Jet Basics Function Availability Changes in Dynamics GP

Jet Basics from insightsoftware is an Excel add-in that allows the GP user to easily create financial statements and reports using the general ledger data in Dynamics GP. It is a replacement for both FRX and Management Reporter and works on all versions of Dynamics GP from 2010 and up.

The best part of this is that the core base functionality is available at no charge to the Dynamics GP user, however there has been a big change in this version recently. In 2016 when Microsoft announced the sunsetting of Management Reporter (yes, the reporter is living on borrowed time) in 2026, they also arranged with Jet to provide functionality to all GP users at no additional cost. This would allow users to replace the basic financial statement functions of Management Reporter with another supported program. To provide this, Jet limited its report engine at the time to allow two functions of its four functions to be used by Basics users. These were GL and NL.

“Since the development of the report is in Excel itself, the learning curve for most accounting professionals is very short and its ability is only limited by the designer’s imagination.”

The GL function is the core of the statement presentation model in that it allows the user to pull directly from the Dynamics GP general ledger. This function can return budget, balance, net change, names and other data from the general ledger accounts for a given company, based on filters. These filters include date, periods, account, account ranges and categories. It does this extremely well and is easy to learn and use. Since the development of the report is in Excel itself, the learning curve for most accounting professionals is very short and its ability is only limited by the designer’s imagination.

The NL function allowed the user to pull detailed transactions from the tables in GP much like a SmartList. More detailed in its approach, it opened all the Dynamics GP database tables in Excel. While this feature provided additional information and access to all subledgers and supporting transactions, it is not as intuitively obvious as the GL function. The detail transactions are listed in a table and the user then creates a pivot table to create the required data. As a live link it replaces the creation and export of SmartList data and provides the report to non-GP users

Now the early adopters of Jet Basics got both these functions and while some have written complex reports using both, most used only the GL function. In early 2020, insightsoftware removed the NL from the basic version moving this back into its full featured version. This change in licensing may negatively affect your firm. If you use the NL function in Jet Basics, when you upgrade this feature will be removed. In order for those reports to continue operating, your firm will need to purchase the full Jet Reports version. The NL function can be replaced by using the data connections in Excel, however creation of these Excel reports can be time-consuming.

So there you have it, those are the changes in Jet Basics from insightsoftware. If you have any questions or would like a demo of Jet Basics to see how it may work for you, please let us know.