Should it cost additional money to upgrade to GP 2013 from GP 2010? Can't believe we are being asked for more money on top of our annual maintenance fee. I can't find anything on CustomerSource saying to upgrade you will need to pay more money for your maintenance fee. Can anyone confirm?
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Hi Bill
Thanks for adding that - I have a client who is about to add two new licences - and will be upgrading mid-next year, so I see I might have this issue crop up.
We had the situation with reducing the number of users - and not wanting to increase them again blocking the upgrade happening - they had to rebuy the licences back in order to upgrade.
Just definitely something for people to be aware of.
Cheers
Heather
Heather, when ever you make a change to your license in order to make a 'favorable' change to your maintenance fee - LOWER is better - and then 'shortly thereafter' decide you need that feature back - Microsoft can and has charged for not only the module, but the difference again in the maintence fee.
I recall some of the fine print in the migration license changes from old GP to BRL that stated that if users / modules were dropped the change could not be reversed or modified for some period of time - dont have the exact words - but something along your line.
As to moving to the GP2015 on Perpetual I would think that if I already owned Bank Reconciliation (as example) I would not drop it to then pick up on the other side with Perpetual - makes little or no sense - but users, that is another issue all together.
I dont recall the exact details, but we had a client that 'added' 2 users in BRL then 8 months later was going to move to GP2015 and Perpetual license, Microsoft was going to charge the user the difference between the BRL price for the user and the Perpetual user price - I know it did not go very far, as the client saw that and said lets wait - waited out the year ( as I recall ) then moved to Perpetual - no extra / over charge.
Anyway - might be of interest, if not, sorry to have taken up your time.
All great answers above. The only other thing I can add in terms of the Microsoft Licensing is that we ran into an issue with a few of our sites that had reduced their licensing - mainly dropped the user count.
I don't know the full details of it, but if you have dropped user count or a module (i.e. to save on maintenance because you don't need that anymore), then you cannot upgrade for (I think) 3 years. If you decide to upgrade in that time, you have to buy back at current list price what you dropped off. Not pay the difference in maintenance - buy back in full.
Not sure if that relates to your situation or not. Also not sure if that is only in New Zealand or is across the board. I do also question whether it is legal or not to have that in there.
In regards to the total cost of an upgrade, SueC is spot on. In regards to your yearly maintenance payment going up, clients who have been on GP for years don't typically see an increase. If you bought after 2012, I believe, you could see some increase in yearly cost.
A note about upgrades, we do a lot of them large and small. SueC is right on point on what it takes to do an upgrade, but some people will tell you the exact opposite based on their experience. Some companies, and even VAR's, will do an upgrade in a live environment without testing and relying solely on being able to rollback via backups. If everything goes well, it is a day's worth of work, but nowadays with companies utilizing more technologies in GP that happens less. There will be "showstoppers" in most upgrades that require research, remediation and a lot of times calling Microsoft for a fix. If you hit these in a live production upgrade that wasn't tested, you have two choices: 1) rollback off of a backup, or 2) be down for days or maybe weeks.
Upgrades are only easy when nothing goes wrong and you've done your homework as SueC has. Even when that happens you may be surprised by the length of processing time it takes to upgrade that could carry over into a Monday morning on a weekend upgrade. The number of company databases and sizes of those databases as well as your hardware dictate that. We had a client that one database took 30 hours to upgrade on GP 2013 because of a missing index on a Fixed Asset table. Testing found that and we added the index after a blessing from GP Technical Support. That took a few days to get that blessing. After that fix the upgrade took 40 minutes.
We test and script our upgrade so that when we do the live upgrade we can do it in our sleep, we know what to expect and have the scripts to fix issues automatically, and we know how long it is going to take and can schedule accordingly.
Best of luck!
It is not the move from version to version that is specifically costing the money, it is the change of license type that 'may' result in a small fee being assessed by Microsoft.
In the case of 8 out of 10 clients that moved from the Business Ready License to the Microsoft Perpetual License model over the past 2 years I think the most that has be charged has been 800 to 900 dollars. This is a one time fee and it is from Microsoft.
When you move to the Microsoft Perpetual License model then you will have access to a great deal more functionality - increase the number of modules is based on what type of license model you were on with the BRL. Some were Basic and other were Advanced. If you have Advanced, and move to Perpetual, then I believe you have 'all' modules on the price list. If you moving from Advanced, then the modules like Manufacturing and Project Accounting are not included. Your partner can give you way more detail on this.
In the end, it is a legimate charge from Microsoft. As others have noted, the real cost of the migration, is not the software, it is the process time. The consultant you work with can and will do a professional update, will provide necessary testing and training. But there is a price for that - at noted, unless you have the 6 weeks to do all the testing on your own, get the professionals to do the update for you - simple, easy and pretty straight forward as well.
Hope this helps
Where can I find information on CustomerSource about my service plan will change when you upgrade to 2013? Do you know where I can find this?
Can I find info on CustomerSource regarding FRx being discontinued?
Thanks for the reminder regarding VAR fees for time spend doing the upgrade. I am really interested first how moving to a different version will change our service plan. We have been on GP since 2000 and moving from one version to the next didn't cost money in additional licensing dollars. Just wanted to check with the community regarding the legitimacy.
The licensing has changed a bit so you might end up paying more when you upgrade to 2013 but will likely find you are now licensed for quite a few more modules. The real cost of upgrades seems to be the VAR that is brought in to perform the upgrade (and test upgrade).
Additionally since you are moving from 2010 to 2013 you will want to see if you are using FRx and if so will need to convert over to management reporter.
You can follow the manuals and do your own upgrade. Or you can hire your VAR to do it for you. I know that when I worked for a private company I would do our own upgrades.
1. They were in a test environment,
2. They were a copy of the db's that we had in production.
3. I would spend close to 6 weeks doing the initial upgrades and making sure that I had all the additional keys, that any 3rd parties I had keys for and had the additional versions of the new software. As well as working out any issues that I found in the upgrade
4. Would verify that all my reports came over. Would setup some of my users in the test company for them to go in and verify that everything was working and set up a test plan. (including SSRS).
5. Would verify that nothing was feeding off of my Great Plains system being used in other db's. And if there was would need to test.
6. I would document everything while I was doing it so that when I went to the QC server I could follow the documentation and do everything again, following the documentation in order to get a feel for what the timing on the upgrade would be. (2 weeks). Then testing out to production users.
7. Would setup all my new servers with the software for the upgrade. As well as terminal servers with MR2012 latest version.
8. And finally, we would do the upgrade on Production.
9. Will have setup a training manual for all the new features for training while the upgrade was occurring or immediately after the upgrade.
10. So, if you have 8-10 weeks you can do your own production upgrade. Or you can hire a VAR who will do all the work and discovery for you and they will do a test upgrade, set everything up, know what the errors are. And can come in and do training for your users with the latest and greatest tools.
So all depends on whether you have someone on staff that is willing to take this on as a full time job for the next 8-10 weeks and how experienced they are with Great Plains. BTW, I have over 20 years experience and this is how long it takes. (8-10 weeks at about $4000 a week for a competent person) Guess it's up to you on which way you want to spend the money.
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