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Dynamics GP Partner Articles: FRx Balance Sheet Report Trivia - Alba Spectrum
Alba Spectrum
How to build Financial Statements for Microsoft Dynamics GP or older version of Great Plains Dynamics? There is very easy answer - call your Dynamics GP consultant and have him or her come out or connect to your FRx via web session and do the job. If you have extra time, or even better reason - you want to invest into Microsoft Dynamics GP reports design knowledge. This article is not intended to be complete technical reference, it is rather introduction, which should allow you to orient yourself and decide which route to take in FRx report design. We will be referring two reports: Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Statement:
1. FRx report anatomy. Each report (referred as Catalog in FRx) has two required building blocks: Row Format, Column Layout and one optional: Reporting Tree. Column Layout allows you to depict, say twelve month of the year for P&L report, or maybe if you need it - Current Year comparison to Last Year in Balance Sheet (there are numerous options, which you realize via Column Layout: Actual comparing to Budget, Quarters of the current year, compared to last year quarters, etc.). Row Format - this is direct link to your GL account (if your goal is to reflect detailed report where each account with non zero balance is shown), or Account Set (if you would like to summarize balances Account From / Account To - this approach has the advantage to automatically include newly created accounts into your existing report). Now few words about Reporting Tree - it allows you to create so-called Consolidated reports, where your Row Format and Column Layout show the results from multiple companies (including multicurrency conversion, if you are multinational corporation - requires FRx Professional version or FRx Currency Conversion module, if you are on FRx desktop edition). Now let's review the recommendation on Balance Sheet report design
2. Balance Sheet in FRx. First of all - the note about Balance - it should balance (meaning your Active section summary should be equal to Liabilities plus Equity), and if you are making your first exercises in FRx reports design, the natural question might be - why Balance reporting is not balancing and how to catch the problems and make it balance
3. Current Year Earnings Section in Equity. Be sure to include the summary of all Profit and Loss accounts in the Equity, typically before or after Retained Earnings account. Current Year Earning in Balance Sheet Report should be control sum for your current year Profit and Loss report, which is also typically required
4. Missing or Duplicate Accounts. These culprits could be printed out. Please in Report Catalog, such as Balance Sheet report for ABC corporation, click on Report Options tab and then Advanced and Exception Report section mark Report Missing Accounts and Duplicate Accounts. Then print your report to paper printer (or to PDF printer, if you are remote web session consultant). If you see missing or duplicate accounts in print out - we guess, you know what to do at this point, right?
5. FRx Consolidated Financial Statements for Multinational Corporation. Here you typically have multicurrency consolidation issue. If you do not have multicurrency consideration set in FRx reports, your Balance will still balance and current year earnings will equal P&L summary, however local currencies in foreign countries will be counted as if they are one local unit is equal one US dollar (the simplest test would be guessing about foreign country subsidiary results, where currency is hundred time cheaper comparing to US dollar, Japan with Japanese Yen, for example, or Russian Ruble). Please, note, that even if Dynamics GP is not localized for Japan, China, Russia, Germany and the rest of Continental Europe, you can still use FRx to consolidate multinational corporation branches on GL consolidation level (when you export all GL transactions from your foreign subsidiary accounting application and import them into GP shadow company General Ledger, or consolidate on the level of Excel Trial Balance Worksheet)
6. Bonus topic: FRx Financial Reports installation. If you are on the current version Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 (or 11.0, which should be released at any moment now in 2010), you should deploy FRx 6.7 Service Pack 10. If you are upgrading from earlier version of FRx (for example FRx 6.5), make sure you have old FRx media (CD) and backup of FRx Sysdata directory (this is where FRx stores its metadata in Microsoft Access format)
7. Bonus topic: FRx Service Packs. If you are on legacy version of Dynamics GP Great Plains: 8.0, 7.5, 7.0. 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0, please be careful in upgrading your FRx Reports (or applying FRx 6.7 latest service packs). Here you may step down on gray area, where old Great Plains Dynamics GP version is no longer supported and FRx service pack was released after the version support discontinuation was already announced
8. Multinational Corporation expanding Worldwide. You do not have to read this paragraph, if you are local business in US. For the rest of us, please be aware that Microsoft Dynamics GP is only localized in English speaking countries, Spanish speaking Latin America and Caribbean, French speaking Quebec Canadian province (Montreal). Plus there is some support to Arabic language: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, OAE, Qatar. Microsoft Dynamics GP is not localized for such regions as Brazil, Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway. If you are in Corporate ERP selection process for your overseas subsidiary we recommend you to consider SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics AX, or local Corporate ERP options (such as 1S Bukhgalteria in Russian Federation)
9. Microsoft CRM as rising star. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is localized (well, for CRM application there are no much of the requirements to be localized, as it supports Unicode characters and is available in such international markets as China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, and other countries)
10. SSRS or Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services as alternative to FRx in the future. There is formal statement on intentions from Microsoft so far. IT and Technology is typically very turbulent area, and if possible you should avoid commitments. In the case of discontinuing FRx in the future, we are in accordance with Microsoft to convert existing FRx reports to SSRS
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum http://www.albaspectrum.com help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577. Informational portal http://www.pegasplanet.com We are serving Great Plains Dynamics community since 1993. We have two locations in Southern California: Los Angeles and San Diego
Author Site
1/30/2010
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