Archive for the ‘General’ Category

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How are you managing workplace stress?

Monday, December 5th, 2011

It seems like we are all more stressed now than ever before. To prepare for this article I started with a web search on “managing stress at work” and one search yielded 4,870,000 results. Bing yielded 87,100,000 results for “managing stress in the workplace”. Evidently no one has solved this problem.

We all seem to know the causes but feel somewhat powerless to solve it. Businesses and organizations need to do more with fewer resources. We are all working longer hours and not having very much fun. No one is secure in their jobs or careers any longer. And this is spilling over into our personal lives with unintended negative impacts. So what can we do? Here are some of my thoughts but I am more interested in hearing from you. So please respond to this blog!

Exercise: Even if it means taking a short, 20 minute walk during the day. Find an exercise that you love. When I ride my bicycle it seems that all of my cares dissipate – at least temporarily.

Eat Healthy: Resist the urge to eat unhealthy foods. I know first-hand that it only makes you feel worse.

Do something you love: My passion is quilting. Even 30 minutes at the sewing machine or just ironing fabric for my next project makes me happy.

Connect with people you love: Our lives are so busy that we sometimes do not make time for family and friends. I have been reflecting on Sunday dinners back when we had blue laws. One day a week we visited with family because that was all you could do that day. We need to find a way back to just spending “guilt-free” time with family and friends.

Spend more time organizing, prioritizing and planning your work load: The busier we get at work the more important it is to take a step back to think about our tasks, making lists, figuring out what is more important (remember Steven Covey’s 4 quadrants?) and scheduling when we are going to complete these tasks.

Buy Local and Buy American: This really needs to be a topic for another day but my personal belief is that we cannot continue to be a “Knowledge-based” economy. We all need to pay attention to the origin of the goods and services that we purchase – especially the goods. Here in Connecticut our manufacturing base has eroded over the past 20-30 years to the detriment of our economy. This is not easily accomplished but we have to try.

Let me know what you have found helpful in managing stress and I will post it to our blog.

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State of Connecticut Tax Withholding

Monday, August 8th, 2011

As everyone who runs payroll already knows, there are some substantial problems with the tax calculations that the State of Connecticut provided to the payroll software providers.  The state is in the process of issuing additional guidance.  We have identified two situations that will empact employers. 

The first situation is where the employee has requested additional withholding.  The initial guidance did not address this  and Microsoft Dynamics GP’s payroll calculations do not differentiate between regular, required withholding and additional, elective withholding.  The result is that employees with additional withholding will see their net pay increase instead of decrease.

The second issue is in regards to mid-year new hires.  The GP code annualizes the new pay amounts and over-withholds – sometimes  a very significant amount.

As soon as the state provides new guidance for managing these and other identified challenges we will update this blog.  In the meantime don’t hesitate to contact us for assistance.

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Update on Connecticut income tax withholding

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Whether or not you use Microsoft’s Dynamic GP for payroll, if you operate or even just work in Connecticut, we want you to be aware of the upcoming change in the State’s withholding rules. Recently enacted legislation makes state income tax changes retroactive to January 1, 2011. The tables that have been released take this into account and act as a “Catch Up” withholding for the remainder of the year. Be advised that these new withholding tables become effective on August 1, 2011. We are happy to provide this link to the State of CT web site with the new 2011 Withholding Tables. http://www.ct.gov/drs/lib/drs/forms/2011withholding/2011withholdingcombinedcatchupwithholdingtaxtables.pdf

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Reaping the benefits of blogs

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Blogs are an increasingly excellent resource for ideas about how to do things differently (i.e. better and more efficiently, which, of course, = more cost effective) in your business. For example, we’ve all run into unfamiliar technical challenges, but instead of digging through our manuals as we might have in the past, now we can utilize the blogosphere. This is where the ripe fruit of information is just waiting to be picked – where you can find the resources and solutions to your problems, straight from the keyboards of those who have solved them.

