Processing and Fixing Vendor 1099 Codes in Dynamics NAV

Posted by on January 29, 2013 No comments

It’s that time of the year again. Time to send out those 1099 to your vendors in Dynamics NAV.

Here’s a quick video of how to process 1099s in Dynamcis NAV and how to process vendor 1099 invoices and and print out 1099 forms in Dynamics NAV (In 2 minutes or less no doubt).

If you forgot to put in the 1099 at the time of setup (which you should’ve done when you made your vendor sign that W-9 form), it will not be defaulted when you enter the purchase invoice. But don’t worry, here’s an object that will fix all of the historical transactions for the vendors with a valid 1099 code specified on the Vendor Card.

Note that this function will not address the situation where some invoices for the vendor are 1099 liable and some invoices that are not 1099 liable. This program will go through and modify all of the historical transactions assuming the 1099 code for all historical invoices are what’s setup on the Vendor Payment tab.

I would highly suggest that you get with your Dynamics NAV partner to do this with you.

Here’s the object. The object is Report 50095 – Fill in 1099. I’ve included the .fob and the .txt file:
FillIn1099

 

Quick Video on Closing the Year in Dynamics NAV

Posted by on December 4, 2012 No comments

It’s that time of the year again. Close out the year! Most companies align their fiscal year to the calendar year so right around this time, we usually get a ton of support calls from people that forgot how to close the year end and need a quick refresher.

So I made a quick 2 minute video on how to do year end processing. Why? Because you can’t go through a 10 minute video in 2 minutes and I know you have a ton of other things to do.

I’m using NAV 2013, but the menu tree is the same as in prior versions. So to access the accounting period, in the video, the NAV 2013 has the icon pointing to Department – Financial Management – Accounting Period. If you go to Financial Management -> Setup in version 4.0 and 5.0, you’ll see the accounting period.

The processes are exactly the same from version Navision version 1.2 to Dynamics NAV 2013.

Survive and Thrive using Dynamics NAV in Any Economy

Posted by on November 8, 2012 No comments

Hypothesis
Companies that bought Dynamics NAV and make continuous improvements in the system are less likely to go out of business or sold off.

Informal Research
This was the conclusion I had while I was speaking with my fellow Dynamics NAV (Navision) partners. The question I asked was this:

Have any of your customers, who is active before the recession, during the recession, and now, gone out of business or have been sold?

When we partners say customers are “active”, we mean customers that frequently calls us to request new functions, ask our opinion when there is a new business problem, automating and sometimes obliterating their process to become more efficient. Not active meaning they only call you for bugs and error messages they can’t resolve on their own.

“Active” customers also means that they’re using Dynamics NAV as their primary ERP system. This means they’re not running parallel with some other accounting or ERP software.

The answer I got back from the partners was a resounding no. Meaning that companies that make continuous improvements to their Dynamics NAV system before and during the recession until now have survive and thrived.

My Question for You
Of course, this is only based on the partners I speak with at Directions and does not qualify for actual formal research.

I’d like to hear from you from your experiences. Has any of your Dynamics NAV customers that were “active” before the recession, during the recession, and now ever gone out of business or being sold?

Dynamics NAV 2013 is Here – Recap of Microsoft Directions 2012

Posted by on October 31, 2012 5 comments

It’s Microsoft Directions 2012
Yes. Microsoft Directions.

The theme for this year’s Directions is Dynamics NAV 2013 is here! This is release is what 2009 should’ve been. Microsoft reiterated that with Dynamics NAV 2013, it’s ready and you will not need to wait for a service pack. From what I’ve seen on the early release of Dynamics NAV 2013, I have to agree with them. It’s runs a lot faster with a lot of usability features.

Microsoft has done an INCREDIBLE job of documenting the features and creating step by step instructions on how to do this on our own. Well done Microsoft, well done!

The Paul White from Microsoft, has reiterarted the focused target market Dynamics NAV is between 5 to 250 concurrent users. That’s not to say NAV cannot support 1000+ user implementations, but Microsoft marketing is geared towards the small and the mid-market.

