledger or General Ledger, but not both
• Transactions that potentially match, but don’t meet all the matching criteria

Reconcile Report

Analysis of the reconciliation results is an important aspect of the process. In order to provide the appropriate tools to perform an analysis the results are sent to an Excel spreadsheet. Excel provides the typical functionality of an spreadsheet.

You can save each spreadsheet to document your exceptions and how they were handled by adding a comment to your Journal Entry noting the action taken to fix the problem.