Evaluating some additional modules

[barbola]

I've been asked to evalueat the following:

Integration Manager
Fixed Assets
Business Portal
Consolidations? (ie between company databases)
Excel Reports (something new I think)
VBA Modifier

I'll do some searching on here, I know I looked at Fixed Assets and there wasn't much to go on, but any info would be appreciated. Such as what do you use it for? Are you happy with the product? Is it worth the $$$$ paid?

Thanks!
Barb E.

 

[jymm]

Integration Manager is great to get data into the GP database structure from an external source. Example - we have some rebates to customers based on their sales of selected products - I have some SQL that makes the transactions - then we use IM to push the General Leger entries into the right accounts. Also use it to push info from out time clock system into Payroll - automate them and it is slick.

Business Portal - again, pretty slick if you set it up right. It saved me a fair amount of work reporting to some internal and external users after we figured out the security piece.

VBA Modifier - if you are a VB programmer, this is a synch to use. Since GP does not fit everyone, this is a good way to customize it to your biz.

Excel - I have always just used smart lists or Excel based budgeting - so I am not much help here.

We wrote our own consolodated report in FRx since we were not fond of how the consoldations were looking in GP.

Fixed Assets - We were never able to make it work the way we wanted, so we use BNA - which is pretty inexpensive alternative considering you have to license the GP module for ALL of your users and we only had two that were doing anything with the depreciation side... and not much with it.

Hope others chime in with their 2 cents for u - j

 

[barbola]

Thanks for your input. I also use FRx for consolidated financials, but I think my boss had something else in mind such as automatic elimination transactions and other features that can't be done in FRx. I am not sure.

Business Portal I hear uses up alot of server space, so I doubt it would be in the budget here, but I love the idea.

I'm learning VB and know some VBA so I could get by with this module, but afraid of messing something up!

Out of all of them I think Integration Manager would work for us because we have alot of external spreadsheets and systems that are used to summarize various data and then we enter invoices and journal entries from those summaries between our several related companies that are on separate databases.

Fixed Assets - I will look into that BNA. I'm not the accountant, but will make sure we get our money's worth for this.



Thanks!
Barb E.

 

[stef315]

Fixed Assets doesn't produce the tax forms needed. It's a lot of work to setup but easy to use. If you don't have a lot of assets and mostly do straight line, even excel spreadsheet is a better option.

For consolidations, are you talking about Intercompany? That module creates general ledger transactions in the other company(ies) for transactions that involved multiple companies.

VBA isn't that tough. I am able to do some stuff and I'm mostly an accountant. It's helpful if you do a training of some sort though.

I agree with jymm, Integration Manager is pretty good and useful.

Excel reporting--I think this means the new Analytical Reporting. It's a component of Professional Advantage's Webhouse product I think. I could be wrong on the names, but I believe it's the OLAP cubes product. It looks pretty slick--instant reports, graphs, etc. Very good for heavy financial type companies. It's great when you have to give reports to non-financial users because you can easily produce pretty graphs and such.

Business Potal I haven't used much but I hear good things about it. Aleviates accounting from constantly pulling reports for managers. Also, the HRM (HR and Payroll) module is good for companies with lots of employees. It lets me pull previous pay stubs, make benefit/address/etc changes, and enter time for themselves. You don't have to use or allow all that.

Good luck with whatever you choose.

 

[barbola]

You mentioned the fixed assets does not produce tax forms. Is this for Canada or US? We are a Canadian company.

For consolidations, we are looking for something that will do eliminations for sales between companies. Eg. A sale from Company A to Company B would be a Cost in Company B. Since there is more than 50% ownership of these companies by the same group, we need to consolidate the financials and eliminate these crossover transactions.

Does consolidations have a setup feature for these eliminations?



Thanks!
Barb E.

 

[stef315]

Okay, then Fixed Assets doesn't produce tax forms for either country. I do have a US company that is a sub of a Canadian company that fully utilizes the Fixed Assets module. They've been using it for about 7 years or more I believe. Since before it was a Great Plains module (used to be a 3rd party product).

I think I don't know the consolidations module afterall. The Intercompany module I was referring to is basically a due to and due from module. So, if one company pays a bill on behalf of the other company a journal entry is created that debits the Due From Company 2 in Company 1 and credits the Due to Company 1 in Company 2. That sort of thing.

 

[barbola]

I think you are right that the interco module is just the due to/due from. Although it might work if we use one crossover account that gets omitted in an FRx report. IE. If Co A invoices Co B, Co B owes Co A, the JE's are created and posted to the crossover accounts to be eliminated.

I'll look into it.



Thanks!
Barb E.