Are you looking for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency in your procure-to-pay process?
Ready to find information up to 83% faster?
Let’s discover how to achieve savings and efficiency gains by proactively managing business spend and speed up searching for key records in Dynamics GP.
Take it outside
Extending the functionality of GP by taking the purchasing solution outside which then extends that out to all the users through mobility and allowing them to be able to create those POs and move the process forward. Fraxion is a true cloud procurement software that enables complete spend management – from purchase requisitioning and approvals to expense management and spend analysis.
Why does it sit outside of GP?
The reason the Fraxion solution sits outside of GP is because that’s what makes it easily accessible to users, the interface is easy to use, and everyone can move through the system very easily.
Different Areas of Spend Management
- Procurement Side
- Expense Management
- AP Automation
- Spend Analysis
If you look at the PO module within GP, many customers describe it as bulky and hard. It takes up a user to use it and they ‘re using things like Business Portal to potentially do that.
How can you achieve savings and efficiency gains?
Most employees want to make great decisions when they’re doing their purchasing, but because of lack of information that kind of going on gut feel. What we want to do is make those more data driven decisions and be able to put the budgets in their hands.
Give them the information and tools they need at their fingertips:
- What have we spent
- What are we committed to
- Approvals into the right hands
- 2 and 3 way match
- Bring it all back into GP
Now you’ll get more control of your spending, automate your workflows, and provide visibility and analytics that allows you to become more efficient.
Do you find that it takes too long to search for things in Dynamics GP?
Think about using Google. You start typing into your Google search bar, maybe you’re looking for ‘snow pants’ as an example. As soon as you start typing the word snow, Google’s anticipating what you are looking for and starts sending you suggestions such as a snow shovel, snowblower, and snow pants. You get that list right away to select the right option a little bit faster without typing in the entire word.
That’s pretty much what SmartFill does for GP and your 3rd Party Solutions. It’s a super search tool. Anyone that touches GP could and should use SmartFill.
Intuitive Places
Have you ever noticed every GP window has lots of magnifying glasses? You may use those for your typical look-ups. Well, not anymore.
Let’s focus on purchasing and vendors. If you use the magnifying glass you have to wait for that list to load of all your vendors or all your items. That can get really time consuming. You’re waiting for the list then sorting the list looking for that Vendor and it can sometimes take a while.
Well, it can get a whole lot easier. You can just type the item description or part of the Vendor’s name into the field and SmartFill will do all the magic. You never have to click on the magnifying glass again!
Out of the box
You don’t have anything to set up. SmartFill is ready to go. There are 20 searchable objects that are searching over 4000 Windows in GP, plus you can add as many of your own as you want as well as customize the existing objects to your liking. As soon as you install this product, which takes about five minutes, you’re ready to search.
These are the tools and the ways to automate your procure-to-pay processes as well as save time and money with a fantastic productivity tool for your entire team.
Next Steps:
- View the webinar recording
- Try SmartFill for free for 30 days
- For a quick review of your procure-to-pay requirements and 10% off your order please contact sales@fraxion.biz
Rockton Software and Binary Stream tackle the challenges Dynamics GP Users face when it comes to security, user management, and multi-entity management.
The POWER of 1
Imagine if you could take many databases and bring it down to one. One database, one single login, but multiple companies and with all the security you need.
Multi-Entity Management handles intercompany transactions in a single database, whether you have 5, 10, 20, or even 600 companies.
Yes, you can:
- put them all in 1 database
- end up with a single sign-on
- have complete control of security for the access of your users
- have a single set of master records you can share between companies or not
- have different rules for different companies
All of this functionality is available even within a single SQL database your GP world sits on. Imagine accessing all the companies and never having to logout and log into different databases ever again.
Ways to set-up system security
You can restrict users from certain databases while giving them access to others. All the security is done over all of your companies but from one database.
You can:
- Identify what companies the AP Clerk can see (in one database)
- Assign any vendors to any combination of companies
- Users can see only those databases they have access to
Something for everyone
With Dynamics GP Toolbox you’re not just getting a tool, you are getting an entire tool kit. This toolkit contains 27 tools. These tool ideas came from users like you.
These tools can help anyone who uses Dynamics GP. We cover security and system administration as well as some to enhance your business processes pieces and end-user experience.
Since we are focusing on security for this blog below are 3 of the 27 tools we wanted to point out.
1. Security Manager
Security Manager allows you to look at the security across your different companies, and flip between them so that you can see exactly what your users have access to.
What can you report on?
- Your different roles
- Your tasks that are under those companies
- What users have access to
- What windows in a company, what SmartLists, reports, roles, & posting permissions
- Compare what a user has against another user
- What roles users have across companies
This information can all be printed and customized. You can also export all this information to Excel. So if you need to make changes perhaps to a different company, or maybe you just want to copy everything over to a new company, you can export a file out into a different file format, import it back in, and then those changes you’ve made in that file will then be your security.
