Duplicate a posted Journal Entry [applicable to Finance]

Where I used to think that it was impossible to replicate a one-time GL Journal Entry, I’ve now found (thanks to Dynamics Care / I.B.I.S., Inc. posting from 31 August 2011) that there is a trick that will help to accomplish this.

Say you posted a one-time Journal Entry last month with 100 line items on it.  In the current month, it turns out that the previously posted entry (or a very similar entry) needs to be posted again.

Here’s how to do it:

Open a new Journal Entry and hit Correct.

Under Action, select “Back Out a Journal Entry and Create a Correct Entry”.  Then choose the year the original Journal Entry was from and then key in or search for the original Journal Entry number.  Click OK.

**warning – this step can take a few minutes in GP to process, so you must be patient and wait for it**

Once this process is complete and you click OK, it will yield two Journal Entries –

(1)                a back out JE that will be the reverse of the original entry and

(2)                a correcting entry that will be a replica of the original entry.

The system will automatically bring up the Back Out Entry.  Give it a batch name such as “DELETE” or “DO NOT POST” and click SAVE.  The system will then automatically bring up the Correcting Entry.  Give that an appropriate batch name – as this will be the future batch to be posted – and click SAVE.

The system will auto-generate labels that will clearly indicate Back Out JE and Correcting JE in the Reference section, as well.

Once these batches are created and saved, go in to the Batch posting screen and Delete the back out entry’s batch.

Then go to the correcting entry’s batch and you can then edit it as with a normal batch / journal entry and:

a)      Change all or some of the document line items amounts

b)      Change the batch to recurring

c)       Change the document to reversing

Just remember to delete the Back Out Entry and/or change the name of the batch to something clear to not be posted, depending upon your security level in GP.

**Public postings of this information represent my own ideas and do not represent my employer’s (past or present) positions, strategies or opinions.

I’ve been waiting for for DynamicsWorld’s Microsoft Dynamics Most Influential People Top 100 list all year. I was hoping that maybe the fine folks at Dynamics World would see my great contribution to the Dynamics community over the past year and put me maybe 100 on the list. Alas, my random thoughts during my infrequent blog posts were not enough to convince anyone of my value to the community. I wonder if they expanded the list to 1000 I’d have a shot? Last years Awesome list can be found here in case anyone was wondering if they improved on their awesomeness over the year.

Reading over the list I must admit to only knowing a fraction of the winning nominees. Maybe it’s a UK thing versus a North America thing.

From here on out in this post I will refer to that other list as the “Other” list. No need to dig up painful memories for all those that were wrongfully omitted from the Other list.

So without further ado I now present the second annual “Doug Pitcher’s OFFICIAL 100 Most Famous, Awesome and Totaly Influential Dynamics People for 2012” or DPO100MFATIDP2012 for short.

