Great Plains Suggestions

Great Plains' project module does not interact with MS Project. I have heard that they were going to link the two, but I've heard that's rumoured to just be available with Soloman and not Great Plains. The Project Accounting module is pretty complex, but is not meant to "manage" projects ie you can simply setup projects and post costs (timesheets, employee expenses, purchases) and then bill the customers for these costs. It doesn't have any timetables etc.

MS Project integration for Great Plains Project Accounting was planned but it was canned a couple of years ago.

David Musgrave
Senior Development Consultant
Asia Pacific Professional Services

Microsoft Business Solutions

mailto:dmusgrav@nospam-microsoft.com

Any views contained within are my personal views and
not necessarily Microsoft Business Solutions policy.

A much better solution than the Great Plains Project Accounting module is Project Tracking from Encore Business Solutions which fully integrates with Great Plains. We have just moved our property management & real estate investments from Quickbooks to Great Plains with the Encore Project Tracking. The module also includes budgeting and import tools. They will give you a free demo if you request one. You can also download a free demo copy from their website. Contact info: 1-888-898-4330

This has been delayed every year even when the Project Series was still owned by Match Data Systems(bought by Great Plains which developed the Project Series and PDK). They keep telling partners and customers that it would come the next version but never really delivered the goods. I know a group in Microsoft Philippines which still enhanced the Project Series until last year. David just said it..canned a couple of years ago. If you still want to go this avenue I would suggest Solomon, which is stronger in Project Accounting.

SalesLogix and MAS-90

There is the workforceROI product which some of our Great Plains clients use and seem happy with.

The company/product was called Intellisol

Details at workforceROI.com



I am not associated with the company other than as third party support of pre-existing installations

Yikes. Be very wary of buying any Intellisol products. I just did the Customer Enhancement Survey for version 9.0 and the link to MS Project is one of the enhancements you can vote on, so the more people that vote for it, may increase the probability of getting that functionality. However, it still is not until version 9, which will be another 6 quarter or so away.

I did the survey as well and I just attended a User group meeting where we decided to put priorities to the functions the group wanted most. There wasn't much on it that you can choose from, that's what I can say.

I would also look at Business Portal 2.5 instead of waiting for ver9.0 or getting a 3rd-party. This will be the future for Great Plains Project Series.

I wasn't too impressed with Encore's Project Tracking module. I was using it for a non-profit (supposedly with the Grant Management module which was way under developed). Anyway, it was okay if you only do payables. If you add payroll to the mix, it gets more cumbersome. You can't really allocate employees to a project and you have to enter a transaction for every employee--even salary. I guess it's worth seeing a demo though. No integration to MS Project.

Also, I think some people may use Wennsoft Job Cost for project tracking.

I've seen the demos on the Solomon integration and it seems pretty good. Full integration to MS Project Professional. Solomon financials are a little lacking but not unbearable.