2. Inactivity Time-out
This has been a huge lifesaver since COVID hit and everyone started working from home. When users forget to log out of the system, whether at home or in the office, this tool is for you. Especially if you’re a bit restricted on the number of user licenses.
You can set a default number of minutes that a user can be inactive in Dynamics GP, regardless of company, before being gracefully logged out of the system.
You can set that time based on user groups and you can specially set times for particular users in a group. Maybe light users get 60 minutes and those who enter just time and expense get 30 minutes.
In summary:
- Consider assigning a shorter amount of inactivity time to people who are only periodically in the system. For example, those folks logging in to enter an order here or there or their time.
- If a user is actively working in the system, say entering transactions, printing reports, posting batches, entering data, etc. they will not automatically log out of the system. Users are only logged out if they are inactive and still logged into the system.
- The Inactivity Time-out Tool is going to completely remove you from that activity table so that the license is freed up for someone else to get into the system.
3. Period Open & Close
Whether you have 1 or many companies this a great time-saving tool. This tool was specifically built for a customer that has 138 companies.
Imagine going into GP and having to open and close periods for two days, every month, because you didn’t want to double click and close the financial series.By having every company in one list you can now pick the fiscal year and multi-select those companies you want to close. So, it’s a huge time saver and it’s great for minimizing the potential for user error.
Whether you need to manage users at home or at the office or manage multi-company challenges from master record consolidation to balancing intercompany transactions we’ve got you covered.
Next steps:
- Watch this recently recorded webinar
- Contact sales for a more in-depth demo of Dynamics GP Toolbox or start your free trial today
- Contact Binary Stream’s team to learn more about Multi-Entity Management or to request a demo
Saving Time & Saving Lives
How much time do you waste in a day looking up information in Microsoft Dynamics GP or even your third-party products? You know it’s in there, but coming up with the magical combination of words, numbers, or phrases to find it is another story. What a pain!
Who is the Donor Network of Arizona?
Donor Network of Arizona (DNA) is the federally designated, not-for-profit organ procurement organization for the state of Arizona. They facilitate the transplantation of organs and tissues for transplantation in pursuit of their mission to make the most of life through the gift of organ and tissue donation.
Their organization only exists because of the generosity of organ and tissue donors and their gifts.
What Challenges Did They Have
Donor Network of Arizona realized what a headache it was trying to look-up the right G/L account. Over the years the naming conventions became less consistent and as they grew some departments were named slightly different than others. Talk about those growing pains.
Being a new employee also has its challenges. When you’re not familiar with any of the naming conventions it can be a struggle to look-up things quickly and easily especially G/L accounts.
Vendor IDs quickly became an issue as well. In the earlier days, the IDs were much shorter. If there were any changes made to the name or ID that’s when it became difficult. You could no longer quickly lookup a certain vendor using current GP functionality.
How SmartFill Makes Their Work Simpler & Easier®
New employees no longer worry about not finding the information they need quickly and easily. Searching for something in Dynamics GP is easier and less time-consuming. Gone are the days when they have to try and come up with the magical combination of words, numbers, or phrases.
What does all this mean for the Donor Network of Arizona?
They spend less time on unproductive searches and in turn, have a more productive staff. They are more efficient and ultimately able to save more lives.
Read the full Customer Success Story here!
Please visit donatelifeaz.org or donatelife.net to learn more about how you can register to be a donor.
Your print destination is anywhere, but only when you have Dynamics Report Manager.
Fly the friendly skies with us, no layover or hidden fees, just a tool to print your reports. You can print them at home, in the office, on vacation, or on some tropical island. We’re not picky!
At Rockton, we know how important it is to be able to print your reports from anywhere to anywhere. If that’s not enough, here are 4 reasons why you need a great reporting tool.
Flying First Class
Feel like you’re flying in first class when you have the flexibility to launch reports from other 3rd party products and integrating dictionaries. Dynamics Report Manager allows you to launch reports from a variety of sources and programs, including:
- Crystal Reports
- SQL Reporting Services (SSRS)
- FRx
- Management Reporter
- Report Writer
- Microsoft Word and Excel
- Any Dexterity-based third-party program
All of these, right from within Dynamics GP!
You have your pick
Do you like the aisle or window seat? Me, it’s window all the way. We don’t limit you to just the middle seat which is why you get your pick. You can print from a Floating Palette, Shortcut Bar, Home Page, or even schedule a launch to print reports when you want, even if you are away from the office.
With a scheduled launch, you determine if the report should be an hourly, daily, or monthly report. You can decide where you want the reports to print and when. This is extremely helpful for those large reports that may tie up a printer or if you’re traveling or on a much needed day off. Do you have an invoice created from a Crystal or SSRS report? You can easily replace the Report Writer report to use that report when your user clicks the Print button. No extra steps needed to print the report from somewhere else.
