What’s New in Dynamics GP 2018 (Video)

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TRANSCRIPT

Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018. I’m Elaine McDougall. I’m a senior solutions specialist at Encore Business Solutions. I was a GP user for about 10 years prior to working on the consulting side. So today, we have a lot of new features to cover with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018. So the categories we have are sorting options, document attachments, sales, payments, purchasing, administration, workflow, U.S. payroll, and web client.

So I am gonna be demonstrating most of these features in my GP demo system to show you what these features are about. So these PowerPoint slides will be available for you after the elevate session, and those PowerPoint slides do have screenshots of all the new features for the most part. There’s a few that we didn’t have, but those will be available for you.

All right. So let me switch to my demonstration system. So the first new feature I want to show you is on the reconcile bank statement screen. So I’m gonna pick a checkbook and go to Transactions. So there is new functionality added to the Select Bank Transactions window in the Sort by area. So now you can sort by the payment column and the deposit column. So you’ll see that there are those two new selections here to sort by payment and sort by deposit, by type, and by date were there previously. And you can also sort now in ascending or descending order.

So if we were to go and look at our payment section and say to sort descending or wanna hit Read display there, so you’ll see that the payment column is now sort of from largest to smallest in the screen there. So anything that negative would be at the bottom. So if we wanted to sort by the deposit column, and maybe we’ll do that by ascending, you’ll see that that now sorts as well. So some great features added to the screen to help do your bank reconciliation.

The next area is in payables management. So there’s new functionally added to the payables transaction inquiry by vendor and by document. So there’s new sorting capabilities added here as well. So the sort by options that are available in this screen are by document number, by type, by original amount, by an applied amount, and by document date, and you can also sort those by ascending and descending order. So if I pick one of my vendors, I’ll make the screen a little bit larger here so you can see all the transactions. So if we sort by… So this is currently sorted by document number in ascending order, we could change it to descending. It will sort that way. If you wanna sort by the document type, it does that as well in descending and ascending order.

So same feature available in the transactions by document screen here. So you can sort by the maybe the original amount in ascending order so then you can go through and look for your dollar amount if you’re searching for something and then also by the unapplied amount. So sometimes, that’s handy to be able to look things up by what’s on applied. So you do have to hit the Show button to see those fields in that sort option.

The next new feature is in the sales module similar to purchasing. There’s new functionally added to the receivables transaction inquiry by customer and by document. So the sort by options that are available in this screen are by type, by document number, document amount, amount remaining, and the document date. So if you’re looking for transactions that have amounts remaining, you can sort by that. You have to hit the show button just to see those amounts in the screen. If you wanna sort by the document type, you can do that as well and your documents will sort there as you look through those transactions.

The next area is in regards to document attachments. So GP 2018 has broadened the availability of document attached capability to additional master record windows increase in transaction entry windows. So under administration, company, and document attached setup, there’s a new checkbox here that says “Allow attachments to be added in the inquiry windows.” So if you want to be able to do that, you need to check that box. You can also password protect that ability as well. So if you only want certain people to be able to do that, you can set up a password and provide that password to those who use GP users. So once that’s turned on, I’ll demonstrate the new capabilities with the increased screen. So the first one is under vendor inquiry. So if you go under the vendor, you pick a vendor here, you’ll see that there is an attached button at the top of the screen. Now, when you click on that you go find your attachment. Attach that item there and now that’s attached to the document.

Same under sales under the customer inquiry area, you can now attach something to the customer. So you’ll see that the attached button is there as well. And also, if you have GP project installed, you can attach to the project inquiry screen and the PA project inquiry screen. So with those inquiry screens, there was availability to attach documents in the maintenance ring already and now it’s just new capabilities in the increased area.

So there are some new document attached functionality in available in these screens. So first one is under financial transactions journal entry. So you’ll see that there’s a journal entry and you have this, but that’s kind of hidden under this Chevron. So there’s the attached button there that brings you to that screen. And then similarly, under the journal entry inquiry screen, you can also attach there now that the inquiry area can do that. So there’s your attached button for the journal entry inquiry.

Under sales for receivables transaction entry, there is now an attachment feature there as well as within the inquiry area here. So if you were to pick a customer and you drill back to a receivables transaction document inquiry, you’ll have the attachment button there as well where you can attach items. In fixed assets under the fixed asset general card information, you can attach things here. So you’ll see the attached button there and then similarly within the inquiry area, you have the general asset information here that has an attached button as well.

