Dynamics GP: Tips & Tricks for Financials

Hello GP Users,

Are you looking for ways to work smarter or work faster in Microsoft Dynamics GP?  Or maybe you just want to learn some best practices so you can get the most out of Dynamics GP.   I have listed some tips and tricks below for the Financial modules in Dynamics GP that I often pass along when helping Customers with support cases. I hope these will be useful to you as well:

1. Make sure the ‘Payment Document Management’ module is NOT installed.   This tool is for countries that use a bartering system and so should not be installed on a U.S. installation. This module changes the behavior for many payment windows in sales and purchasing and can often cause performance issues with posting or voiding, or just odd behavior in general.  So be aware to not just install all modules by default, as this this one should not be installed if they do not need it. 
   
   
   
   

2. Are you having performance issues with posting or voiding a document in Receivables? To help make these processes go faster in Receivables, you can move older fully-applied documents to history to help keep the open tables smaller.   To do this, routinely run the “Paid Transaction Removal’ routine (Tools | Routines | Sales | Paid Transaction Removal) so the user will have a better experience with Dynamics GP.   Processes will run faster if the open transaction table is smaller. 
   
   
   
   

3. The same goes for Bank Rec. If your reports are taking forever to reprint, or it takes a long time to void a document in Bank Rec, you will want to move reconciled transactions to history using the ‘Reconciled Transaction Maintenance’ utility (Tools | Routines | Financial | Reconciled Transaction Maintenance).  In this utility you can mark which type of reconciled documents (deposits, bank transactions, bank transfers or voided transactions) you want to move to history by using a Cut off date.   Having data in your historical Bank Rec tables does improve the performance with reprinting Bank Rec posting journals and other reports. 
   
    
   
   

4. Install Professional Services Tools Library (PSTL) [Pronounced ‘pistol’ in short.]  This tool is free (and now included in the installation media, see screenprint in Step 1) and contains many other tools that may be useful to you including the Toolbox where you can rebuild a SQL table and maintain the data in the table.  If installed, you can access PSTL using the Area Page icon in the left margin (See below list and be sure to scroll to the very bottom of the list) or set up a shortcut on the Home area page.  Other tools such as the GL account modifier/combiner, Vendor Name modifier, Customer Name modifier, Employee modifier, Item number combiner, Fixed Asset modifier and many others are available for any maintenance needs. 
   
   
   
   

5. Another good tip is to turn on the ‘Doc Date Verify’ tool in PSTL. Without this tool, the user can key a document date such as 5/9/2099 and gets a pop-up message that says “A fiscal period for this date has not been set up”, where the user can click to continue past it.  However, if you turn on the Doc Date Verify tool, the user will get the same message, but they cannot click past it.  The user must change the date before they can proceed.  So this is pretty handy to turn on for those users that tend to ‘click past’ messages without reading them.  This will help to prevent users from keying incorrect dates and save you some ‘maintenance time’ of having to fix it later on. 
   
   
   
   
   
6. Do you want to speed up the time it takes to key payables invoices or receivables cash receipts? Let users know that they do not need to type out the full document date for each document.  You can just click on the date and type the day, or the month and day and tab off, and it will keep the rest of the date format.   For example, if the last document date was 05/05/2021 and you need to key 05/09/2021 this time, the user can just click the date, click ‘9’ only and tab off.  The system will update the Day and keep the Month and Year. So that was 1 keystroke for the user to key instead of 8 keystrokes.   Or if the next invoice date is 06/01/2021, the user can just key ‘0601’ or ‘601’ and tab off, and the year will default in.  That is 3 keystrokes instead of 8.   This little tip excites users and will save them a lot of time.   This should work for any module in Dynamics GP. 
   
   

7. If you use Receivables Management, the ‘RM Transaction Unapply’ tool in PSTL will be very useful to you. Without it, once a document is moved to history in Receivables, you can’t void, unapply it or mark it as NSF.  However, with the ‘RM Transaction Unapply’ tool in PSTL, you can move the documents back to open and choose to unapply one document or all documents.  (Just unmark the APPLIED checkbox on the right below, and you will be prompted with Are you sure you want to unapply document XXXXX.)   This is a very handy tool, especially if a check comes back as NSF that you already moved to history.  Now users can move fully-applied documents to history with comfort because this tool provides a way to move the document back to open if needed.  Keeping the open transaction table as small as possible also helps to improve performance. 
   
   
   
   

8. Educate users to close windows in Dynamics GP after performing a process such as posting or voiding. Closing the window is what completes the process and prompts the posting journals to print.  If the user leaves the window up, and leaves for lunch or even for the night, some companies may have a ‘time out’ job that removes them from the activity file, and can disrupt the process from fully completing.  In some instances, the data may also become damaged if the process is not completed correctly.  With many users working from home right now too, there are more connection issues happening, so it's a good practice to close the window in GP right away to complete the process before stepping away from their computer.  Educate users to close windows in GP as a good practice, and even lock their computer screens if they step away from their desk for a long period of time.
   
   
   
9. Why pay mailing costs to mail out paper EFT check remittances in Payables or Customer statements in Sales?  There is an electronic way to email those documents to the vendors and customers using Word templates, and all you need is their email address. (Click each link above to find out more information.)  You don't even need to purchase ADOBE Writer, as it is already built in to Dynamics GP, so you can get this up and running in no time and let GP send these documents out electronically for you. 
   
   
   
   
   
10. Sometimes the Home page in Dynamics GP take a very long time to load when the user logs into Dynamics GP.  Although the links on the Home page can be very useful, they can also take up many seconds for the user to launch GP every day and they may not know that they can turn them off if they are not using them.  On the Home page, click on ‘Customize this Page’ and show the users how to disable some reports or reminders that they don’t use so the Home page loads faster.   Also go to Microsoft Dynamics GP | User Preferences | Reminders and review those reminders as well.  Obviously the more that are marked, the longer it will take GP to load, so review these with the user and help them to select the most beneficial options for their role.
    
    
    
    
    
    

These tips and tricks can help the user work more effectively in Microsoft Dynamics GP, so be sure to pass them along for consideration.  I hope that some of these tips will help your users to improve some processes or even overall performance in their daily activities.

Thanks!
Cheryl Waswick
Sr. Technical Support Engineer
Microsoft Dynamics GP Support