Print Destinations
Dynamics Report Manager gives you the flexibility to have reports sent to the screen, printer or saved to a file as a .pdf or Word document. Email reports in a snap from any window. Yes, you can email reports from Dynamics GP but we can take it one step further. Print or email your prettied up custom Sales Order Processing Invoice or Purchase Order with your company’s logo with a single click of the print button!
With Batch Reports, you can run a report multiple times based on your set of criteria. For example, you print invoices for your customers based on a Batch ID or a date. What a time saver!
Time to Explore
One more reason you need a great reporting tool is the Dynamics Report Manager Explorer window. Because when we get to our destination one of the first things we want to do is explore.
This is a centralized window that will display the existing reports you print using DRM, regardless of the report type or module. You will be able to see all reports in one window and easily print multiple reports from this same window. You can sort, configure, and group reports together for easy printing and viewing. This makes reporting more manageable. You can even save a group of reports as your favorites to make report printing even easier.
To wrap it all up, we help make viewing, printing, and emailing reports work simpler & easier® in Dynamics GP! Yes, Dynamics GP does offer a variety of reports but just remember there are limitations for where and how you can print them. Dynamics Report Manager (DRM) gives you the flexibility to print almost any report, from almost anywhere, at any time without. Turn one of your tedious tasks into a timesaver!
Next Steps:
- Join our webinar on December 3rd
- Start your free 30-day trial
Payroll compliance is vital for HR teams and business owners. Fail to stay on top of it and you could see serious fines or penalties coming your way.
Let’s dive into how to stay safe with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Employer Mandate Compliance, tracking sick time, and COVID-19 Compliance in Dynamics GP.
3 areas to play it safe within Dynamics GP Payroll
- COVID Legislation
- Sick Leave – paid and mandated
- Affordable Care Act compliance and penalties
COVID Legislation Overview
The COVID-19 legislation started back in March and April. Of course, we thought we’d be on the other side of it by now. Unfortunately, it’s still going on, so it’s important to know this information. In case you’re new to your role or haven’t seen it presented, there are two elements in place: the FFCRA and the CARES Act (Coronavirus Stimulus Bill).
Family First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA)
This Act provided COVID-19 Paid Sick leave, as well as an additional paid sick leave for up to 10 weeks – considered emergency family, and medical leave. Paid FMLA, as it relates to COVID-19, is for caring for family members or yourself, or have kids out of school…. all those things that we’ve all experienced in the last eight months.
This essentially made available paid sick time for employees as you’re dealing with either yourself in a quarantine situation of potentially having the virus or caring for your family. The first two weeks will be considered as paid sick leave. This was made available through an employer reimbursement tax credit.
Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act
The second piece of legislation was the Cares Act often referred to as the stimulus bill. The CARES Act includes important provisions including the Payroll Protection Program, the economic impact payments, or the stimulus checks that we received to help sustain the economy.
Mandated Sick Leave
Another type of leave many customers deal which is just a different type of sick leave is mandated sick leave. In some areas of the country, there’s legislation, either at the state level or the local level that states, you have to provide paid sick time to all of your employees – even part-time employees.
Generally, mandated paid sick time accrues one hour for every 30 hours of work. It also depends on where the employee works. Even if you’re headquartered in a particular area, but you have employees working in California, you would have to be in compliance with those local laws.
Whether it’s a traveling consultant or an employee assigned to multiple projects, they both can accrue several different types of sick time in different areas at the same time. This certainly can get very confusing. It could get as convoluted as this, you could have a sick bank for California sick time, Washington sick time, San Diego sick time, whatever the situation might be.
You have several options for how to do this. You can use:
- Excel
- Dynamics GP Payroll Accruals
- Dynamics GP PTO Manager
- Integrity Data’s Comprehensive Leave Manager
Affordable Care Act
We wanted to throw this in because as we get towards the end of the year, it is time to start thinking about the new enrollment season.
It’s important to know who’s eligible for an offer of coverage during the open enrollment, based on ACA rules, and part-time employees that have been working for you for the last year…. all the fun things related to ACA Compliance.
Just to touch on the penalties for 2020. There is the Sledgehammer Penalty and the Tack Hammer Penalty. There’s also a penalty for offering non-compliant coverage that’s not affordable to the employee. Certain industries are impacted and most vulnerable to these penalties.
Who is vulnerable to penalties?
- Certain industries that are most impacted are Hospitality, Retail, Education, Nursing Care, Municipalities, and more.
- Part-time workforces, seasonal, varying schedules, frequent turnover.
Rockton Auditor
Being compliant is not only about making sure you have everything set up correctly in Dynamics GP. It’s about tracking and auditing any changes that are made as well. You also need to audit all areas and aspects of these business processes when it comes to Payroll changes, sick time, vacation time, and more.