The continual message from Microsoft this year is, of course, go vertical and go cloud. Both of these 2 strategies benefits Microsoft, but I’m not sure it benefits the partners. Why? Because some of the largest solution center in the US are not vertical and are not a lot of cloud. Anyway, same message, go vertical go cloud or die!!!

One important detail which I notice was missing from this year and the prior year was microphones for the audience to challenge what the keynote speaker was presenting. This was my favorite part of the “old” Directions because it allowed the partners to express publically their concerns and we can hold the Microsoft executives and managers accountable based on their responses.  Now, I learned that in order to talk to these Microsoft executives, you had to schedule a private meeting with them, which is a real shame and I think it does take away from the feedback process.

Sessions
There were a ton of technical sessions on Dynamics NAV 2013. The folks at Microsoft Directions were gracious enough to share their information on here. No, I didn’t make a mistake on the link.

Most of the sessions I attended were the executive and sales sessions because I think the information given on these sessions cannot be transferred properly from the internet.

Observations About the Event
It looks like business has also picked up in our industry. A lot of the attentees that were missing last year have returned. I’ve also noticed a few more new ones that showed up to these events. This tells me that the Dynamcis NAV business is doing good. Very good.

One other thing I noticed is that there were a lot of woman in this Directions than the previous ones. Not those eye candy ones, but the ones that are project managers, developers, implementors, support, etc. These woman are truly passionate, incredibly smart, and driven working with Dynamics NAV. That blew my mind a little. By the way, the first boss I had was a female whom I have tremendous respect for, so this comment is not meant to be sexist at all.

Highlight of the Event
It wasn’t from any of the sessions. A couple of us solution centers got together on a small table and had an open talk about our business. About employees, what our revenues were, and what we took home as owners. We dived in detail about our fears and problems that comes with being a leader of an organization. It’s truly refreshing to speak with people that are in the same boat as you are, sharing your concerns and worries. I hope our little group can get together again next year and talk again next year.

Add-on that Caught My Eye
Mobile NAV. Yes there are a ton of mobile NAV add-ons out there. This one caught my eye because their mobile app is actually pleasing to use. When you’re mobile, usability has to be king. I think these guys comes pretty close. Of course, ease of use is in the eye of the beholder, so you would probably need to try it out on your own.

Easy Security from Merge Tool from Per Mogensen. No more adding 50 tables to control security! Yeh!! This product is fully CfmD Certified and works with pages and forms. A very well done add-on to any client site that needs a better way to control who can edit and see what on which field.
Fun Fact about Per: He is the only guy that has an authentic smile on his face when he talks about coding architure and coding itself. He really takes pleasure in this stuff. Don’t believe me? Next time when you’re at a conference with him and he gets into coding questions, just observe him.

Food
Terrible. No variety, even the food for the Partner Celebration day was bland. I was full, but I was not satisfied.

Conclusion
It was a good event, but this one is a Microsoft event, not a partner event. The only true partner to partner connection I had was in our private session that I described earlier. Personally, I wouldn’t mind having it at a crappy hotel instead of a vacation resort. And I wouldn’t mind paying more for registration for it to be a true partner event instead of a Microsoft event.

The food defintely needs to get better because I’m one of those people that like to get 2nds.

Hardware Requirements for Dynamics NAV 2013 “NAV 7″

Posted by on September 21, 2012 3 comments

Overview
Looking through the hardware requirements for Dynamics NAV 2013, it looks like there are a couple of things the end user will need. More noteable, it looks like now the computer has to be running at least Windows 7 in order to use the NAV 2013 Windows client.

There are mixed feelings about this, while I do understand that Windows XP is no longer supported at Microsoft, I’d safe at least half of our customers that are using NAV are still using Windows XP. So if an upgrade is considered by the end user, they will have to budget for the OS as well.

Not to mention the new customers that are considering Dynamics NAV as their ERP of choice over the competitors. If XP is running okay, why am I going to spend another chunk of money on each computer?

Options Available
Fortunately, the era of desktop computing is dying. We actually have quite a few customers replacing the desktop computers with Thin Client boxes for each non-executive people in the office. What people basically do is RDP into a powerful server to do all of their data entry, report processing, e-mails, etc.