Under payroll, under employee cards, we have the ability to attach. Now, this one is a little bit different. It’s not in the upper ribbon area, it’s right here next to the employee ID. So that’s where that button is. A little bit different than the other screens where you can attach things and then also in the employee inquiry area, similar button there where you can attach in the inquiry screen. And also within human resources, you have the ability to attach a document in the I9 form screen. So lots of new features for document attachment.

All right. The next new feature is gonna be in our sales module. So you now can print a statement for a single customer from either the customer maintenance screen or from the customer inquiry screen. So you pull up a customer and then there’s a print icon up here in the ribbon. So if you click on that you have two choices here and you have a statement choice. So it brings up this print statement screen here, so it defaults to the statement ID step for the vendor or for the customer and you can change that to a different statement ID, if you like, if you hit print. It will print the statement to the screen and then you can print it from there.

So also in the customer inquiry area, pull up a customer. You also have a print icon for a statement and it does the same thing.

The next new feature is displaying a hold status icon in your sales transaction entry screen. So I have a customer…let’s see here. So I’m gonna go to sales transaction entry and I have a customer that is set to be on hold. So we have Adam Park here. So I placed Adam Park on a credit hold previous to our session here today. So you’ll see now that there’s this little stop sign icon next to the document type that’s visible. So as you’re entering a new sales transaction into the screen and you pick that customer, the whole icon will appear, as you’re entering or for any open documents that will appear as well. So if you select the stop sign icon, it will give you the reason why they are on hold. So these are hold types that are previously set up in the system so they’re currently on credit hold there. It’s a nice visual cue for when a customer is on hold.

The next area is in payables management. So in GP 2018, the…let me make this a little big here. Some of the menu items have changed terminology. So, payables management, the checks windows have been renamed to reflect the ability to process payments to your vendors. So there are various ways to pay your vendors. You can pay by check, by credit card, electronic funds transfer, and you know, any other methods. So the terminology within the menu items have changed to reflect that flexibility and having different types of payments. So manual checks was now Manual Payments. The select people checks item is now called Build Payment Batch. And then the Edit payables check is now Edit Payment Batch, Edit Vendor Payments, Print Payments, Post Payments. So these everything was changed from checks to payments and then a little bit of other terminology changes. Well, they all do the same thing, but it’s the terminology has changed to reflect multiple ways to pay a vendor.

Our next new feature has to do with processing one payment per vendor or per invoice. So there is a new option within the vendor setup in GP 2018. So you’ll see here there’s a one payment per selection here and the choices are by vendor or invoice. So when you upgrade to GP 2018, the default for the vendor is going to be set to one payment per vendor, which is typically how you would pay your vendors, but if you needed to change that, you could change that here. So then to go along with that in the build payments batch area, there’s a new option under the one payment per the default selection in this screen is used the vendor option. So if when that is selected, all the vendors included in the batch will be using the setting from the vendor maintenance area. So the other two selections that were there previously are still available if you wanna control that at the batch processing level.

All right. Our next feature is within the Build Payment Batch screen. So there is a new option called Payment Option ID that allows you to save the settings used to build a payment batch. So I have a couple that I’ve previously setups I’m gonna open those up for you to take a look at these. So I have one called Class U.S. I’m using a vendor class ID for a range of vendor classes that are for the USA vendor classes. So I have that setup. And then also for this payment option ID, I unchecked all the automatically apply existing on applied payments, credit memos, and returns. So those are you that are familiar with his screen. Typically all these boxes are checked. So when I selected that payment option, those boxes were checked in inserted my class ID there.

So the other option that I have set up already is a priority one option ID. So for this particular setting, I inserted a restriction for payment priority is set to one and that’s about the only restriction I have. So you’ll see that the automatically apply items are selected. So to kind of set up your own payment option, I’ll just go through and all set up a test batch here. I already have a best so let’s clear that. Let’s do new batch and I’ll set the checkbook.

All right, then I’m gonna say…I’m just gonna call this Payment Option. And then once you tab off of that field, it will say, “Do you wanna add this default ID?” and I’ll say add, and then you can put a description on that. So you obviously you wanna call it something that would make sense to you and your users. So say, for this one, maybe I wanna insert, you know, a class ID for the different range of classes. So maybe I’ll do my Canadian class IDs here. And I’ll insert that and then maybe I want to have these boxes unchecked and maybe I wanna also take non-qualifying discounts. So as you’re, you know, making all these settings, if you were to, you know, build the batch or just close the window, I’m just gonna close the window here and it’ll ask you, “Do you want to save the changes to this payment option ID?” So I will hit save. And then when I go back into the screen, I’ll go and select my new option, you’ll see that it has the class ID and these items are selected and this box is checked. So that’s a big time saver and helping you do your payment runs in a consistent manner.