4 ways to make auditing work simpler & easier®:
- Track changes and be specific
- Audit silently or authorize it
- Reporting at your fingertips
- Who, what, why? – Get your questions answered
Track Changes & Be Specific
If you’re making changes anywhere throughout GP, but especially in this case, in Payroll, don’t you want to be able to track who made that change, what the value of that field was previously, what it is now, and the why that changed occurred?
Auditor is field-specific. So, you can look at any field on any window and this includes all the fields on the Integrity Data side, anything throughout GP, as well as any dexterity based third party products. You can be picky and choose the field or fields that you want to audit.
Does Auditing slow down GP performance? No way. We get around that because we let you pick and choose what fields are important to you, what are important to your auditors, to your team, and your managers. Everyone is happy.
Audit Silently or Authorize It
With every field that you audit, you always have a couple of options.
Option 1 – audit silently in the background, so that your end-users aren’t aware that there’s an audit happening on that particular field. It’s just capturing that change and putting it aside for you to go and report on it later.
Option 2– you can require the end-user to tell you why they made a change.
That might come in handy if you want to know why someone suddenly has 200 hours of vacation or an extra 80 hours of sick time. You can require that note to pop-up on specific fields.
Once a change is made, the Auditor Note Maintenance window will open, asking the end-user to enter in the details of why those changes are being made.
The users you have defined as Audit administrators can be set up to receive, in real-time, notifications when changes occur.
Reporting at your fingertips
When it comes to reporting, we tried again to stick with the work simpler & easier® approach. All of the reporting is done right inside of Dynamics GP using standard Smartlists. When you install Auditor, it will create an Auditor folder for you, as well as the subfolders.
This is going to list every audit systemwide. If you have 25 different GP companies, the information for each will appear here. When you set up an audit, by default, we audit all your users and all your company’s unless you dial it back. For example, you wouldn’t have to audit a test company.
E-sign Approval
E sign approvals are a feature included with Auditor. You can put a lock on vacation time, changing a social security number, or maybe a direct deposit account field, and require approval prior to allowing them to be changed. Our audit log will keep track of who requested approval, and ultimately who gave it or denied it, and why.
Audit Security Changes
It’s as simple as marking a check box, and Auditor will track all your security changes.
For example, say you gave Dan access to a Payroll Administrator role, gave Amiee access to the Audit Administrator role, or modified a task inside of those roles, those security changes would be captured automatically, and kept in a separate reporting folder, so you can easily access and review the information anytime.
Who, what, and why? – Get your questions answered
Auditor arms you with all the answers. It answers who, why, and what changed in your system and your data. You’ll have access to all the audits that have been accruing over time. Simply use the power of SmartList and sort by date, by user, by company, to review and display whatever you want to see.
Take it to the next level and create SmartList favorites by simply saving searches so the information is quickly and easily available at your fingertips.
You can get real granular with reporting. If you wanted to see changes to a particular pay code, simply use the SmartList search functionality, select to search on a specific pay code, and review the narrowed down data.
For the purpose of compliance, let’s say you drill into sick time. Our report includes a date and time-stamp for the change, the user who made the change, the workstation they were at, the company and database they were in, and the specific record changed. It’ll also list the type of audit it was such as a change to an existing record, or a new record, and was it added or deleted.
Ultimately, you now know what field changed, who changed it, when it changed, and, if you are asking, why it changed.
Serious fines and penalties are no joke
We know how important compliance is for your business. With all the changes that are happening this year, our hope is to keep you educated and informed. It’s time to take action and follow the steps needed to ensure you’re not at risk.
Next steps:
- Watch this recently recorded webinar
- Contact sales for a more in-depth demo of Auditor or start your free trial today
- Join Integrity Data’s Payroll Year-End Event
The History of Federal Regulations
The first regulations were implemented by the IRS to improve tax collections on long-term or multiple year contracts.
The second push came after our military leaders became intolerant of the pricing policies of major contractors. The policies would be considered fraudulent in today’s environment.
The new standards wish us to:
- Use performance obligations to trigger revenue recognition
- Allocate contract revenue fairly to performance obligations
- Adhere to standardized revenue recognition profiles
Objectives:
- Financial Statements that are more comparable and standardized across industries and geographies
- The changes initiated by ASU 606 were initiated by Wall Street to provide investors with more consistent published financial information
Requirements:
- Performance Obligations
- Allocate Revenue
- Revenue Recognition Profiles
- Capitalize Additional Sales Cost
- Capitalize Variable Consideration
Now that we know what the regulations require us to do, let’s look at what the regulations are trying to control.
ASU 606 wants concise and transparent math and no delays that would affect revenue recognition timing.
What are the key impacts and how do they pertain to you? We have outlined them below.
The core principle of Topic 606 is that an entity should recognize revenue to depict the transfer of goods or services to customers in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the entity expects to be entitled in exchange for those goods or services.
