Confessions of a Dynamics NAV Consultant

Processing and Fixing Vendor 1099 Codes in Dynamics NAV

2013-01-29T22:49:36Z

It’s that time of the year again. Time to send out those 1099 to your vendors in Dynamics NAV. Here’s a quick video of how to process 1099s in Dynamcis NAV and how to process vendor 1099 invoices and and print out 1099 forms in Dynamics NAV (In 2 minutes or less no doubt). If you forgot to put in the 1099 at the time of setup (which you should’ve done when you made your vendor sign that W-9 form), it will not be defaulted when you enter the purchase invoice. But don’t...(read more)

Quick Video on Closing the Year in Dynamics NAV

2012-12-04T19:58:50Z

It’s that time of the year again. Close out the year! Most companies align their fiscal year to the calendar year so right around this time, we usually get a ton of support calls from people that forgot how to close the year end and need a quick refresher. So I made a quick 2 minute video on how to do year end processing. Why? Because you can’t go through a 10 minute video in 2 minutes and I know you have a ton of other things to do. I’m using NAV 2013, but the menu tree is...(read more)

Survive and Thrive using Dynamics NAV in Any Economy

2012-11-08T05:26:20Z

Hypothesis Companies that bought Dynamics NAV and make continuous improvements in the system are less likely to go out of business or sold off. Informal Research This was the conclusion I had while I was speaking with my fellow Dynamics NAV (Navision) partners. The question I asked was this: Have any of your customers, who is active before the recession, during the recession, and now, gone out of business or have been sold? When we partners say customers are “active”, we mean...(read more)

Dynamics NAV 2013 is Here – Recap of Microsoft Directions 2012

2012-10-31T09:39:32Z

It’s Microsoft Directions 2012 Yes. Microsoft Directions. The theme for this year’s Directions is Dynamics NAV 2013 is here! This is release is what 2009 should’ve been. Microsoft reiterated that with Dynamics NAV 2013, it’s ready and you will not need to wait for a service pack. From what I’ve seen on the early release of Dynamics NAV 2013, I have to agree with them. It’s runs a lot faster with a lot of usability features. Microsoft has done an INCREDIBLE...(read more)

Hardware Requirements for Dynamics NAV 2013 “NAV 7″

2012-09-21T16:26:12Z

Overview Looking through the hardware requirements for Dynamics NAV 2013, it looks like there are a couple of things the end user will need. More noteable, it looks like now the computer has to be running at least Windows 7 in order to use the NAV 2013 Windows client. There are mixed feelings about this, while I do understand that Windows XP is no longer supported at Microsoft, I’d safe at least half of our customers that are using NAV are still using Windows XP. So if an upgrade is considered...(read more)

Thought Process on Receiving Defective Inventory in Dynamics NAV

2012-09-07T00:30:03Z

Overview Receiving items from vendor can be a tricky thing. This question has come up quite a bit during implementation regarding defective inventory. I know a lot of companies has put a lot of modifications into receiving defective inventory, I’d like to propose an out of the box solution to receiving goods that have some defective quantities. Here is the scenerio: 1. A purchase order came in on a container for ItemA with 100 pieces 2. Of the 100 pieces, 30 are damaged and they want to...(read more)

Entering A/P Credit Card Transactions in Dynamics NAV

2012-07-13T23:20:35Z

Overview Here’s quick tip on entering transactions for the credit card. Sometimes, when you make a purchase using your credit card, but you want to keep track of the purchase against the vendor, you don’t want the credit card statement to come in at the end of the billing period to enter that information. The Easy Way to Do It Here’s a way to enter that information against a specific vendor instead of towards your credit card vendor account (i.e. American Express). Here’s...(read more)

Different Flavors of Warehouse Management in Dynamics NAV

2012-05-29T16:47:21Z

Overview Dynamics NAV (Navision) is a comprehensive ERP system. As such, it has many features that caters the different needs of businesses, for example, manufacturing, service managment, CRM, distribution, etc. Each one of these functional areas can be configured a number of ways depending on the needs of the business. During my time working at AP Commerce, there are never any shortages of investigating different setups based on on the needs of a business. What you think you need may not be what...(read more)

NAV 2013 Technical Documentation on What is New

2012-05-16T16:30:04Z

Just a quick note. If you don’t have this link already, here’s the MSDN article on what’s new in version 2013: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh174007(v=nav.70)?lc=1033...(read more)

Cost Effective Microsoft Resources That You Did Not Know

2012-05-11T18:52:04Z

Overview Microsoft is a technology organization. It’s their job to develope new technologies that business and individuals can use to improve upon their lives. Having said that, there are A LOT of products that Microsoft releases and as an end user, it’s really hard to keep up with everything going on. Being in an IT professional, it’s even hard for me to keep up. There are many times where the customers will go out and see a demo of something that can drastically improve their...(read more)

The Best Business Practice

2012-03-20T01:33:45Z

The Hype Often times when I go into an implementation, some clients will want to implement it based on the “best business practice”. The idea is that somehow using the “best business practice” will reduce their implementation cost. In reality, more often than not, enforcing “best business practice”, without proper analysis, ususally leads to go live problems that will plague your business for years and years. Unforuatenly, there’s no such thing as best...(read more)

Why Your Inventory Cost is Wrong

2012-02-21T02:35:04Z

The Problem I hate beating a dead horse to death, but there are a couple of incidences that prompted me to write this article. Navision 1.0 has been out since 1996, yet it always astounds me when I walk into a company claiming that their inventory costing and cost of goods sold is incorrect because Navision is bugged. The first question I always ask is: Have you guys ran the Adjust Cost – Item Entries process? Most of the time, I get the blank stare asking what the hell I’m talking...(read more)

