Accounting and Financial Outsourcing

Article Dean Dorton

Intacct 2016 Release 1 – New Enhancements to the Solution

We are very excited about the Intacct 2016 Release 1 – we think you will be as well. There are a number of features, some of which we’ve listed below. The best way to ensure that you understand all the new features is to join us for a one hour webinar where will discuss the new features:
Intacct 2016 Release 1 Training (Free)
February 25, 2016, 2:00 PM ET
Click here to register 
There are a number of new enhancements to Intacct Financial Accounting solution.
Intacct Collaborate
One of the Intacct enhancements we’ve been looking forward to is ‘Collaborate!’ – and it is now available. Intacct Collaborate is a new feature that uses Salesforce Chatter and allows users to interact and collaborate on individual transactions or records without needing to leave your Intacct session. Think of it this way: Intacct integrates with an existing Salesforce instance and connects sales and finance teams. This results in speedier approvals, problem resolution, and the ability to better respond to new trends.
Benefits of Using Intacct Collaborate

  • Eliminates back-and-forth emails about transactions
  • Operates with an existing Salesforce instance or with Intacct alone
  • Gives users the complete picture as they converse with in-text communication
  • Captures dialogue and decisions for later reference in the system of record
  • And much more 

Intacct Collaborate Training (Free)
April 21, 2016, 2:00 PM ET
Click here to register 

Other Intacct 2016 Release 1 enhancements:

Administration

  • External authorizations and external users – separated at last
  • Increased security with longer, more complex passwords
  • Browser version support

Project Accounting

  • Find missing time sheets within a specific period
  • Enhanced billing insight: Preview your invoice total before you bill
  • Workflow and global management
  • Create transactions at the top level, entity level, or both
  • Reduce transaction definition maintenance with entity document templates
  • Use unique entity numbering and/or global numbering on transactions
  • Automatic inter-entity funds transfer with different currencies

Insight enhancements

  • Graph design made easy: what you see is what you get
  • With Waterfall charts, change is easy to understand
  • Let Intacct do the work: automate metric counts for better insight

Ease of use, customer driven

  • Quick insights into days aging in transactions and aging reports
  • See the date criteria you used for filtering key AP and AR reports
  • Reconcile using auto-matching that works for you
  • AP/AR draft transactions – feel the power
  • How did I pay that bill?

You have selected the very best financial accounting solution on the market. You have invested in a very powerful tool. We want to make sure that you are using Intacct to its fullest. Be sure to visit our calendar page frequently to see the free training sessions available to you.

Article Dean Dorton

Today, we are both very excited and extremely sad.  We are excited because we can announce Microsoft Envision, Microsoft’s new flagship event for business leaders.  At the same time, we are saddened because we must also announce that Microsoft Convergence is no more.

Microsoft Envision replaces Microsoft Convergence as the premier event for business leaders.

Microsoft Envision is designed for CxOs and their senior department and functional leaders who are driven to shape their own future and position their organizations and business for success in a mobile first, cloud first world.

Attendees of Microsoft Envision can expect to gain insights, uncover solutions and build connections to help them achieve more. The event will include:

  • Keynotes and interactive sessions with a broad slate of visionaries, experts and innovators
  • Functional and industry-specific content to provide relevant insights and solutions
  • Opportunities to build valuable connections that last beyond the event

Microsoft Envision will take place in New Orleans April 4-6, 2016… and registration is now open!

We encourage all CxOs and business leaders that use a Microsoft Dynamics product to attend!!

Article Dean Dorton

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently announced a significant proposed change to the wage and hour rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Background
The current rules generally require employers to pay an employee one and one-half times an employee’s regular pay rate for hours worked over 40 in a work week. However, the rules exempt certain “white collar” employees from the overtime pay requirement.

To fit within this exemption, each of these tests must be met:

  1. “Salary basis test” – The employee must be paid a fixed salary that is not subject to reduction due to variations in the quality or quantity of work performed.
  2. “Salary level test” – The employee’s salary must exceed $455 per week ($23,660 annually).
  3. “Duties test” – The employee’s primary job duties must involve executive, administrative, or professional duties.

Proposed Change
The DOL proposes changing the “salary level test,” increasing the threshold from $23,660 to $50,440 (with a provision for future annual adjustments). The DOL has characterized the salary level test as being the “best single test” of exempt status. Information from the Department of Labor can be found at  https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/NPRM2015/.

Impact
Based on 2013 data, the DOL estimates that this change may impact over 20 million workers, about 15% of all U.S. workers. As we understand, no effective date has been established for finalizing the proposed rule changes. A short period for submitting comments from interested parties on the proposed changes closes on September 4, 2015.  Many businesses, industry associations, and other organizations have identified major impacts from the proposed rules, if finalized. Here are just a few such impacts:

  • Employers will be required to reassess exempt status for employees in salaried positions earning less than $50,440 and to strategize about how to address these employees’ situations.
  • Employers may need to revise labor cost budgets and the pricing of their products and services to find the dollars needed for additional overtime pay or adjustments in annual salaried compensation.
  • Employers will need to consider all staffing options to determine the most cost effective manner in which to operate and alleviate the added overtime pay burden.
    • This may include a staffing model favoring more part-time staff.
    • Employers may explore ways to reduce headcount.
    • Employers will need to assess pay practices for seasonal workers and flex-time working arrangements.
  • Employers may need to create new systems and policies to govern the approval and control of overtime work.
  • Employers may need to upgrade or implement technology (software and hardware) to manage the entirety of the payroll process.

