It was only a couple of weeks ago that GP 2015 was released. While there are over 120 new features in GP 2015, there were plenty of features in GP 2013 R2 that you could be taking advantage of today!
1) Vendor purchase order tolerance – This feature allows you to specify quantity tolerances for shortages and overages for the quantity ordered when receiving against a purchase order (both standard and blanket). These quantity tolerances help better manage inventory and can prevent issues, especially in the case of process manufacturers.
2) Document attach – With this feature you can attach documents at key locations to be emailed, or that will be automatically attached based on “document flow” at the master record level. This video shows more.
3) Purchase Requisitions – These improvements remove the dependency for requisitions via SharePoint and the Business Portal (BP). With Dynamics GP 2013 R2, Purchase Requisitions can be linked with Purchase Orders within GP. Now when an item has been purchased through GP the user can track back and review the Purchase Requisition using the Purchase Order link. Now that purchase requisitions are handled inside GP it is possible to create workflows that include a review or approval process. This provides much better audit controls.
4) Reconcile bank without marking the transaction – This is a major time saver! In addition to saving time with the regular reconciliation process you can now reconcile a checkbook with no transactions. Once again this helps you maintain a good audit trail for inactive checkbooks.
5) Vendor combiner & modifier – If for some reason you find that you need to modify a vendor ID you no longer need Professional Services Tools Library (PSTL) to do it. Combine existing vendor IDs with another existing ID or combine existing vendor IDs with new vendor IDs. Vendor IDs will update for all existing records. You can do this as a manual process one at a time or by importing a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet method requires a few more steps but it’s the way to go if you have a lot of vendors that need updating.
Those are five features of GP 2013 R2 that I think you could definitely get value from. If you are ready to upgrade to GP 2015, though, I think you’ll see value in these two features:
1) Expanded workflows – Build workflows for financial, purchasing, sales, payroll, and project expense related approvals. These new native workflows allow you to quickly customize your GP to your business processes. There are nine new workflows in GP 2015:
- General Ledger Batch Approval
- Payables Batch Approval
- Receivables Batch Approval
- Vendor Approval
- Project Expense Approval
- Direct Deposit Approval
- Employee Skills and Training Approval
- Employee Profile Approval
- W4 Approval
2) Service based architecture – this is a radical and welcomed change for GP but what is it? Service based architecture is the name given to the way in which GP will now allow developers to access the application. GP has now been built such that developers can have direct access to functions deep within GP. You won’t have anything to look at on the surface but what you will notice is that your partner (or internal resources) will be able to build more complex customizations with much faster development and implementation times. Another key benefit of this change is that GP will now be more Cloud friendly. Over time apps and addons will be built to take advantage of this new architecture.
You don’t need to wait for GP 2015, add more value today by using the GP 2013 features mentioned here.
Watch for future blog posts on GP 2015 in the new year.