Let me say that these thin clients has dramatically lowered the IT cost of maintenance for each user in the company, not to mention virus infections, going to sites they’re not suppose to, etc. So the next time you’re planning to do a mass upgrade for all of the computers in your office, thin clients may be the better option. This is especially true in this case where the new ERP requires new technology.

Conclusion
Depending on how hard the community pushes back, maybe they’ll add XP compatibility probably as a service pack or something. I personally do not believe this is necessary, but I’m just one man.

Here’s a complete list of the requirements if you’re upgrading to Dynamics NAV 2013 or Navision 7.0.

Thought Process on Receiving Defective Inventory in Dynamics NAV

Posted by on September 6, 2012 4 comments

Overview
Receiving items from vendor can be a tricky thing. This question has come up quite a bit during implementation regarding defective inventory. I know a lot of companies has put a lot of modifications into receiving defective inventory, I’d like to propose an out of the box solution to receiving goods that have some defective quantities.

Here is the scenerio:
1. A purchase order came in on a container for ItemA with 100 pieces
2. Of the 100 pieces, 30 are damaged and they want to reject these pieces and send them back to the supplier
3. The user wants to be able to return the 30 pieces to the supplier and revert the Qty. to Receive to 30 to indicate there is still 30 to be received

Before we get into processing this, I want to bring up an important concept a person taught me when I was starting out doing Dynamics NAV:

Processing any task on a computer is no different than if you were to process processing a task manually.

This is a very important concept that changed the way I thought about automation, implementation, and how we can use Dynamics NAV (or any other computer software) to help us. This is especially true in the world of accounting where paper trail is everything. This concept is literally the difference between 100 hour modifications or 2 hour training session.

The Quick and Dirty Way
Looking at this problem, the natural instinct would be to do this:
1. Use the undo receipt function to undo what I’ve received
2. Post the receipt of the correct 70 quantities so the PO would look like it has 30 remaining on the original line

Here are the problems with the above approach:
1. Undo Receipt will not work if the received quantity has been sold
2. You have no record to match up with the vendor bill of lading
3. There is no record of the return to the vendor

Realistically speaking, is the truck unloading the shipment going to wait for you to do QC on the pieces received? The trucker has people to see, places to go, the trucker is a driver and probably does not even work for the vendor you bought the stuff from.

Being a developer with limited knowledge of operations, this would be the process that’s the easiest. For accounting, they want it easy and just want everything back to how it should be. For warehouse and operations, just do it and avoid the system at all cost.

This process would work in the perfect world. The problem arises if there are disputes, lost items, vendor reconciliations where they said you received some stuff but your records says you didn’t.

As I’ve said it time and time before, skip any data entered into the system you want as long as the financials balances out. The problem only arises when it’s time to reconcile.

The Manual Way
Going back to the original concept that’s laid out before, let’s solve the problem on the same issue if we had no computer in front of us. Here’s what I would do.

1. Unload the goods from the truck and sign the BOL because the trucker need to leave
2. Place the goods in a holding area in the warehouse to be checked/put-away
3. As the goods are checked, move the defective items into a separate area in the warehouse and put the good pieces in the warehouse bins
4. Call the vendor and say “Dude, your product is broken, I’m gonna return it. I also need you to replace the 30 that’s defective.”
5. Arrange transportation, prepare packing list, bill of lading, (if international, prepare commercial invoice, etc).

Bring in the System
Knowing how we process this manually, we can then replicate this into the system, in our case, Dynamics NAV:
1. Receive the items in full into the QC location (or into your main warehouse and into the QC bin if you’re using WHM)
2. As the items are checked, the good items should be moved to your main warehouse or bins using the item reclass journal or movement worksheet
3. Create Purchase Return Order for the defective goods. Use the document to generate the packing list, commercial invoice, etc.
4. Add a line to the purchase order to indicate replacement of the additional goods

Doing the above will create some additional steps and data entry, but it also has the benefit of having a paper trail. You need the full story on what happened to the PO. You need to show that you received 100 pieces originally, returned 30, then received the additional 30.

Each of the steps above can be handled by one person, but it should split out to ensure checks and balances. For example, it’s not realistic for the warehouse guys to call your vendor asking for a return.

In addition, it’s not realistic to generate a return every time there’s a defective part especially if the vendor is in another country. For returns dealing with international vendors, the company will ususally accumulate all fo the defective parts until they can fill a container, then process the return in one shot.