1. Doug Pitcher – Once again, it’s my dang list so I’m putting my name at the top
2. Linda Rose – Until someone convinces me Linda is not the most intelligent and forward thinking person I’ve ever worked with she’ll stay at the top as well. There are other Dynamics hosting companies out there but there is only one Linda Rose.
3. David Musgrave – Until David actually makes the Dynamics world list I’ll keep him at the top of my list. I’ve actually had quite a fun time with David over the past year and him not being on that other list makes me really question it’s validity.
4. Mark Polino – Mark went out of his way to say hi to me at Convergence. Even if you are on the Other list I’ll let that slide. I think you should brand the “50 tips and tricks” phrase and sell it on eBay or something Mark. You’d make a gazillion with how well known that is now.
5. Mariano Gomez – I felt bad for Mariano this year as he slid to 66 from 30 on the Other list. You know you are losing your magic when you go on a free fall as bad as that.
6. Leslie Vail – An MVP and totally awesome person so of course she still gets her name in the spotlight. I don’t see her on the Other list this year so this only solidifies her position at the top
7. Nick Hoban – Still waiting for the MVP vote Nick. Would putting you higher on my Awesome list help?
8. Victoria Yudin – I make money off of sending customers to Victoria’s website. It’s not often I can’t find a solution to someone’s reporting questions by just referencing her blog. It’s not wrong to charge someone just for knowing where the answer to their question is, is it?
9. Kirill Tatarinov – When you are the big wig of MBS I guess it would make my Awesome list seem invalid if I didn’t put him on here.
10. Mohammad Daoud – Sorry Mohammad about your snubbing this year on the Other list. Try bribing your family to vote for you like Dwight Specht did last year.
11. Dwight Specht – Speak of the devil. He made the Other list last year but not this year which only improves his chance at getting a higher placement in my rankings. I sat with Dwight on a partner panel this year for the DYNAA. I felt like a little fish sitting next to a shark. He has quite an impressive aura around him.
12. Tami Jones- Our whole company is run by women and Tami fits the mould of dynamic take charge type person. She’s the backbone behind the RASP team and does a great job interacting with customers.
13. Doug White – Grumpiest guy I know but one heck of a systems architect. He’s the smart Doug in the company.
14. Colin Powell – Keynote speaker at Convergence so why not put him here.
15. Terry Heley – When I have payroll questions I turn to Terry. She’s a great MBS resource.
16. Steve Chapman – Steve is the all around social media king. 20000 twitter followers and 100’s of youtube videos. We have people calling in just to talk to the famous Steve Chapman.
17. Rebecca Bunas – AKA Rock Star. The phrase I’m with Rebecca works wonders.
18. Errol Schoenfish – I met Errol at Convergence in person and he knew who I was because I was with Rebecca. It helps to be with the band sometimes.
19. Julie Rague- Rebecca’s friend that puts up with me tagging along as they spend the night talking about girl things and the good ole days.
20. Mark Rockwell – Mellowed down on the outfits this year as they went for the bartender looks. That won’t get you any higher on my list Mark. Try a “Get out of the 70’s” theme next year and dress up as hippies and have the disco music pumping. That would get you some serious points on my list.
21. Tami Jones – She’s so cool I’m putting her on the list twice.
22. Katie Hasbargen – DYNAA program lead. Took over the main operational duties of the DYNAA this year. I was invited to go to a hockey game with the DYNAA this year and if that doesn’t get you on my Awesome list nothing will.
23. Don Morton – Football coach, mentor and site leader over the Dynamics Academic Alliance (DYNAA)
24. Bethany Eighmy – Part of the DYNAA team that brought myGPcloud to universities
25. Lyndsey Creamer – the other part of the DYNAA team that brought myGPcloud to universities
26. Jesse Byam – It’s blizzarding outside my office right now and I bet Jesse is still in shorts. We missed you at Convergence this year Jess.
27. Doug Kennedy – Rebecca and I ran into him coming back from the ball park in Atlanta. I started chatting with him and he admitted to not knowing who I was. But I was with Rebecca so he was still willing to talk to me.
28. Chris Dew – Our RASP booth was next to eOne this past year so I got to see how famous Chris really is. 1000’s of people flocked around him as he discussed the finer points of politics, the seperation of church and state, and how to resolve the conflict in the middle east. At least I assumed he was talking about that as there was a never ending flow of customers waiting to talk with him.
29. Francisco Garcia Hillyer – Second year in a row for Francisco on this list. He’s smarter than me so I need to keep him happy so he’ll help me when I get stuck with anything.
30. Terry Carlton – I still like Terry so he stays on the list by default.
31. Donte Kim – Nodus founder
32. Tim Cruickshank – Been on several customer panels over the past couple of years at Convergence relating to Manufacturing and healthcare. He also lets me hang out with him so I feel cool.
33. Vaidy Mohan – Still a blogging buddy. Maybe we’lll meet up eventually.
34. Cheryl Mortvedt – Fellow support person whom I usually team up with to beat up on unsuspecting Microsoft support people at the annual partner advantage meetings.
35. Todd Schultz- Chair of the DYNAA. Leading the way to bring myGPcloud to the academic setting.
36. Richard Whaley – I almost got ran over by Richard as he drove his stand up scooter thing around. Only Awesome people have one of those so I guess you can stay on the list.
37. Jennie Davis – The partner channel head hauncho. No partner event this past year so only said hi to Jennie in passing.
38. Mike Feori – Payroll specialist. When Terry doesn’t know the answer I turn to Mike.
39. Beat Bucher- Commented on my last Awesome list so gets a place on this years list. Hey, it’s my list and I can decide who is awesome or not.
40. Liane McIlraith – Most knowledgeable GP training and implementer and nicest person anyone knows. She actually yelled at someone this year….and then apologized for it. We were really proud of her up until the apology part.
41. Christina Philips – Another Blogger extraordinaire.
42. Melissa Sanders- She writes the payroll checks in our company so I need to be nice to her.
43. Carol Yacht- Dynamcis GP author of educational books. I’m scheduled to be on a panel with her next week at an educational conference. If you ask anyone about academic books her book is one of the main ones out there.
44. Frank Hamelly – I’m sorry Frank. You made the Other list this year so I just can’t put you as high on my list.
45. Anya Ciecierski – I still don’t know how to pronounce her name and since she made it on the Other list she gets to pull up the rear with Frank. Just having fun Anya. Please keep inviting us to your blogging luncheons and web training on how to write effective and useful blog posts.
46. Patrick Roth (Late addition)- Somehow I forgot about Patrick Roth. I didn’t see any comments from Patrick last year on my list so assumed he didn’t care if I thought he was awesome or not. 
47. John Lowther (Late Addition)- Anyone that references my awesome list on their blog must be awesome.

