Accounting Software

Article Dean Dorton

Fixed Assets in Dynamics GP is a full-function fixed assets system that’s included as part of the financial area.

The fixed assets module is well integrated with the rest of GP. On the procurement end you can identify a fixed asset in the PO process and the payables process. This creates a nice audit trail from each asset, to the procurement transaction related to the asset’s acquisition. There is also a tight integration with the general ledger that accurately records all depreciation, movement, and disposition transactions.

The reporting is list based and is well suited for typical requirements, e.g. asset listings by state/county, inventory lists with asset costs and net values, insured property list, etc.

Article Dean Dorton

How Much Sales Tax Risk Do You Carry?

Sales tax. It is one of those tasks that can drive your accounting department or bookkeeper crazy. It is also one of those unavoidable statutory requirements. Undoubtedly you have developed a process that works, but do you know how that process will hold up in an audit? Most companies cannot afford to screw up sales tax. The average audit penalty of $34,000 means the consequences of making mistakes are dire.

In a time where states are short on revenue and looking at uncollected sales tax to help make up that gap, sales tax practices are increasingly under the microscope. Now is as good a time as any to examine your sales tax process and determine just how much risk you carry. Here are a few things to consider:

Are you manually managing sales tax in Microsoft Dynamics or Intacct?

Perhaps you look up sales tax rates by ZIP code or download rate tables to implement into your ERP. This can be time consuming and error prone. ZIP codes were created for the postal service and do not always line up with taxing jurisdictions. Relying on ZIP codes to determine tax rates can mean over or undercharging your clients.

Does the taxability of your products vary by jurisdiction?

Products that are taxable in one state may not be in another. For example, some Indiana localities have adopted a local food and beverage tax when a food or beverage is sold, served or prepared for consumption. In neighboring Ohio, most food items are non-taxable unless they are consumed on the premises where they are purchased.

Are you doing business in multiple states?

Instead of thinking of sales and use tax obligations in terms of where your business is located, think about where you do business and the activities you engage in within those states. Why? Rules vary from state to state when it comes to what creates sales tax nexus. For example, certain trade show activities can trigger sales tax liability in Illinois, Texas, Nevada, Florida and California.

Reduce your risk:

Sales tax can be tricky, especially when manually keeping up with rate, rule and boundary changes in multiple jurisdictions. Reduce your risk of a negative audit by taking time to examine your sales tax process and develop a consistent, defined work flow. Then, look for ways to increase sales tax calculation accuracy. Automating the sales tax calculation and decision process can save time, money and effort. Avalara sales tax automation solutions integrate with Microsoft Dynamics and Intacct, along with most e-Commerce shopping carts and POS systems to help you achieve compliance and accuracy for all your transactional tax needs.

For more information on how to reduce your risk, join us for an upcoming webinar:

The Hidden Dangers in Your Rate Tables
1PM ET, Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Register Here

Article Dean Dorton

The third part of this series covered summarizing, grouping, and charting your report. This week we will finish up by looking at different run time changes you can edit for your report.

The “Run Report” step has settings you can change regarding the reporting period and dates for your report. You have the ability to use a financial reporting period such as current month or current year along with an As Of date, as well entering a specific start and end date to capture a specific range. If your report is of the “Summary” type, you can select to show or hide the details on the report. Hiding the details means that you will only see subtotal and total calculation, but not the detail lines. The “Report Title 1” and “Report Title 2” let you enter text for the first and second lines of your custom report’s title, and the “Footer Text” lets you put in information to show along the bottom of your report’s pages.

Next up are Runtime Parameter fields. These are similar to the filters that were set earlier, but instead allow the user who is running the report to choose the criteria when running the report. For example, you might select “Customer ID” as a runtime parameter, which will let the person using the report specify a specific customer to filter the data by. You can specify up to six of these parameters to use.

If you decided to use runtime parameters, the next options will be for Runtime Parameter Sequence. This lets you change the order and grouping of runtime parameters, and whether the user will be prompted for the filter when running the custom report. Fields that have the same Field Group name will be placed together; by organizing related fields into a group, you can save time for the user running your report. As before, you can change the order of the fields by selecting the radio button on the relevant line and using the up/down and top/bottom arrows to move the field.

In our very last step, we will give our new custom report a name and description, decide where the report should be accessible from, and whether it should be used by other users in your Intacct system. The name and description of the report go into their respective fields – make sure to be descriptive in case someone else will need to use the report later. If you want the report to appear in the module you selected, check the box for “Deploy”. If this box is not selected, the report will only be available through Custom Reporting. By default, reports are marked as being active. If you want to disable a report without deleting it, then uncheck the “Active” box.

Now save your new custom report and you’re done! You can now run your new report and see what it looks like. Remember, you can always go back through and change settings to tailor the design to suit your needs. If you need to make a similar report to one you’ve already made, you can duplicate any of the custom reports in the system to avoid redoing the basic parts. There is also the ability to export the custom report definition to a file.

Article Dean Dorton

Method 1

Follow these steps for each Microsoft Dynamics GP user:

  1. Start Microsoft Dynamics GP.
  2. On the View menu, click Reminders.
  3. In the Reminders window, click the CEIP task, and then click Task on the Open menu.
  4. In the Task window, click Name.
  5. In the Customer Experience Improvement Program window, select an option, and then click OK.
  6. In the Task window, click Completed in the Status list, and then click Save.