Okay. The next option on our new feature is in regards to the ability to print Purchase Requisition that wasn’t available previously. So I’m gonna just go in here and create a Purchase Requisition and then I’m gonna set up my warehouse and I’m just gonna type in pencils here. And then I’m gonna order 100 and each box is 250 and I’ll just count pencils. I had my warehouse ID, and I’ll add my Vendor ID here. So once that is done, you’ve entered your Purchase Requisition, you can print it from the ribbon here. You wanna save your Purchase Requisition. So now, there is your Purchase Requisition that you can print and you can print this from the inquiry area as well as well as the navigation list.

So for my next feature, I’m gonna use this requisition that I created. So the next feature is that whenever you create a purchase order from either the Purchase Requisition screen that we have open here or from the purchase order generator tool, which will generate your suggested purchase orders for any inventory items that you’re low on quantity. So whenever you transfer this to or create a new purchase order, so within the requisition, I’m gonna go actions in purchase. What’s gonna happen is after we’ve printed this Po, there’s the purchase order transaction navigation list is gonna open automatically and filtered to display only the new purchase order got created. So the user can see what pa was generated immediately without all the other purchase orders in that list.

So here is my purchase order preview. Everything looks good. I don’t have any warning signs. I’m gonna hit generate here I’m gonna print the purchase order to the screen and then you’ll see kind of in the background that it’s changing our view here. So here’s a report saying that P0 2090 got generated. So we’ll close that report. We’ll close the Purchase Requisition entry screen. And here is our navigation list that opened automatically while we were printing that PO. So here’s our PO 2090, how much it was, who the vendor is as well.

So along that similar line, there’s also on the Purchase Requisition transactions navigation list. It now will give you the requisition number and what Purchase Order Number got generated from that requisition. So, previously, we didn’t have that ability to see what purchase order got generated from the requisition. There’s also in regards to requisition and PO numbers and how they linked together on your homepage, you can activate their procurement page. So you would do that by going to customize this page and checking the procurement box. So in this screen here, I think I need to refresh that here. Let me go back. This will list the requisition number, and what purchase order to God generated. So here’s my PO 2090. So you can see this on your homepage as far as what got added. So other users can add this procurement page to their homepage. And so if they’re wondering if a PO got generated on a requisition, they can tell by this list.

All right. The next feature has to do with the system password. So my demo system does not have a system password but new functionality has been added that no longer requires the user to reenter the system password for the duration of the user session. So typically, when a system password is set up certain selections within the Setup Menu administration are password protected, like setting up a user so every time you went into a user or user access and security as you’re setting up a new user, you would be prompted for the system password. But you enter the system password once and then it will be suppressed for any other entries during this particular session. So if you log out of GP and log back in again later in the day, you will be prompted the first time and then following that you won’t so it’s per session which is very handy for those that are in those screens quite often.

Our next new feature is in regards to adding a password to a smart list. So as you know, anyone can modify a smart list. So now, let me open simple smart list here. So I have a chart of accounts smart list here. So if I went and changed the order of the columns are added new columns are deleted and I wanted to save that the user would simply just hit Favorites and hit Modify to save that smart list. So I have a smart list here that’s already password protected. So if I made changes to the smart list and I wanted to change it, I clicked on Favorites and I hit Modify, it’s gonna ask me for the password in order to modify that smart list. So I hit Enter the password the last time, I saved that smart list. So this will really be helpful in making sure people don’t modify smart list that shouldn’t be modified. Nice little feature there.

The next new feature is in regards to analytical accounting. So we’re gonna go under administration company and little accounting and then user access. So in the user access to transaction dimensions window, you can specify which users have access to dimensions. And now there is a copy button. So that allows you to be able to easily copy access to multiple other users or other transaction dimensions and dimension codes.

Another new item within GP 2018, in previous versions, there were some missing help documentation. So they have made sure that those links are now available in some of those screens. So if you go to any entry screen or inquiry screen or really any screen if you hit Help about this window, you’ll get a Help menu here. So the previously, there were some missing help items. One thing to note is in 2018, it still does say Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015. So they missed that little that label there are, but help documentation has improved since 2015.

All right. The next area is in regards to workflow. So I don’t have workflow turned on in this demo system, but we can go over some of the features. We’ll talk through some of those features. So under setup, company, workflow, workflow maintenance, we have a few new workflows that have been added. So the first one is under the financial series and it is for general ledger account approval. So anytime a general ledger account is set up, you can set up a workflow to approve that setup.