- ASU 2019-08, Shared-based consideration payable to a customer
- ASU 2018-18, Targeted improvements for collaborative arrangements
- ASU 2018-08, Clarifying the scope and accounting guidance for contributions received and contributions made
- ASU 2018-07, Improvements to nonemployee share-based payment accounting
- ASU 2016-20, Technical corrections and improvements to ASC 606
- ASU 2014-09, Revenue from contracts with customers
- ASU 2016-11, ASU 2017-13, and ASU 2017-14, Amendments to SEC guidance related to ASC 606
The revenue recognition standard explains that to achieve the core principle of Topic 606, an entity should take the following steps below.
5 Revenue Recognition Steps:
- Identify the contract with the customer
- Identify the performance obligations in the contract
- Determine the transaction price
- Allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract
- Recognize revenue when the entity satisfies a performance obligation
The 606 applies to every company except 2 types: insurance and leases
One of the most common examples in our industry as it pertains to the ASU 2014-09, revenue from contracts with customers is professional services and software sales type of scenarios. Here is an example.
The ASU 606 wants:
- No games with unit prices
- Consistent revenue timing
- Recognize revenue when certain
To Sum It All Up
Treat revenue recognition like performance obligations, using consistent methods across contracts. Additional sales costs are costs incurred to obtain or prepare to meet contractual performance obligations. They are costs that would not be incurred if the contract was not awarded.
The purpose of this update is to provide insights and a better understanding of these changes and how they can affect your business.
If you would like to learn more about Project Cost feel free to:
- Check out this new features blog
- Schedule a demo
A few years ago, Rockton enacted a 1-1-1 rule. This means we dedicate 1% of our team’s time, 1% of company profits, and 1% of our product is given to charities in our communities. Employees enthusiastically jumped at the chance to engage with their chosen charities. It is such a great part of our company culture. We support a wide and interesting range of nonprofits in the communities where Rockton Software employees reside.
Going along with this rule we have recently incorporated something new. Each year we ask for nominations from nonprofits that would like to receive one of our products at no charge. We typically announce the winner at GPUG Summit but since this event went virtual we had to do things a little differently.
This year we are thrilled to give out not 1 but 2 awards.
Congrats to Autism Services of Saskatoon and Grace Lutheran Communities.
After all the submissions were reviewed, we felt these two service organizations go above and beyond for their community and they both deserved to get their requested product.
Autism Services of Saskatoon Submission
I would like to nominate Autism Services to receive the Dynamics GP Toolbox solution. We have been in operation for just over 40 years in the Saskatoon community and on an annual basis have approximately 130-145 new families every year coming to us for services. The existing families still need support so our demand for services has been increasing dramatically in the past 5 years. In all of this, I feel having the right tools in our hands to do our administrative processing as efficiently as possible is a good way for us to save a few dollars that can then be used to support our clients.
Grace Lutheran Communities
I’m writing this nomination for the free Rockton product that you are looking to reward to a non-profit organization. We are a non-profit organization that specializes in Skilled Nursing Facilities, Assisted Livings, Low-Income Apartments, Adult Day Services, and Child Care. Our organization uses Microsoft Dynamics GP for our Accounts Payable and Finance reporting.
Being a nonprofit organization, we use our budget to the best of our ability to service our residents and clients and most times go without the technology items that would help us with our day-to-day operations in the office. If I could have one product introduced to my Finance Team, I would like to get SmartFill. I feel as though the functionality of this product would greatly help us when we are dealing with information for 20-plus facilities and over 300 vendors that we do business with.
With a small team of seven people doing so much any little time saving tool would greatly help and impact the amount of time spent looking for something within the Dynamics system. I also find that this product would allow us to find mistakes before they happen and really impact our organization. I know that using this product previously it can help elevate double payment to vendors and such issues that arise. With an organization that does so much for so many facilities with a small number of employees this product would definitely be beneficial to us.
Congratulations to both and we are so excited to help be a part of your mission!
If you would like to learn about these two organizations and donate check out the information and links below.
Autism Services continuously strives to deliver the highest standard of support, advocacy, and service to individuals with autism, and their families and caregivers.
Click here to donate, https://www.autismservices.ca/how-you-can-help/make-a-donation/
Our vision at Grace Lutheran Communities is an evolution. We will breathe life into our vision with initiatives that help us live the vision a little more each day.
Click the link to donate to our Supplying Grace Fundraiser: https://www.autismservices.ca/how-you-can-help/make-a-donation/
Did you ever think there would be a shortage of toilet paper? Or we would attempt to cut/color our own hair, OD’ing on hand sanitizer, or that wearing masks would become the norm?
Matter of fact, we have a Rockton Parody all about it.
Being in this COVD life since March sure has been challenging. It has created anxiety and uncertainty and put a lot of stress on us and our families. But, in the midst of all the chaos, we are also getting more creative, learning new things, and making the most of it.
What has the team at Rockton been up to? Many of us have been cleaning, decluttering, learning new things, and staying active. We thought it would be fun to share some of the ways we’ve been keeping busy in hopes to help give you ideas as we head into the winter months.
