FRx and Forecaster Go Belly Up – Options and Tips for Keeping Your Company Running Smoothly

As the Dynamics GP product evolves, many long-awaited new features are being added into the latest releases. However, some staple features are being cancelled with no clear replacements lined up. Two of these are Microsoft FRx – a tool for financial reporting and analysis for small to mid-sized organizations – and Forecaster – a tool for organizational budgeting and planning.

In an effort to replace FRx, Microsoft developed Management Reporter.  A true 64-bit solution, this module greatly improves performance and is easy to use.  It also offers a conversion utility to aid in moving your reports from FRx to Management Reporter. However, not everyone feels that Management Reporter is the best choice.

Mainstream support for Forecaster and extended support for FRx will be discontinued with the upcoming release of Dynamics GP 2015, according to Microsoft.

What does the dissolution of FRx and Forecaster mean for you and what are your options going forward? Read on to find out.

Alternatives for FRx

FRx did not support the 64-bit operating system environment that Microsoft felt was the future. Management Reporter was developed to replace FRx as a bundled module with Dynamics ERP solutions. The challenge was that Management Reporter didn’t deliver on all the standard features of FRx, let alone provide any new functionality.  For example, Management Reporter was designed to replace FRx for both financial reporting and enterprise reporting to provide for consolidations, but it doesn’t export to or import from cubes, Excel pivot tables or data warehouses. Because of the tool’s limitations, users turned to alternative solutions and add-ons to provide them with the robust functionality of the ERP they were looking for.

Thanks to the strong Independent Software Vendor (ISV) channel, there are many choices to review and choose from.

The leading Management Reporter alternatives are Jet Reports, an Excel-based reporting tool, and BI360, whose reporting capabilities go far beyond just general ledger, including ad-hoc reporting and consolidations.  BI360 is also a full Business Intelligence solution including Excel and web-based reporting, budgeting, dashboards and data warehousing.

Alternatives for Forecaster

As many would agree, Forecaster was not the most widely used product on the market. Its original intention was to be used as the budgeting and planning portion of Microsoft Dynamics in an effort to help organizations move away from spreadsheet-based systems. Being pulled from the roster of robust tools within Microsoft Dynamics was only a matter of time. To many users and VARs, it comes as a relief to make way for newer and better options.

The two leading budgeting and reporting alternatives are BI360, which offers an easy integration into Excel and allows easy access to data, and NexDimension, whose budgeting functionality has made major improvements in saving time for integrating big accounting data.

How to Choose?

Of course, every product is a different fit for everyone depending on the needs of the company. Here are some important metrics to consider when choosing the best option for your own organization:

The first question to consider is how large is the company that needs the product? Whether there are one, two or 50 people, can the product realistically support the installed base? How many Dynamics GP customers do they have? Not just users, but actual different firms. This number will determine whether or not it would be a reasonable purchase.

Additional questions:

• Is the product embedded in Dynamics GP?
• Does it use the Dynamics GP data from SQL Server, or does it have to create its own tables?
• Is the product reading data in real time or do you have to run a batch process first?
• Does your product offer unlimited users or do you have to purchase named or concurrent licenses?

An important consideration is the support options and costs. Compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics software can be determined upon the frequency of upgrades and product releases. If you’re dealing with a cloud-based product, that means that you’re privy to the updates and product releases available on demand. However, it’s a different story for those with local installs. You need to ask how often those updates are offered for maximum product utilization.

Where do we go from here?

There are many very good solutions that will serve as replacements to FRx and Forecaster.  The best places to seek out information are from your partner, The Partner Channel Magazine solutions section in the back, GPUG forums  and the customer source at the Microsoft Dynamics website.  Be sure you review at least three solutions before you make a commitment to ensure you’ve made the right choice.

There are literally hundreds of ISV products to choose from.  These cover a wide range of requirements and efficiency tools that deliver tremendous value to your ERP solution. Regardless of the evolution of the Dynamics products and the changes Microsoft makes to them, the Dynamics solution remains a flexible and malleable software solution that can be integrated with whatever your need.

Along with FRx and Forecaster, Microsoft has announced that Business Portal will not be included in the next version of Dynamics GP. If your company is seeking a replacement for the time and expense tracking component, Journyx invites you to take a look at our solution and see if it might be a good fit for your company.

About the Author: Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx, a Certified Microsoft Partner. Journyx maximizes the value of Microsoft Dynamics by adding enterprise time tracking. Journyx Accountlink for Microsoft Dynamics allows companies to quickly implement a complete time tracking solution using existing business data in Dynamics. Connect with Curt on Google+.

About Journyx

A Certified Microsoft Partner, Journyx enterprise time and expense tracking software is an add-on that integrates with Microsoft Dynamics GP as well as Project Accounting. Learn more at http://journyx.com/dynamics.

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