Well that’s more than 37. I guess I met 8 new people this year so my Awesome list is growing by leaps and bounds.

Did I miss anyone? I’m sure I did and am not above adding to the list if my attention is brought to a worthy candidate.

As always, chocolates and candy are an appropriate bribe if you want to nominate yourself and I’ll take the matter under consideration with my nomination committee.

Have a great year being Awesome everyone.

Let me share an experience that happened today to discuss a significant reason on why Dynamics GP customers should consider moving to a cloud deployment.

A client called in and stated she had no GL account information in her system.

I’ve seen it where security has made it so you can’t see any GL accounts so I ran with the normal troubleshooting steps to resolve that issue. Nothing worked. I queried the GL00100 table and sure enough nothing was in the account master table.

No sweat. Let’s restore from a backup from last night. The accountant was completely confident in her IT team as she confirmed just a few short weeks ago all backups were being preformed and all data was secure. She did this as I had mentioned the option of moving to the cloud as a way to minimize risk with botched backups. I specifically said “I’ve seen it time and time again. Something happens and you need to restore your company database. You go to your IT team and there is no backups being done so you loose several months worth of data.”

I received a call a few minutes later from a panicked IT manager stating no backups have been done since November 29th, 2011. That’s five months ago. The SQL backups had been failing and they had been backing up the same file for five months. They are using SQL Express so the notification of failed backups are non existent.

After restoring the database to a test company with the files they provided we discovered the backup was actually from November 4th, 2011 which just so happen to be before their year end close and all their audit adjustments were entered, six months ago. We also verified the other 5 companies they have had not been being backed up as well.

Without a backup we are left trying to figure out what happened and determine how to resolve. Come to find out the accounting manager mistakenly used the clear data option instead of the check links function on all the financial tables in GP. We are now in the process of recreating all GL tables and CM tables back to November 4th, 2011. But the GL information will have to be recreated from that point on by running posting reports from all sub modules and GL entries being re-entered. There just so happens to have been quite a bit of activity done in this company since November (approximately 10 million in sales). This would have been no big deal with a valid backup in place.