Lisa Oberg
- Golf – it’s one of the only sports right now that makes you feel good, allows you to get some fresh air & exercise, spending time with friends while social distancing, and lets you forget about COVID for a few hours.
- Family Game Night – Our go-to game right now is Catan. It involves the whole family, promotes problem-solving mixed with a little strategy and is something different than Monopoly.
- Using “Microsoft Teams” for Virtual Happy Hours – I’ve been connecting with my college sorority sisters and it’s been a great opportunity to catch up, talk about our kids and their challenges with being in High School, distance learning, sports etc. and our other children that are facing similar challenges with college.
Jim Peliksza
We have used this extended lockdown to finally declutter our house. We made a list of everything that needs addressing in every room and have been knocking down that list, little by little, pretty much every weekend since this began. I don’t know if I would call it “fun” per se, but the results are endlessly satisfying.
Mark Rockwell
I’ve done more TV watching in the past few months that I have in the same number of years. Netflix exclusively.
Mike Watt
I tried to cut my own hair… but I don’t think it would be considered fun… the end result certainly isn’t.
Oh, one thing I have done that’s fun is Legos! Built an awesome VW Van.
Paul Pollock
My family has slowed down and we have planned more “togetherness” moments. We went camping almost every weekend for 2.5 months starting around May when the campgrounds opened up. We spent many nights by the fire sharing stories, fishing early in the morning and fishing at night, going to the beach, swimming for hours, renting kayaks and standup boards, playing card games in the camper, and going for hikes more than we ever did in previous years. In all of these weekend trips, there were so many fun memories or things we did together and that is what got us through a lot.
COVID has affected so many lives & families (and continues to do so). Families have lost loved ones and I can’t imagine their grief. For our family though, COVID has helped bring us together and form a stronger family bond. It forced us to listen more and talk less. It also gave (forced) us to show our kids how you handle bad situations like a pandemic. Like making personal hygiene something we can all get better at. We try to be the examples for them, even though we are just as nervous as they are.
This summer we spent many hours outside landscaping and adding value to our home. We added new flower beds, transplanted hostas to add more life, built garden boxes for my kids so they could plant strawberries, grew tomatoes in several planters, and I tried growing jalapenos for the first time. I put up bird and squirrel feeders as well.
Shawn Strayer
- Got a new bow for my Birthday so I have been going to the archery range and shooting more!
- Driving through the mountains to enjoy the fall colors.
- Quick camping trip using our rooftop tent on the Jeep.
- Spending time with our dog who is getting up there in age
Kris Berger
- We’ve done a virtual couple’s cooking classes. The classes we have taken go from making a Charcuterie meat & cheese board to Chicago deep-dish pizza and Thai Curry.
- We’ve done a virtual escape room with a group
- Using the Houseparty app, we’ve connected with friends and family to play the trivia and games that are part of the app
- We’ve found a lot of new walking trails in our area
- We’ve had patio happy hour with friends
- Spa nights at home – facials, manicures, and pedicures
- Met family at parks to do socially distant walks
- Attended online church on Sunday mornings. It’s become one of our favorite times to be together get organized for the week and have breakfast
- Firepit and movies outside
Sue Roe
- Planted a garden
- Multiple home repair and improvement projects
- Started a weekly Zoom book club with my siblings, nieces and nephews
- Stream yoga classes
- Moved kids back and forth to college two extra times
- Played backyard beer pong with same kids
- De-cluttered house, Marie Kondo style
- Helped my daughter sew her first quilt
- Rediscovered cards and board games and got some new ones (recommend Wizard)
Alicia Weigel
Well, what have I done so far? It’s quite a list.
- Put our Christmas lights up on the house
- Organized nearly every corner and closet in the house
- Baked more than I have in my life
- Taught my boys how to bake without burning the house down
- Countless puzzles with the family
- Teaching my boys how to play chess
- Started designing my holiday cards
- Sent quarantine gifts for friends stuck at home
- Finally programmed my Alexa to do what I say
I am not done yet, here is what I have left or want to do:
- Plan to learn calligraphy
- Start a succulent garden for the winter months so I have something green growing inside for winter
- Redecorate both of my son’s rooms
Amiee Keenan
It feels like so long ago when you could just get on a plane and go anywhere. I was going to FL a few times a year to visit family (my parents, daughter, and granddaughter) well since that’s not happening we are Facetiming a lot more.
We also have the Facebook Portal which makes it easier and you don’t have to worry about your phone dying so quickly.
I have been doing a lot of organizing and decluttering but still have a ton to go. I just received a Cricut Joy for my birthday. I plan to use that a lot in the coming months as it gets colder here in RI. Maybe I will become a DIY crafter.
Angie Hinickle
During the lockdown, I have had 2 distractions that have helped keep me from pulling my hair out (which I suppose would be the closest thing I have had to a haircut!)