Method 2

  1. Open Microsoft SQL Query Analyzer or SQL Server Management Studio.
  2. To delete the CEIP reminder, run the following script. 
    delete from DYNAMICS..SY01403 where LinkTo = 2 and CmdID = 269 and CmdFormID = 1568 and CmdDictID = 0
  3. To select all users not to participate in the CEIP program, run the following script. 
    USE DYNAMICS
set nocount on
declare @Userid char(15)
declare cCEIP cursor for
		select A.USERID
		from SY01400 A left join SY01402 B on A.USERID = B.USERID and B.syDefaultType = 48
		where B.USERID is null or B.SYUSERDFSTR not like '1:%'
open cCEIP
while 1 = 1
begin
	fetch next from cCEIP into @Userid
	if @@FETCH_STATUS <> 0 begin
		close cCEIP
		deallocate cCEIP
		break
	end
	if exists (select syDefaultType from DYNAMICS.dbo.SY01402 where USERID = @Userid and syDefaultType = 48)
	begin
		print 'adjusting ' + @Userid
		update DYNAMICS.dbo.SY01402
		set SYUSERDFSTR = '1:'
		where USERID = @Userid and syDefaultType = 48
	end
	else begin
		print 'adding ' + @Userid
		insert DYNAMICS.dbo.SY01402 ( USERID, syDefaultType, SYUSERDFSTR )
		values ( @Userid, 48 , '1:' )
	end
end /* while */
set nocount off

Article Dean Dorton

In the previous part of this tutorial, we looked at how you can perform calculations, sort data, and filter data to suit the needs of your custom report. Now we will look at the different options for summarizing, grouping, charting, and running your new custom report.

After you’ve completed any filters, you can choose to show summaries for a columns data. Options include count, sum, average, standard deviation, largest, and smallest. To show these summary columns, you only need to find the object that you want to summarize and check the box under the appropriate summary type. As you will see, non-numeric fields can only be summarized by count; all summary types can be used if the field is a numeric one.

If you chose the “Summary” format at the start of the custom reports wizard, then the next option will be to choose group-by columns. To do this, drill down through the data types to find the location that contains the information that you want to group by and select it from the drop-down list. You may select up to three columns in total to group by. When multiple columns are selected, there will be multiple subgroups inside of your report.

Next we can choose the sequence of columns displayed in the custom report. The title heading of the column can also be modified here by editing the name in the text box. As before, the rows can be moved by clicking and dragging each one to fit the order you want them to appear in.

After changing the column sequence, the next option to look at is changing the summary and group by sequences. Note: summary sequence changes will only be available if you selected a summary column. For both of these steps, select the radio button next to the column whose sequence you want to change and click on the up/down or top/bottom arrows to move its position.

When running your report, you can optionally run it in a chart format. The next step will let you customize what kind of chart is generated when running the custom report as a chart. First you can choose from a number of chart types such as line, column, bar, and pie charts. After choosing a chart type, you can configure different display and labeling options for that chart. There are quite a number of different setups, so you can always come back and change them later if you don’t like how the chart looks.

Check back next week for the fourth and final part of this series on custom reports where we will cover the final steps for running your report.

Article Dean Dorton

In the first part of this tutorial, we discussed how custom reports in Intacct can be used. We also went over the beginning steps to create your own custom report. This next section will go over the different calculation, sorting, and filtering options that are available.

The fourth step of the custom reports wizard is where you can add calculated columns. Each column can be customized with different formulas and column names. To create a new calculation, simply click “Add”. This will bring up a form where you can see the available data columns and operators. Any of the available columns or operators can be added by clicking on them. You can also type your desired formula directly into the Formula box. Once your formula is ready, select the type of data the column should display as (decimal, currency, or percentage), give the column a name, and save it. To add more columns, just repeat the process. Once you’re done, move on to the next step.

Next is column sorting. Here you can decide how columns are sorted – either ascending or descending order – and the sort priority. To change the sort order for a column, just choose the appropriate order in the dropdown menu. Note that only four columns maximum may be assigned a sort order. Now to change the sort priority of columns, click and drag that column’s row up or down the list. The column in the first position will be sorted first, the second position sorted next, etc. Once finished, move on to the next step.

The next section is where we can filter the data in the report. The filters can be set against any data related to the root object chosen earlier, not just the data displayed in your report. Also note that filtering by date is done when running the report, and thus will not be setup at this time. To add a new filter, find the object you want to put a filter on, choose the filter type, and put in the filter value. For example, if you want to only show invoices that are still unpaid, you might filter “Amount Due” by “greater than 0.00”. If you need to filter records that have an empty value, the keyword “null” can be used. Basic filters are evaluated as AND statements by default, but that can be changed in the next step.

After you set up your basic filters, you can change how they are evaluated in the Advanced Filters step. Here, you can use AND, OR, and parentheses to set filter conditions. Expressions inside of parentheses are evaluated first, so if your advanced filter was “(1 AND 2) OR 3”, then 3 would be returned only if “1 AND 2” did not have a result.

Next week in Part 3 of this tutorial, we will look at grouping, charts, and run-time parameters.