How would moving to the cloud fix a situation like this? Backups are monitored and verified. Every Monday our hosting company (RoseASP) randomly takes a backup of an existing customer and restores it to a test company. The backup is verified and the customer can go in and verify the data as well. The hosting company is interested and concerned about each customers backup plan and goes through several steps to ensure there is a disaster plan in place.

It is now 1 am in the morning and I have been working on fixing this mess since 11 am yesterday morning. There is a lot of data and the insert scripts take a long time and there is no DTS tool with SQL Express. I have copied over each table with an insert script for each GL and CM table individually. I guess I’m in part writing this post because I’m grumpy and I feel like saying “I told you so.”

One good thing has come about this situation. The client is now sold on moving to the cloud. They should be moved over by next week.

The Cycle Count functionality is a great tool to keep on top of your inventory, and is certainly less stressful than doing a 100% count once or more in a year.

Here is a blog article that explains the process: http://gp.rosebizincblogs.com/2009/06/inventory-cycle-counts-2.html

The following list is made up of some of the tips and tricks that I was reminded of over the course of the four days at Convergence. Some of them may be obvious, but it never hurts to rehash in order to avoid mistakes and lessen data entry requirements.
Speed Date Entry
Keying on the day number in a date field will cause Dynamics GP to fill in the current month and year. For example, keying a “23″ in a date field the month of March 2012 will input the date 23/03/2012.
Exception Reporting
Use Smartlists as a way to do Exception Reporting in GP. For example, as part of the month-end close process, Smartlist reports can be created to show any unposted transactions, any GL accounts that are set up incorrectly, or any erred transactions. If the exception report yields no items in the smartlist, there are no exceptions to review.

Testing
The development/test company databases are there for a reason. They should be used freely and often. If you find yourself hesitating prior to posting an entry, take the ten minutes to switch over to the test company and first perform the transaction there. Don’t test in the production company.

Prepayments
Use Project Accounting to better track prepayments. By putting the prepayment “on account”, once an invoice is entered the system triggers to let you know that there is a balance associated to the account and then allows you to apply against it.

Unapplied Documents
Go to Reports > Sales > Analysis > Unapplied Documents in order to run a report of all payments, returns, and credit memos that have not been applied to invoices/sales documents. This report can be used at month-end dates to help ensure that all paid A/R items are closed out and removed from the Historical A/R Report.

1099 Vendors
Leverage Smartlists in GP in order to manage your 1099 vendors on a monthly basis. Go to Microsoft Dynamics GP > Smartlist; follow through from Purchasing > Vendors > 1099 Vendors and keep up to date on records and which vendors you will be sending a 1099 to at the end of the year.

Smartlist Wildcards
You can perform searches and filter using Wildcards in Smartlist. The table below breaks down the SQL -like wildcards that are available:

As an example, in the screenshot below the Smartlist search definition is going to search for vendors whose vendor name begins with A, C, J, L, or R:

Smartlist Clarity
Improve report clarity by renaming Smartlist Columns. Go to Microsoft Dynamics GP > Smartlist, create your smartlist, click “Columns” and change the “Display Name” for each column heading that you’d like to update.

Additional information and support

The Microsoft Dynamics Support website has a host of information available for customers.
http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/customer/en-us/default.aspx

From that site there are links to training materials, customer support, and the Dynamics GP Community.

CustomerSource
CustomerSource is your home to all Microsoft sponsored support, training, etc. Ask a site administrator for your login information.
https://mbs2.microsoft.com/userinfo/AssociateAccount.aspx

Customer Training
There are numerous training materials available throughout the CustomerSource site. Below is a link to the main training page with downloads and information available.
http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/customer/en-US/training.aspx

Dynamics Community
There are Forums, Blogs, and Videos posted to the Microsoft Dynamics Community website. Users can post specific questions and look for support ranging from other users to Microsoft support employees to industry experts.
http://community.dynamics.com/product/gp/default.aspx?ref=hp

Product Suggestions
Microsoft pays attention to the Product Suggestions that are logged in to the system. Go to the Customer Support webpage, log in to your account, and log an issue/suggestion. It’s very likely that if enough other users log the same issue that the problem will be resolved / changed by the next version of GP software.