Import Budget into Excel in Dynamics NAV RTC

2011-12-20T20:35:04Z

When you’re working in the RTC environment in the G/L Budgets, the standard NAV function is that you can export the Budgets into Excel, edit it, then import it back in in the same Excel format. This works fine in the classic client, however, when you try to import the budget in Excel in the RTC environment, you get the error message: Dates have not been recognised in the Excel worksheet The problem, as explained by my local Microsoft rep, is caused by the Dynamics NAV server recognizing...(read more)

Auto-hide Taskbar Does not Autohide in Windows 7

2011-12-20T20:18:21Z

This post is not Dynamics NAV (Navision) related, but I hope it’ll be extremely helpful because real estate space is really scarce on the desktop. Especially when you’re trying to cram all that data on to your screen. This was troubling me for the longest during one of my demo sessions. Basically, I set my start menu to use auto-hide because I want to utilize all the space on my screen. The taskbar really gets in the way of everything we do. Sometimes, the taskbar will not auto-hide...(read more)

Price does not find the Lowest Price

2011-11-03T01:48:27Z

Working with Navision for the last 12 years, there are certain functionality that you assumed worked a certain way. I was under the impression that Navision always finds the lowest price whent he sales order is entered. Recently, one of our customer pointed me to the contrary. Note that this scenerio will only occur if an item has a Sales Price and a Sales Discount setup. If the Allow Line Discount is checked off on the Sales Price, NAV will not use the best price for the customer if a Line Discount...(read more)

Abnormal Item Charges

2011-11-01T01:16:01Z

Overview Dynamics NAV is a ERP software that’s built on best business practice. However, that’s not to say that the users of Navision operates on best business practice. This post describes what I would like to call Abnormal Item Charges. Again, as with what I’ve described with Abnormal Posting Date, don’t bother looking it up on any GAAP dictionary or NAV website. It’s a term that I made up because I lack the vocabulary to think of a better name. English, afterall...(read more)

Dynamics NAV 2009 Reporting Book Released

2011-10-26T17:33:00Z

Looks like I jumped the gun when I wrote about the book release on this post . For real, the Dynamics NAV 2009 reporting book is now officially released. Again, you can buy a copy of the book here: https://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-dynamics-nav-2009-for-professional-reporting/book Back when I was asked to review this, I knew this was going to be a must read book for any people out there wanting to develop reports in Navision. After the final product is delivered to me, I have to say that the...(read more)

Recap of Directions 2011 for Dynamics NAV (Navision)

2011-10-15T21:57:15Z

Overview This post is an overview of my experiences at Directions 2011 – Connect Learn Execute. Again, if you don’t already know, Directions is THE single event that any partner dealing anything with Dynamics NAV (Navision) absolutely has to attend. Not only do they preview a lot of new stuff, it’s also a great place to learn from what other partners are doing and the challenges they’re facing in the market. The Vibe The event itself was spectacularly put together by...(read more)

Inventory Value to General Ledger Reconcilation in Dynamics NAV

2011-09-13T16:23:41Z

I recently signed up to be a guest columnist on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV community site. I wrote an article with the list of common steps to finding and reconciling the difference between your inventory valuation and the inventory G/L account. The article is posted in the Dynamics NAV Community site hosted by Microsoft. The article is found here: https://community.dynamics.com/product/nav/navnontechnical/b/navguestcolumn/archive/2011/09/12/reconciling-inventory-value-to-your-inventory-general...(read more)

Magento and Dyanmics NAV (Navision)

2011-08-08T23:38:14Z

E-Commerce Magento is an unstoppable force. There are NAV e-commerce add-ons out there, however, the websites that are created, at least from what we’ve seen, looks very outdated and “old”. In addition, it’s hard to add features and customize the website to your liking. The end result is probably not the best foot you want to put forward if your e-commerce webstore is the first thing your potential customers sees about your company. Even if the integration works flawlessly...(read more)

Magento and Dynamics NAV (Navision)

2011-08-08T23:38:14Z

Dynamics NAV 2009 Reporting Book

2011-08-01T20:01:43Z

Let me first start by saying that I’m not a fan of doing book reviews. In my very humble opinion, most books about Dynamics NAV that are released, although a good read and provides some valuable information, does not bring much INCREMENTAL value to the NAV professional. What do I mean by Incremental value? It’s the money and most importantly time and attention, that you spend reading the books verses what you get out of it. Most information written can be obtained for free on the Customersource...(read more)

Switching to a New Dynamics NAV (Navision) Service Provider

2011-07-14T23:31:50Z

The Disappointment… Frustrated by the long lead time? Mad at the frequent bugs received and being billed for it? Disappointed at the decisions you made based on bad advice received? Tired of not getting responses? Angry at the billing practices? Are you considering a switch to a new partner? I can understand the frustrations felt by the clients each time I speak with end users looking to switch. It would really frustrate me if something I paid a lot of money for didn’t live up to their...(read more)

That’s Just The Way It Works

2011-07-01T19:23:38Z

There’s a dangerous trend in the ERP service industry. I frequently encounter this when I’m speaking with client sites that’s asking to migrate to Navision and existing Navision clients asking us for support. One of the first things we do when we walk in to a new client was to ask questions. Why are they switching? What is your current problem? Why are you doing certain things the way you do it? When going through the questions, one of the more common responses I get when we talk...(read more)

Fedex API to be Discontinued for E-Ship

2011-06-17T18:33:54Z

In case you haven’t heard, Fedex will discontinue the use of their old API used by Lanham’s E-Ship module for Fedex Integration. The date that the old API will be discontinued will be May of 2012. While that’s still a couple of months out, it may be worthwhile to plan an upgrade of E-Ship so you can continue using the Fedex Ingration granule for Lanham without interruption when the time comes. This is a long time coming. Fedex had already announced that they will discontinue the...(read more)