Knitting is a longtime hobby of mine, but this year my knitting has become pandemic focused. I knit a rainbow stuffie to hang in my window to show love and solidarity with my community. I used the leftover rainbow yarn to knit a baby blanket for a friend’s pandemic born baby.
Animal Crossing – Imagine if you could escape our current 2020 reality to a faraway desert island with only those you love and some surreal and adorable animal neighbors….all from the comfort of your quarantine couch. That pretty much sums up the Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing. My 7-year-old daughter and I have fully immersed ourselves in this fun and creative game. And it has the added bonus of visiting our friends’ and family’s islands who live in other states. It has helped us all stay connected in a unique setting.
What you have been doing during this time in quarantine, feel free to share them with us?
Also, if you’re not part of our Summit Staycation, learn more and sign up today.
Are you still manually calculating commissions or royalties?
Do you need variable compensation management to handle multiple intricacies of your commission structure?
Do you wish there was a way to audit when lines are added to existing documents and when commissions are changed?
It’s possible to automate and audit the accounting and administration of your commissions, rebates, royalties, bonuses, and SPIFFS.
Commission Plan is the only variable compensation management software that is completely integrated with Dynamics GP.
Auditor is a simple (yet robust) data-change management tool that will track any of those field level changes in GP and in other 3rd party products.
There are 2 tools to automate and audit your commission puzzle, and we are going to dive into 10 the ways they can do that.
1 – Attach multiple salespeople with a split percentage
What if you didn’t have to manually determine the salesperson or salesperson’s splits for a document?
You’re probably tired of pasting the Invoice details to multiple salesperson’s tabs on your spreadsheet and remembering which salespeople split a particular customer or sale.
Commission Plan allows you to attach multiple salespeople with a split percentage if needed to our customer, an item, or a territory. This will allow them to automatically default onto the invoice for commission purposes and begin tracking their commissions.
2 – Automatically calculate the commissions
What if your commissions automatically calculated as sales documents are updated?
Document lines change, a new price is entered, quantities are modified, or a line is deleted. Commission Plan automatically calculates the commissions for the sales document and automatically updates with no manual intervention.
3 – Easily set different rate structures
What if you didn’t have to assign a rate to each salesperson’s lines on your spreadsheet?
The more complex your structure is, varying the rate by product line or differing the rate between an inside rep versus an account executive can be a lot to handle.
The Commission Matrix, Commission Plan allows you to group like customers, items, and salespeople together for commission purposes and easily define the rate.
You can easily manage the many different rate combinations contained in your company’s compensation plan.
4 – Reconciliation of invoices to payments
What if you could quit manually reconciling invoices to payments to determine which commission should be released?
You probably have a list of invoices and a list of payments and have to match them up routinely.
If you void an invoice or if a payment is unapplied, updating your spreadsheets becomes even more tedious.
Commission Plan automatically tracks per salesperson ID when a commission is ready to be released. Whether you release when the invoice is posted, or when the invoice is paid it is bringing you the task of the reconciliation.
5 – Edit commission after the document is posted
What if you could edit the commission after this SOP document is posted?
Commission Plan entry allows you to edit the commission even after the SOP document is posted so you can easily add/remove salespeople, change the commission type or rate, or even the commissionable sale/cost amounts if needed.
Commission Plan entry allows you to edit the commissions for a given transaction and keep it all tied to document in Dynamics GP.
6 – Release payments with just a few clicks
What if you could release the proper compensation payments to your salespeople with just a few clicks?
At the end of the period, use the filtering power of Commission Plan to easily dictate which range of commissions should be released for payment. Whether you pay salespeople weekly, monthly or quarterly.
And, when processing a salesperson’s commission, the software can also automatically create a general ledger, accounts payable, or payroll transaction. Saving you time and data entry errors.
7 – Avoid Data Silos
What if you could produce reliable results, avoid data silos and get the full data picture in the hands of the people who need it?
Commission data is stored in your ERP system alongside the sales transactions, providing multiple inquiries and reporting options.
You can easily answer questions from reps. The CFO can make strategic decisions. The sales manager can see how well a new product is doing. The account rep can focus on servicing the customer. This enables everyone to realize their compensation program goals.
8 – Audit Everything and Anything
What if you could audit any field, any changes, in GP or 3rd party products?
Auditor just about audits anything you can imagine in Dynamics GP, if you can think of a place where you would make an edit to a record, add a new record, or delete a record, that’s where Auditor is going to work.
It also works with all Dexterity-based 3rd party solutions like Commission Plan.
So, if you’re looking or wanting to see who’s making changes to those commission structures and things like that, that is something you’d be able to track with Auditor.
Auditor is a field-specific auditing solution, which means you can look at any window across Dynamics GP and those 3rd party products and pick and choose the fields on the window you want to audit. So, you’re not having to take everything that’s on that window and cram a whole lot of data into your tables.
