Category Archives: Sales

Analytics For Dynamics GP – BI Solution From Mark Polino (DynamicAccounting.Net) #MSDYNGP

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Mark Polino of DynamicAccounting.Net has released first among series of Excel Dashboards, Sales Analytics Starter Edition, for Dynamics GP. This dashboard series is named as Analytics For Dynamics GP.

Sales Dashboard

Sales Starter Edition has got following charts with whole set of important filters:

  • Top Customers (with costs)
  • Top 10 Products (with costs)
  • Top 10 Salespeople
  • Top 10 Sales Territories
  • Top 10 Sites
  • Sales with Trend and Projection
  • Sales Mix with Item Class

It’s a simple plug and play kind of dashboard on Microsoft Excel (v2010 & v2013) file. Setting this up once you buy it is so very easy. How to map your GP data server is clearly explained as part of this dashboard solution. And you can modify this as you wish once you link this to your GP data server.

As it is just an Excel file with a straightforward GP data server connection, all you need to do is to click on refresh to get the real time information.

This sales dashboard starter edition is priced at $249 +$49 annual maintenance. Maintenance covers updates, improvements and fixes. Click on links provided across this post to visit Mark’s Analytics For Dynamics GP product page, learn more about this awesome BI solution and know how to buy your copy.

In my personal opinion, this is a simplistic and satisfactory BI solution which meet its promises pretty well.

VAIDY

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Infamous “Sales distribution amount is incorrect” Error

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I received an email from one of my users seeking my help in clearing this issue. While posting an invoice, this error message popped up:

SDE-01

 

Upon running the Edit List for this invoice, I realized that it was due to an imbalance in Markdown Amount and corresponding distribution line. Below was the error report that I got:

SDE-02

There seemed to be Markdown entered on one or more line item(s), but there was no distribution line for that amount. But the issue was not THAT simple and didn’t stop there.

When I ran thru’ all line items, none contained a Markdown. Now that’s the problem. After some minutes of thinking, I realized something must be stranded on header record’s Markdown field, for which GP requires a Markdown distribution line, but since line items do not contain any Markdown, it’s not creating one. Strange.

I decided to query the records from SOP10100 (SOP Header) and SOP10200 (SOP Line) to understand the issue. Below is what I found:

SDE-03

SERIOUSLY…?!?!?!?!

But yes, that was the issue. And most baffling thing is, when I tried to reconcile this sales document, this major mishap didn’t get cleared at all.

Obvious solution for this abnormal situation is as follows:

1. Take backup of this SOP10100 record.

2. Update Markdown fields with ZERO.

3. Reconcile this sales document again to see if the above update had caused any imbalance.

Happy new year and happy troubleshooting…!!!

VAIDY

Sales Quote Line Item Cancellation

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I recently took a training for users on GP SOP. Training was a success. There were couple of users who are already into GP for quite sometime now (4 years precisely).

Interestingly, when I was explaining about Quantity Quoted Vs. Quantity To Order Vs. Quantity Cancelled, one user said they had never used Quantity Cancelled at all to record any line item cancellation. That was quite a surprise to me.

Consider this scenario: A customer enquires about couple of products and we prepare a quote and send it to them. Out of two products, they confirm only one and we are to transfer this quote with only product. There are three ways we can adapt:

1. Delete that unwanted product line on the quote and transfer this quote to an order (Bad Approach).
2. Transfer the quote in totality and from Sales Order delete that unwanted product line. (Bad Approach).

Above two approaches do not give us the fair picture on quote conversion. Considering the fact that GP SOP do not maintain a revision history of each document, it’s not advisable to follow above steps.

3. Cancel the quantity, by removing “Quantity To Order” and entering “Quantity Cancelled”. Transferring this quote will not transfer unwanted product to Sales Order.

By doing this you are retaining originally quoted products list and transferring only those which your customer wanted, also for your self-assessment on how you have performed in winning the quotations. Most recommended approach.

Of course, we would be forced to add/remove product lines from Sales Order for some reasons. But at least, quote conversion would give us facts at the time when we won the quote for that particular customer.

UPDATE: Siva has written a post which expands my post into different modules and how we can maintain records for better and painless auditing.

VAIDY

What is Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and how it is calculated?

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The concept that I learned in past 2 days is this: Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and the way you calculate it.

Joshua Burnett has posted an article on this way back in March 2009. Read it here: The DSO Calculation (Days Sales Outstanding).

It’s quite simple and yet very deep in concept. I simply loved to read and learn. I am sure it would be useful to some people out there, trying to understand what DSO is all about.

VAIDY