Conclusion
Again, doing things the proper way will create some additional steps, but I’m assuming you bought Dynamics NAV to help you organize your business, not creating more mess. Not every tasks requested by the end users will make sense in the long term.

It’s really up to the consultants to challenge the end user’s way of thinking and what’s the proper way to process certain business tasks. If you find that every request you made to the consultant always results in additional modification instead of training, you probably need to challenge your own request to see if your request makes sense if you were to do it manually.

Entering A/P Credit Card Transactions in Dynamics NAV

Posted by on July 13, 2012 No comments

Overview
Here’s quick tip on entering transactions for the credit card. Sometimes, when you make a purchase using your credit card, but you want to keep track of the purchase against the vendor, you don’t want the credit card statement to come in at the end of the billing period to enter that information.

The Easy Way to Do It
Here’s a way to enter that information against a specific vendor instead of towards your credit card vendor account (i.e. American Express).

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. Setup a Credit Card Clearing account in your G/L account (should be in the short term Liabilities section of your COA)
2. Setup the vendor that you’re buying from
3. Setup the Payment Method Code and have the Balancing Account set to the Credit Card clearing account on step #1

If purchase does not need to go to a vendor and you just want to treat it as an expense:
1. When regular bills come in through the statement
2. Enter the purchase invoice with your credit card vendor
3. Enter the expenses directly to expense G/L accounts

If the purchase needs to go to a specific vendor that you pay the purchase using your credit card:
1. Enter the vendor
2. Setup payment method code for the AP vendor described in step #3 above
3. Enter the purchase invoice
4. Allocate it to the proper department/salesperson/project/etc using Dimensions
5. Make sure the Payment Method Code is set properly
6. Post the purchase invoice

When you drill down on the vendor ledger, you’ll noticed that the Invoice will have been paid by a coorsponding entry. The reason is because you did infact paid for this purchase with your credit card. The amount that you owe for the credit card will be recorded in the Credit Card Clearing Account on the G/L.

When the statement comes in, instead of having the transaction go into the regular expense account, you will use the Credit Card Clearing Account. So at the end of the billing period the Credit Card Clearing Account will always be 0.

Conclusion
The same concept can be used to handle credit card charges for salespeople on the field. Some companies uses separate G/L accounts for each sales people, some people use dimensions. It’s really up to you.

Hope this tip helps!

Different Flavors of Warehouse Management in Dynamics NAV

Posted by on May 29, 2012 2 comments

Overview
Dynamics NAV (Navision) is a comprehensive ERP system. As such, it has many features that caters the different needs of businesses, for example, manufacturing, service managment, CRM, distribution, etc. Each one of these functional areas can be configured a number of ways depending on the needs of the business. During my time working at AP Commerce, there are never any shortages of investigating different setups based on on the needs of a business.

What you think you need may not be what you need. Yes, I did write that in one stroke without flinching. One of the most common requests from potential and current users of Dynamics NAV (Navision) is they want to effectively manage their warehouse using warehouse management system.

The question I’m always tempted to ask is: “What type of Warehouse Management are you looking for?” Of course I never ask that question because this will cause more confusion than I can handle.

So why am I tempted to ask that question? Again, in each functional area in Dynamics NAV (Navision), there are a number of ways to set it up. Having said that, here are different ways to setup WHM for your business. Note that Warehouse Management can be defined per warehouse, so every warehouse that you have can be setup differently.

NOTICE! The purpose of this article is not to give you a complete step by step instruction on NAV warehouse management, the purpose is to give you some knowledge on different ways to go about implementing WHM so you can have some knowledge and input when you speak with your Dynamics NAV partner on it.

Considerations
One word of caution is when implement ANY warehouse management system, you have to make sure your warehouse is organized, efficient, and accurate. A lot of companies make the mistake of buying a warehouse management software because the warehouse is too messy.

DON’T DO IT!

Software, in general, is designed to streamline your operation and speeed up the processing. If your warehouse is disorganized, inefficient, and not accurate, any warehouse management software will make it worst. You will be disorganized, inefficient, and inaccurate at a faster rate. Garbage in, garbage out.