For further information, questions, or guidance, please contact Jim Green, Director of Accounting & Financial Outsourcing, at jgreen@deandortonstg.wpenginepowered.com or (859) 425-7615.

View Jim Green’s Bio

Article Dean Dorton

In the first installment of “GP Is So Easy, A Caveman Can Do It,” I am excited to talk about a little known feature of the Analytical Accounting module called the Alias! No, I am not talking about the science fiction show – although I was a big fan! I am referring to the ability to setup alias codes in Dynamics GP Analytical Accounting to make data entry SO much easier! And, it’s required for the copy/paste from Excel GL entry function if you want to use Analytical Accounting.

Analytical Accounting, for those not familiar, is a module in Dynamics GP that allows an organization to add dimensional tags to their accounting transactions. Dimensional tags, you say? Consider this scenario… Your company president has decreed that all marketing dollars spent should be tracked back to the appropriate shows or activities. Oh no! Now you have to setup a segment for each event and vastly expand your chart of accounts!! But No! Analytical accounting will let you setup “codes” that you can use to further define your one advertising expense account by convention, dimensional mailer, etc. What a HANDY FEATURE!!

But wait! There’s more!!

Now is where the “Alias” feature comes in. Let’s say you need to not only track what convention you were marketing for, but which product line, what state, what year and who attended the convention. No problem!! Setup codes groups for each of those “functions” and create the needed codes (people, events, states, years, etc.). Once you have all of that created, you can then create and alias that COMBINES the correct values for convention, product, state, year and attendee, so that you only enter ONE code and all the correct values take their places!

But, how does all this help me?!?

During transaction entry – in this case Payables Transaction Entry shown here – a user can click on the “AA” button (highlighted in green) to open the Analytical Payables Transaction Entry window.

Once the Analytical Payables Transaction Entry window opens, users can then take populate the alias code (highlighted in yellow) and watch as multiple analytical accounting transaction dimension codes (highlighted in green) show up at one time!  Users won’t have to make multiple clicks and select multiple codes just to accomplish their tasks!

That’s it! 

Using Alias Codes in Analytical Accounting for Dynamics GP makes your life – your accounting life – so much easier and more efficient.

Have questions about how your organization could benefit from Analytical Accounting, Alias Codes, or Microsoft Dynamics GP in general?
Use our contact form or simply call us at 877-875-3577.  We stand ready to answer questions or provide any other assistance you many need!

But I have a LOT of Alias codes to create!

Don’t panic!  Check our next blog post, coming soon, to find out how EASY it is to import those alias codes in just a matter of minutes!

Article Dean Dorton

We are releasing the Round 2 US Payroll Tax Update, there are a couple states that require code change with it, see noted below, otherwise just a table update.

  • Arkansas – code change required with table
  • Colorado
  • District of Columbia
  • Indiana
  • Missouri
  • New Mexico
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Oklahoma
  • Rhode Island – code change required with table
  • Vermont

In the code drop, January Hotfix, (which will be translated for French and Spanish) has the following items included based on version. This is an all-inclusive update so it will include year end.

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

  • Canadian Payroll ROE window not functional, missing buttons after you install the year end update.
  • Arkansas and Rhode Island code changes for taxes

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013

  • Arkansas and Rhode Island code changes for taxes
  • ACA changes

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015

  • Arkansas and Rhode Island code changes for taxes
  • A new tax engine so taxes will install/work on GP 2015
  • All the US Payroll and Canadian Payroll year end changes and tax update changes will be included
  • ACA changes

With all of you starting to use ACA, we of course have a couple of issues.  🙂

Here are the 4 we are addressing in the January Hotfix and most critical.

  1. ACA – Benefit information is over-written in the UPR00905 table causing data issue with multiple benefit codes.
  2. ACA codes are defaulting in on ALL Benefits – causing data issues line 14 and 16, meaning all need to be reset to None
  3. The 2 new fields for the ACA are set wrong when records are created during Reconcile HR process
  4. ACA – You cannot mark or change coverage on Dependent self

The UPR00905 which was a new table in year end is tracking all our changes to our benefit codes by date.
select OfferOfCoverageCode, SafeHarborCode,* from upr00905

The problem we are having is when designed the Benefit column was NOT put in that table from the HR existing table BE010130
select Benefit, OfferOfCoverageCode, SafeHarborCode, * from be010130

Not really thinking that employee Terry would have 3 codes, or some are splitting out Dental and Vision now.  Some have ACA codes, some not and now we are “over-writing” records of covered and not.

Thus we have decided to put the Benefit column in the table…this also raises concern for existing customers that now have data in this table from year end, which Benefit code do we attach to data????