The other two new workflows are under purchasing. So the first one is for receiving transaction approval. So this would be a receiving off of a purchase order. So you can create a workflow for receiving transactions and then purchasing invoice would be the next step. In that process, you can add a workflow for the purchase invoice approval process as well. So three new workflows,

There have been some additional fields added to some of the other existing workflows. So for the payables transaction approval workflow, some additional fields have been added. So those fields are the vendor account, the comment ID one and two, the vendor class ID, and payment priority. So a few more fields are added to that workflow. Also for the vendor approval workflow here, if you set up an EFT for a vendor. So let’s pull up that screen. So for a vendor under the address ID, there’s this EFT bank field. So previously these fields are not part of work flow. So now the country, the bank name, the bank account, and the swift code will be included in the workflow approval for vendors.

For the purchase order workflow message has some additional fields as well. So the account description field for the purchase order workflow assignment email on the purchase order workflow action completed email have been added. There are also some reminders that were added. So workflow reminder emails can now be sent to users who have a workflow transaction pending their approval. So this enhancement lets you set a reminder time period on the workflow that’s used to notify users if they haven’t reacted to their assigned workflow of tasks within the specified time frame. So that’s a handy feature down to remind users to do their workflow approvals.

There’s also a new feature that allows you to copy a workflow step. So this enhancement adds efficiency to the process of setting up workflows by enabling you to copy steps within the workflow of the same workflow type and then you can rename that step and then include the sub steps in a workflow. So that’s helped us streamline the setup process of a workflow.

There’s also a new workflow history report. So within administration reports, company workflow history, so there’s a workflow history report that can be sent, that can be generated. This report can be filtered by, you know, workflow type, workflow manager, the user complete date, due date, etc. So good reports to track the workflow there.

All right. Our next features are in regards to U.S. payroll. So within the first feature is the ability to turn off garnishments reports. So for those that are familiar with how to turn reports on and off, you go under administration setup posting and posting. So if we pick payroll and then pick computer checks. Luckily, there are a lot of reports with this. So now you have the payables garnishments detail and payables garnishments summary reports that you can turn off. So previously don’t have that ability, so they default to be turned on. So if you don’t want those reports to be generated during your check posting process, you can turn those off during that pay run.

The next new feature is in regards to the ability to roll down set up to select your choice of records. So if I go into Setup payroll and maybe I’ll pick Deduction here, pick a deduction code. So anytime you make a change to a deduction code or a Pay Code, a benefit code, or shifts that up if you make a change, so I’m just gonna uncheck local taxes here and you say, “Save,” you’re gonna get this new option that says, you know, “How do you wanna roll down these changes? You just wanna roll it down to active records, or you wanna roll it down to all records or no records?” So all records would include active and inactive. So you have those selections now to do those roll down those changes.

All right. The next one has to do with the Pay Code modifier. So you now have the ability to change the department code for the payroll codes. So these others for a pay benefit and deduction were available previously. So department code is a new feature within this. So if you have any codes that you need to change, this will roll down to the current records as well as to the history tables.

The next new feature in Payroll is in regards to look ups for inactive code. So you can now exclude inactive codes during a lookup process. So if we go to cards payroll deduction. I’ll just pick an employee here. So if we go to the deduction code and we do a lookup within if you change the view, so there’s this little arrow next to the view here, so it defaults to increase all deductions. So if you select exclude inactive deduction codes, it will exclude any codes that were inactive. And then what you can do is you can select Set as default so that for your user only, anytime you go to look up any deduction codes, it will only look up those active codes and you can see the selection you have here in the view. So that’s handy when you have a bunch of inactive codes and they’re not part of the list.

All right. The next feature within Payroll is in regards to reprinting the distribution detail in summary reports. So now you can reprint these two reports at any time. And this will help, you know, identify what happens during a specific payroll run and help you track down any, you know, taxable wage reconciliations, and that’s everything. So previously you weren’t able to print those two reports. So you can reprint those now at any time.

All right. My last features are in regards to the web clients within GP. So for those of you that use the web client, so the first new feature is a one-click access to smart lists, so there’s new functionality added to the web client that allows one-click access to a smart list, so there’s a new link that will be in the banner in the upper right area of the web client window labeled “Smart list.” So just click on that link and opens the smart list window. So quicker navigation to the smart lists within the Web Client. The next Web Client new feature is the ability to maximize the bank reconciliation window so the user can see more transactions in that window and reduce the amount of scrolling that’s needed to find transactions in the bank reconciliation window.

And then the last item is in regards to the autocomplete functionality. So that’s been added to the web client. So, you know, when you start to type in, you know, a partial entry, like for a vendor code, it will recognize those partial entries, just like the Microsoft’s GP desktop clients. So that’s a list of all my features. So I’ll go to my last slide here and see if there are any questions.