The Flavors
Here’s a picture of the Warehouse Mangement setup in Dynamics NAV:

Bin Mandatory
From initial look, if you just want to keep track of the items on the bins, this is the option for you, right? Unfortunately, no… I’ve never been in an implementation where we just place a checkbox on this field without at least enabling Ship/Pick or Receive/Put-away.

Just checking this on enables you to keep track of items by bin, however, one of the main problem with just checking this on is that you specify bin on the purchase and sales order. So if you have an item that’s on 2 different bins, you have to split the sales/purchase lines. Not only that, if you want to move an item from one bin to another, you have to use the item reclass journal, which effectively creates Item Ledger, value entry, and the general ledger. Doing physical inventory may also create a lot of excessive entries that will bog you down when you use the Item Ledger to do any sales and purchase analysis.

Pros: Allows you to tag bin code to an inventory transaction

Cons: Have to split sales and purchase line so the quantity matches the bins on the item ledger Creates a lot of excessive entries to key ledger tables Makes life harder than it has to

You Typically See This Setup for: No one. You’re better off using the Shelf/Bin No. field on the item card. This is how NAV 2.0 handles bins. We’re in Navision version 7 (Dynamics NAV 2013) now, no sense in going backwards when there are better options.

Require Shipment/Receive
Just enabling these option allows you to use the Warehouse Ship/Receive function. The main purpose of the Warehouse Ship/Receive is to allow the user to batch the sales orders by a container or a trailer going out per carrier. This option is typically enabled for companies that ships and receives by containers. The warehouse shipment is typically used to generate your bill of lading for the trucker.

Without turning on Pick and Put-away, I would NOT recommend turning on Bin Mandatory. You would encounter the same problem that I’ve stated above. For smaller companies, spliting up the warehouse process may not be necessary.

Pros: Allows you to Ship and Receive by container or bill of lading Warehouse Manager can control what he/she wants to ship based on released orders instead of the order processor printing out a pick ticket The warehouse process is separated out from the order fulfillment process (so warehouse can do their own posting) More accurate inventory can be achieved since inventory can be relieved when it’s shipped

Cons: Not recommend to enable Bin Mandatory (same cons as above) Not necessary if you do not wish the warehouse people to be posting stuff

You Typically See This Setup For: Large item distributors or manufacturers that want split out their warehouse processing, but does not care of bin contents Companies that ship and receive by containers but do not want to split their items into bins in the warehouse

Require Pick/Put-away (No Require Shipment/Receive)
This is an option is what I would like to call the mini-fullblown warehouse management. This options provides the flexibility for the warehouse staff to create warehouse put-away and warehouse picks as they see fit, they can also assign these warehouse documents to the appropriate people to do the processing. Another way to use this feature is to allow the order fulfillment people to create the pick request to the warehouse without actually printing a pick ticket.

The draw back of using this option is that you’re only allowed to have one sales/purchase order per put-away/pick. This means that you won’t be able to group the orders together in one warehouse shipment (as stated above) to generate a consolidated bill of lading. Same goes for the receiving side, you won’t be able to receive by container or by bill of lading.

This option works perfectly if you want to enable Bin Mandatory. The Inventory Pick/Put-away document generated will allow you to split lines at the warehouse document level so you can put the items away in their proper bin without having to modify the original purchase or sales order.

Pros: Allows you to easily process inventory transactions by Bin Warehouse Manager can control what he/she wants to ship based on released orders instead of the order processor printing out a pick ticket The warehouse process is separated out from the order fulfillment process (so warehouse can do their own posting) More accurate inventory can be achieved since inventory can be relieved when it’s shipped

Cons: Not able to group orders together into one shipment or receipt Not be able to use ADCS (wireless handheld)

You Typically See This Setup For: Companies that would like to organize their warehouse by bin, but does not have the manpower to go Directed Pick/Put-away.

Directed Pick and Put-away
This is the full deal. It has all of the benefits that I’ve listed above. Group order together by warehouse shipment and be able to pick and put away by bins. Not only that, this allows you to use ADCS (wireless handheld device) so your warehouse staff and record warheouse transactions using the handheld.

