A new book about Dynamics NAV 2013 development

First, I’d like to apologize to the readers of this blog for not updating with new and useful content about Dynamics NAV. I know the last update on this blog was back in January and it just seemed like I’ve disappeared.

The time away from this blog was not without reasons. I’ve actually been working on a book about Dynamics NAV 2013. The title of the book is called:
Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development

It’s a book that teaches new users, whether end user or beginner, on how to create an application in Dynamics NAV 2013 based off of a real project that I’ve done in the past.

I hope you will enjoy the book as much as I did writing it. If you enjoyed my style of writing, which is probably one or two of you, now you can extend the joy in a full book version. I tried to bring my unique sense of dry humor so you won’t get too tired going through the whole book.

A big special thanks to Daniel Rimmelzwaan for his extra efforts on being the content editor of this book.

Here’s the link to the book with the full information:
http://www.packtpub.com/getting-started-with-dynamics-nav-2013-application-development/book

Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development
Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development

Processing and Fixing Vendor 1099 Codes in Dynamics NAV

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

 

Survive and Thrive using Dynamics NAV in Any Economy

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

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”

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

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

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!

Cost Effective Microsoft Resources That You Did Not Know

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.

The Best Business Practice

The Hype
Often times when I go into an implementation, some clients will want to implement it based on the “best business practice”. The idea is that somehow using the “best business practice” will reduce their implementation cost. In reality, more often than not, enforcing “best business practice”, without proper analysis, ususally leads to go live problems that will plague your business for years and years.

Unforuatenly, there’s no such thing as best business practice. If it really exist, then all business would be ran the same way and software developers like me would not exist.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the chart of account or the financial statement of the companies in your industry. If “best business practice” really exist, they would look identical. All of the sales and analysis reports would look all the same. They would look for the same key indicators to run their business. With “best business practice” there will be absolutely no room to think outside of the box.

The Truth
The dirty secret is that software consultants will sell you the “best business practice” to cover up limitations in their software. The key is if you asked for a specific feature or functionality that the software is weak at or doesn’t cover, they will keep questioning you and make your request seem stupid or irrevelent.

A typical response if you request something they can’t do is:

  • “There are thousands of companies using our software that does it this way, why are you trying to do something different?”
  • “We developed the software this way because these are the requirement from [some successful] company. Why are you different?”
  • “All the other company does it this way, why are you doing it differently?”
  • “Of all the thousands of companies that I’ve implemented, nobody does it this way. Why are you different?”
  • “Based on our experience, this is how it’s done”

An easy response to these? Because you ARE different. As I’ve mentioned before, businesses are as unique as the people that are running them. The chances of another person who thinks like you, talks like you, has the same taste as you is slim to nil.

What About the Cloud?
Ah yes… The Cloud. We software developers created this to streamline OUR process. The key word here is repeatability. If I can package this industry specific solution into the cloud and sell it like I sell T-Shirts. I win. It’s the “best business practice” for me, not necessarily for my clients.

You want software as easily purchased as buying Angry Birds on the iPhone? We have it! BUT, you have to conform to what the software does. When’s the last time you “customized” Angry Birds?

Believe me, I really do wish this “best business practice” would exist. It would make my job so much easier. I would not have to train developers or implementators. I can just pre-record some training and package it up. Actually, come to think of it, there are partners out there that have this available already for their industry specific solutions.

To be honest, we’re moving towards that direction as well, for us it makes sense. We want to package our expertise and sell it like a t-shirt. We want to use the minimum amount of effort to obtain the maximum results and we’ll sell that to anyone that wants to buy it. That’s not to say that the consulting industry will disappear eventually.

The cloud in its current state is like the ERP software industry 20 years ago. Basically, when you’re buying ERP software 20 years ago, you take whatever you’re given. Customization is a no-no and/or very expensive. When there’s an update, everybody gets it whether you like it or not. Eventually, software came out, such as Navision (Dynamics NAV), with the ability to make it the way you run your business that appealed to a lot of people. I suspect the cloud, given another 5-10 years, will be as such.

However, at this point, I’m not sure pretty sure a company of significant size will want to  “Keep track of data if it can be enter, the rest we’ll keep track in Excel” mode. Again, based on my previous post, this concept makes perfect sense for startups and small companies.

Conclusion
This is not to say that the worlds coming out of our mouth is all BS. This is where your judgement and the understanding of your business and what your needs are comes into play.

Some processes in your operation are derived not by choice, but by circumstance. The worst mistake you can ever do for your company is to be sold on what your needs are without having a good understanding of what your actualy needs are FIRST.

Again, there are a bunch of people out there that will use big words to make themselves really smart. If consultants comes in and only tries to sell you the best business practice. Pack up your stuff and RUN!

The best business practice is the practice that works for YOUR business.