General Searches
Microsoft set up a search engine specific to Microsoft Dynamics GP. It pulls a search from over 100 blogs and registered support sites that deal directly with GP. If you have a difficult question or want to start looking for support on your own, this site is likely the place to start:
http://mygpsearch.blogspot.com/p/my-gp-search.html

GPUG – Great Plains User Group
Go sign up for the GPUG, GP’s official free user-based and user-driver group. General membership is free. The site gives even further access to user support, blogs, trainings, events, and other resources.
http://www.gpug.com/

CRMUG – CRM User Group
Just like GPUG, go sign up for the CRMUG, CRM’s official free user-based and user-driver group. General membership is free. The site gives even further access to user support, blogs, trainings, events, and other resources.
http://www.crmug.com/

I go to Convergence to talk with Dynamics Partners and Users. I don’t go to any sessions. I don’t spend much time looking at software products and services offered by other partners. I don’t even eat much of the food. I talk with people about Dynamics; how they use it, what they like about it, what they don’t, and what they’d like to do with it.

Every Dynamics user I talk with heartily agrees that Convergence is a worthwhile use of their time and money. The most enthusiastic are those who are attending Convergence for the first time. Most of them are downright bubbly as they describe their experiences over those few days. We had several customers join is in Houston this year. There were several first-timers. All of them loved it.

These are some of the reasons first-timers love it:

• They get to discuss the issues they may be having with another set of very knowledgeable people
• They become aware of a broader range of functionality available in their existing systems
• They decide that, “OK. Now it’s time to upgrade.”
• They discover several ways to solve problems or increase the benefits of their systems with small additional investments
• Microsoft does a pretty good job of executing a fun and interesting convention experience
• They get to talk with lots of other users, doing all sorts of things with Dynamics
• They get to see Kirill live and in action, and Doug Kennedy may play the drums
• They get to visit an interesting place they may have never been to before
• They know that there will most likely be another Convergence within 12 months

So next year we’re going to New Orleans. Will you be there?

The Rock and Rave was fantastic this year if bowling, pool and networking with you’re fellow convergence teammates.

Timmy K was a king of Lucky Strike.

Tim was good at pool but we found Steve S. A. was a shark. I personally saw him clear the table and I didn’t even get to take one shot.

Of course Rebecca was in the middle of it all.

The spot is usually some type of band or dance location. If you like to bust a move like Jeff below this is a great event.

If you’re not ready to kick up your heels it’s still worth coming by and checking out the scene.

I’m a sucker for dancing but I love bowling and pool. I’d give the edge to Rock and Rave this year.

What do you think?

Here’s some of our team trying to give away free stuff.

The famous Steve Chapman is a hit every where. We’ve had his followers come by and wait around for him to return from his various activities.

I think we are going to have his followers start handing out freebies so we don’t have to take them all home.

It’s a stormy day in Houston. Lots of wind and rain. A perfect morning for a short run.

I had a nice two mile run down to and along the river, as a gentle and warm rain escorted me along my path.

Actually a nice run does me more benefit than a good night’s sleep, so I’m ready to go. See you there.

It’s 9:30 am in Houston. Doesn’t look too cheery, does it?

One big announcement is MBS has now made the Professional Service Tools Library open for partners to use with clients. That’s wonderful news as the tools have typically cost around $1,000 per tool in the past.

There was a lot of people at Minute Maid Park for opening ceremonies. We took the clubhouse tour which was great.

Rebecca’s son is really into baseball and weightlifting. She was sure to send many photo’s to him to make him jealous.

Me in the clubhouse.

I’m pretty sure that’s Fab Melo but I only caught a glimpse of him.

There he is again.

Here’s some fellow tour attendees. Albert looks to be having a good time.

The Red Sox must have prompted the sign above.

Daughtry rocking out.

It was a pretty fun concert and great event. Thanks MBS.