All good right?
Not exactly. It really depends on what your company needs. All these features sounds cool, but if your business does not need it, trying to shove it in may create more work and processes than necessary. There are a couple of steps where the user need to interface with a computer when you enable Directed Pick and Put-away:
1. Create the sales order
2. Create warehouse shipment
3. Create pick
4. Register pick
5. Post warheouse shipment
6. Post sales order

Whereas if you do not enable any of these, the steps would be:
1. Create the sales order
2. Post the sales order

Conclusion
It’s highly recommended that you get with your Dynamics NAV partner and discuss which setup is right for your business RIGHT NOW with consideration for future growth. If you try to implement everything without any consideration for your current operation, the opertional efficiency will decrease. This is because of the increased overhead and maintenance that are required.

Make sure your company have the manpower and the infrastructure to absorb the overhead and maintenance required so the increase in efficiency and accuracy can be realized.

Do not implement some feature just because you like the feature. In most cases, it will be overkill. It’s like buying a size 10 top-of-the line Nike tennis shoes for your 3 year old son and forcing him to walk in it every day. Eventually, he will grow into it. But by the time he grows into it, he’ll develop some other major problems that will cost more money to fix.

NAV 2013 Technical Documentation on What is New

Posted by on May 16, 2012 No comments

Just a quick note. If you don’t have this link already, here’s the MSDN article on what’s new in version 2013:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh174007(v=nav.70)?lc=1033

Cost Effective Microsoft Resources That You Did Not Know

Posted by on May 11, 2012 No comments

Overview
Microsoft is a technology organization. It’s their job to develope new technologies that business and individuals can use to improve upon their lives.

Having said that, there are A LOT of products that Microsoft releases and as an end user, it’s really hard to keep up with everything going on. Being in an IT professional, it’s even hard for me to keep up.

There are many times where the customers will go out and see a demo of something that can drastically improve their business. Being a Microsoft partner, they would come back and ask us to give them feedback on what our thoughts on it and how to implement it.

The Problem
The problem arises when we see the value of it for our customer as well.

Why? Being a Dynamics NAV partner, our sole focus is on NAV. The pros of doing this is that we really know what we’re doing and we’re really good at it. The bad is that we are not as diversified in the “Microsoft Stack”. Companies prefer to do business with partners they trust, since we worked hard to earn that trust, they want us to replicate that same kind of proficiency in other Microsoft products as well.

The Nightmare
As much as I want to take the money, I can’t and I won’t because I don’t have the confidence in the other Microsoft products. So the next question that the customer will ask is “who can you refer to us that does this?”

This question used to haunt me and I cringe everytime a client ask me this question. Before, I always refer them to local IT businesses that I met at trade shows. But the problem is that I do not know how they work or if they hold themselves to a high quality of standard that I owe to our customer. Referring them to a bad company is like me doing bad work for them. It damages the trust that we built with our client.

The Obvious
It occured to me that I belong to this program called the Microsoft MVP program. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a program that Microsoft awards to individuals that demonstrates their proficiency in a particular product through contributions in the community. In another words, they know their stuff. In the world of public community and forums, if you don’t know your stuff, you’re caught and hung right away.

For some reason, this program is not very well known. It’s almost as if people are trying to keep it a secret. I find this to be invaluable directory to the most qualified professional in their respective products.

After referring a couple of fellow MVPs in different product lines, I’ve gotten pretty good feedbacks from our clients. They obvious care about their product line so they know the ins and outs of the product and the pitfalls during implementation. I’m a happy camper also because the customer can continue to come to me to get reliable advice on anything.

The Cost Effectiveness?
I’m also assuming your time is valuable and you do not want to spend more time than necessary to complete certain tasks.

Most of the MVPs will command a high rate. So why is it cost effective? Consider the alternative. You can outsource to India or China where they’ll charge you $18.00 an hour (I may have gotten offers for lower), the headaches, overtime, downtime, frustration, missed deliveries, communication faiulres, plus everything else that executives won’t see in an IT quote will be a lot more expensive (both money and human resource) than if you hired a MVP to do it right the first time.

Of course, due dilligence has to be paid. Just because someone is MVP does not make them qualified nor does it make them “fit” for your company and your needs.

Anyways, here’s the link to the MVP Program.
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx