Introducing Microsoft Great Plains Small Business Information Systems Professor Barry Floyd

Agenda  Installing Great Plains as a standalone systems  Backing up and restoring data  Overview of Great Plains  Payables Management –Setup issues –Processing transactions –Reporting

Objectives  See a more powerful ERP system  Contrast similarities and differences with a system such as QuickBooks  Be able to effect transactions in Great Plains  Associate roles/personas with activities and tasks in Great Plains

Great Plains Positioning in Marketplace  Microsoft Great Plains 8.0, a cross-industry solution for the midmarket business segment, has been enhanced to deliver richer distribution, manufacturing and project accounting; a Microsoft Office look and feel; seamless integration with Microsoft Office; a deeper focus on Microsoft Business Solutions Business Portal functionality; and improved usability. Microsoft Great Plains offers rich out-of-the-box functionality and a broad set of independent software vendor (ISV) solutions

References  ult.mspx

Great Plains Overview  Key Series –Financial –Sales –Purchasing –Inventory –HR and Payroll –Manufacturing –Projects –Field Service  Can use some or all of these series, data is posted to each ‘series’ and then is integrated with other Series as desired.  Go to Help and enter “Series” and click on “Described”

File

View

Tools

Transactions

Inquiry

Reports

Cards  Cards in Great Plains are the “master records” of information, such as your chart of accounts and your customer, vendor, and employee records. To access a card in Great Plains, choose the Cards menu from the menu bar and select a series. A menu will appear, from which you can choose a window to enter information in.

Help  Very important for understanding Microsoft Great Plains.  Provides detailed (but complicated) descriptions of setting up and using Great Plains

Payables Management Using Great Plains

What is Payables Management?  The paying of goods, supplies, or services  Approving vendor invoices for payment  Monitoring and evaluating efficiency and effectiveness through access to detailed information in inquires and reports

The Big Picture!

What Payables Management Covers  Setup and Cards for Vendors  Transactions  Inquiries and Reports  Utilities and Routines

Using the Setup Routine  Begin by setting up defaults for Payables Management. (Tools>Routines>Purchasing>Checklist)

Purchasing Checklists

Payables Management Setup Screen

Vendor Classes Setting up Vendor Classes is a way to group vendors according to common entries.

Why use a Vendor Class?  Creating a class will make it easier to setup individual vendors by designating defaults for that specified class.  You can also make changes to groups of vendors quickly by changing the class record and rolling down the change to all vendors in that class.

Vendor Class Setup Screen

Setting up Default Account for Vendor Classes  After entering in the options it is time to determine how you will be recording different transaction with these vendors.  On the bottom right of the setup screen click on the Accounts button.

Setting up vendor class default posting accounts

Vendor Cards  Now that we have setup our Vendor Class we can begin entering in individual vendors to that class.

Entering Vendor Information

In class exercise  Add a new vendor ….  Choose the class USA-US-C  Create one PRIMARY Address  Check to see the accounts associated with this class.

Transactions  Invoices  Manual Payments

Entering An Invoice Transactions>> Purchasing>> Transaction Entry

Entering an Invoice

Inquiry – Payables Summary

Paying An Invoice

Inquiries

Purchasing Lists

Reports  Reports > Purchasing > Check Information –Click New –Choose Demo –Click Destination … choose screen

Summary  Great Plains supports Payables  We have only scratched the surface  We’ll review other apps in the next couple of days  Add your own vendors to Great Plains  Add other vendors from Companies in the class.  Review Great Plains on Purchase Orders