During Utilities we will look to the BE010130 see if we have an ACA code that matches to the UPR00905 table and then put that code in place, we may also create new records in there, we will see how this goes.  Worse case now that the “code” is in there, we can clean up data easier by code and filter out items just as None by code as well and delete as necessary.

The thought is, it is better to have more tracking data than not. Remember if you have a Benefit that is not ACA, just put None in field 14 and 16

Next, bug 82676, this is another big one….what we will do here, is the dependent window will never open up for self, which I think is OK, based on below.

We are going to start to read Covered and Not Covered for Self, based on the ACA code on the benefit.  Right now that is covered all the time, but if there is no ACA code listed on a benefit, it will be not covered.

Really this dependent window for self, is not “reportable” or needed as the benefit code on the form will handle self by month, it is the actual dependents we need right for tracking to the form at year end.

The other bugs, were about the codes were defaulting in when they should be None so we are fixing that too.

Again, this is all new to us and we are trying to learn it and supply with tracking so year end will go well.  Also remember this is all based on GP User Date, which is nice, so you can back track your changes, by changing the user date.

I hope to release this the week of January 26, we will be blogging of these updates and changes in each update so you are aware of what has released and changes with ACA.

There is also plans for a March Hotfix that will include what 941 changes there will be along with more ACA form work in this update.

Article Dean Dorton

A continued fictional account of very real circumstances…

Elsa Markos, CEO and co-owner of the Arendelle Ice, just finished reviewing a series of financial statements in preparation for a meeting with a potential new arena investor.  She was able to quickly review income statements based on the types of events (sports vs. concerts vs. family) as well as breakdowns by event specific information (hockey division, music genre, sport type, etc.).

But, how did she do it?  Especially since we stated earlier than her chart of accounts was only one segment in length with four digits.  How did she get all those financials?

We can explain it with two concepts and in four words…  “dimensions” and “custom fields.”

While the Ice only has a one-segment chart of accounts, they utilize Intacct for their accounting software, which allows them to use a multitude of “dimensions.”  What is a dimension?  This of a dimension as a “transaction tag.”  How does that help the Ice?  Let’s explain…

Intacct provides users with greater than ten dimensions – or transaction tags – in the standard product.  Dimensions are available on every transaction in Intacct.

As for the custom fields, Intacct allows – in the standard product without ANY add-ons or additional fees – the ability to add custom fields to ANY window in the system.  “That’s nice”, you say.  “But, how does that do anything for financial statements?”  Well, dimensions can be used in financial statement layouts.  Custom fields can be placed on windows where dimensions are maintained.

But how did dimensions and custom fields help us in this case? You want details, right?

For starters, we renamed a dimension to “Events”.  Intacct encourages companies to rename the dimensions in order to make them more familiar.  This helps foster adoption of the system since users see familiar terms.  Renaming a dimension is easy.  Simply choose the setup menu item labeled terminology, select the dimension to rename and save.  Once you refresh the browser, all usage of the dimension becomes your new term.

Next, we opened the Custom Fields window in Intacct and created a few fields and tabs.  The tabs were created to segregate the fields into groups by type of event.  The fields were created to give differing details about each event type.
 

To satisfy the requirements of the Ice organization, we created one tab each for “Sports”, “Concerts” and “Family” as those are the different types of events that are tracked – and reported on – by the arena accountants for the Ice.  As you can see in the image below, each type has a tab.  We also created a picklist field for “Event Type” with the values of “Sports”, “Concerts”, “Family” and “Other”.  Other is always an option to allow for future expansion without immediate panic!  Finally, we created an “Event Date” field on the main tab of the card so that event based reporting can also be created by dates the events took place.

One of the reporting requirements for the Ice was to get income statements by event and by event type – comparing and contrasting the profitability of their different events.  To accomplish this, we needed to create custom fields at the event type level to allow us to distinguish sub-types of events.

Next, we continued working in the custom fields screen to create fields for the event tabs.  The Sports tab is first as more sporting events occur than any other.  Not only is the IcePlex Arena home to the Arendelle Ice franchise, but the local university plays their basketball games there too.  And they have, from time to time, some additional special sporting events there.

With that in mind, we created a “Sports” tab that houses information for both hockey and basketball.  As you can see in the screen shot, fields were created to track the hockey opponent, whether is was a playoff game, and the hockey season that game took place in.  The opponent tracking lets us break out reporting by division since the opponents are then grouped into divisions.  We could also get year-over-year analysis by opponent as well.  Questions like “Do we make more money when any particular team comes to town?” can finally be answered.  Since the hockey season is different from the fiscal year of the Ice Holdings organization, we added the hockey season field to give the Ice the option of running reports based on hockey season.
 

Basketball fields were next, and we created a few fields similar to the hockey ones, but we added one new special field – “Basketball Type”.  This field tracks if the opponent team is in their conference or out of their conference.  A major request of the arena accountants was to know if their in-conference opponents were more profitable than the out-of-conference opponents.

What else did we do for the other event types?  And, how in the world does all this help?

Stay tuned and find out….