You get to be selective and say, OK, I care about when someone adds a new line to this invoice. Maybe I need to know when a vendor’s check name is changed, but I don’t necessarily care if someone updates a PO number or maybe, you know, something a little bit more minor, perhaps an address or a phone number.
This allows us to get around some of the performance degradations that auditing software can sometimes cause on your system. We don’t want to slow down your work in GP. We want to make sure that that work is accurate, that you’re able to report on those changes, and that those changes were valid, to begin with.
9 – Reporting and e-signatures made easy
What if reporting on all of those changes getting an e-signature for a locked field were that simple and easy?
You can track all of those changes to all of those fields that you chose. All the reporting is done inside of GP standard SmarLists. You don’t need to have an external report server or maintain a bunch of custom reports.
We get to use just standard GP’s SmartLists, which we create for you when installing the product.
Audits are everything systemwide, so regardless of how many companies you have, all of your audits are, by default, auditing all users and all companies, unless you want to dial that back, which is totally possible.
E sign approvals is included with Auditor. This is going to let you put a lock on a field before it can be changed. So say you wanted to put a lock on that commission field. We could do that. Then it would require someone else to sign off on it and give a reason why that change is happening.
All of that would be recorded and kept in here. And then we also have security audits. So if you change your GP security, we’re automatically tracking that for you and keeping it out here separately.
10 – Get a complete 360 view
What if you knew the who, what, and when of any changes made in Dynamics GP?
You will always have a date and time-stamped so you know exactly when it happened.
The user who made the change, the workstation from which it was made is the person that logged in and made the change. The workstation is where they were sitting at. Unless you’re using a terminal or Citrix environment, then that would just show that box.
Company and database, the change affected, the type of audit it was.
We also can audit at the SQL level.
So if you have an integration that writes directly to the table, or maybe you’ve got a DBA that’s making update statements in the backend, we can capture that, as well.
The type of event edit means we changed something preexisting. This sales document was out there, and we made a change to that sales document. We can also track adding a new record and deleting a record.
We are going to show you the product that we’re auditing. So if you are auditing Commission Plan, that’s what would show up too.
We show you the field that was changed and the table that field lives in the record key.
It’s a clear snapshot of exactly what changed on a particular sales document.
Automate & Audit
Automating your variable compensation and auditing any changes gives you that little piece of assurance everything is getting done the way you want it. You’re able to track changes and report on them so everyone can be on the same page.
Are you?
- Still manually calculating your commissions
- Trying to figure out who did something, when did they change that particular record, when did they update this vendor, or the sales persons’ commission level
- Handling variable compensation
How can you?
- Easily managing your commissions
- Audit those sales transactions when things are getting added or deleted or updated
- Report and pay on those commissions
If you want to learn more about either of these tools you can:
- See these tools in action, watching our recently recorded webinar
- Contact sales for a more in-depth demo of Auditor or Commission Plan
Not every customer needs a pricing solution. If you have very simple pricing, not many customers or items, and your adjustments are easy to manage then you may be all set. So, ask yourself, how complex is your pricing?
Do you?
- Manage a large list of items or customers
- Match this customer to this item or this date
- Apply discounts or a price adjustment to specific geographies
- Have many types of discounts, rebates, and promotions
Can your ERP?
- Track unlimited adjustments
- Track those adjustments back to the GL and keep them separated for processing
We find that most ERP systems cannot handle this.
We have your back
Rockton Pricing Management (RPM) is the tool to help you and your business grow. To go from manual to automated. We know it can be time-consuming and stressful to manage it all. That’s why we have your back.
This is for the:
- IT professionals who stay up late to input the new pricing changes each year
- Sales team so they know they’re giving the best possible price to their customers and getting a commission too
- Accounting so they can easily track items back to the GL, track rebates and royalties back to the vendor or customer, and not worry about over or underpaying
- Pricing managers who need to update prices on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence and have those prices roll down to their calculations
What’s your industry?
We found a pricing revenue management solution is great for manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers but let’s break it down even further.
- Food distributors sell by the pound, by case, by unit of measure
- Flooring and manufacturing distributors use rebates for their vendors
- Waste management companies offer discounts
- Electronics have restocking fees
- Convenience store suppliers may need to charge a brand fee by item
- Co-ops may need to change a price based on the daily market value of a component
Set It and Forget It
We’d like to think of RPM like a trusty crockpot. You put all the ingredients in and set the timer and forget about it until it’s done.
Well, with Rockton Pricing Management, you put in all the information such as pricing, adjustments, and items and then let RPM do its thing and it will send back a price when it’s done all the necessary calculations in the background.
All the manual effort, all the spreadsheets, all the time it takes to make changes are now alleviated when you put a pricing solution in the mix.
Still not sure if you need a pricing solution? Reach out to our team to learn more and schedule a personalized demo.
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