 This incredible sharing of valuable information may inspire you to consider new ways of utilizing your Great Plains software. In fact, your existing GP software has many potential uses to improve your business function and processes. As always, CriticalEdge is here for you and your business – we want to see you succeed! Give us a call today at 203.281.0006 to find out more information about the tools available to you, or to discuss your ideas for additional efficiencies that GP can provide your business. In the meantime, we’ve included some of our favorite blogs below, with a bit of detail on each. Put them on your reading list!

http://msdynamicsgp.blogspot.com/

Mark Polino maintains a very rich blog spot that he updates constantly with news, tips and other GP-relevant information. A reliable source for research and problem solving.

 https://community.dynamics.com/usergroup/gpug/b/default.aspx

This blog is maintained by GPUG (GP User Group) and includes a variety of tips and tricks on using GP.

https://community.dynamics.com/usergroup/gpug/b/gpugmembertidbits/default.aspx)

 A “sub-blog” of the one above. This has a few GP partners who contribute additional tips, including CriticalEdge staff.

 http://msdynamicsworld.com/

Dynamics World provides some useful GP news. There are marketing “articles” from third party vendors featured on the site, however.

http://blog.criticaledgegroup.com/

Our very own blog! CriticalEdge is committed to adding to this blog as we experience issues and questions in our everyday discussions with our clients.  Stuart is a frequent contributor to our blog.

http://www.gpwindow.com/

GPWindow is Everything Dynamics GP useful  for IT Professionals and Users specific to Dynamics GP.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/gp/

The official Microsoft blog. Need we say more?!

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Say no to Apostrophes

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

I am a bit of a grammar snob. One thing that irks me is the misuse of apostrophes. But one non-grammatical rule that is more certain than “ i before e except after c” is this: Don’t use apostrophes in IDs in Microsoft Dynamics GP. Sure, GP will let you do this, so let me explain why you shouldn’t.
Occasionally, we will have the need to extract data via Smartlist and run SQL scripts against that data. The presence of a little “’” in a master ID such as customer or vendor ID will break the script not only for that record but for all subsequent records. We learned long ago to avoid the “’” and, years ago, used Corporate Renaissance’s Changer to remove any that had snuck into our database.
Or so we thought. Fast forward a few years to our upgrade to R2010. We use Accountable’s Forms Printer to print SOP documents, purchase orders and statements. We discovered that the upgrade of Accountable’s tables resulted in the loss of a lot of our Forms Printer settings. Upon further research, we discovered that one of their tables, ASI12381, still had that pesky “’” in selected records, and that as a result, the updating of their tables was aborted. Fortunately, there is a relatively easy fix:

1. Remove any records that did upgrade from ASI12390 in the Dynamics database
2. Remove the offending records from ASI12381 in each database being upgraded
3. In the dex.ini file, modify the settings for ASIFORCECONVERSION and ASIFPINITIAL to TRUE
4. Open GP as sa and reinitialize Forms Printer
5. Recreate the settings for the records you deleted in step 2, if necessary

 
So what did we learn from this experience? First, that Changer, and I suspect Microsoft’s similar tool, doesn’t update ASI tables. Second, that the presence of an “’” in those tables will wreak havoc on your upgrade.

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Foreign Exchange Issue

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

If you are contemplating adding an overseas operation, you should be aware of a shortcoming in how Microsoft Dynamics GP handles currency exchange. With GP, you can translate only between your functional currency and another currency. You can’t translate between 2 non-functional currencies. This is generally an unusual circumstance, but if it applies to you, you may have to create a “dummy” checkbook in the functional currency to get around it. The specific circumstance I encountered was a USD company that billed a customer in Sterling. The customer wired their payment in Sterling to the client’s Euro account, where the bank translated it into Euros. GP could not handle doing the cash receipt in Euros as it was neither the functional currency nor the originating currency on the sales transaction. The client set up a new USD checkbook and received the funds, in Sterling, into it, then transferred the funds into the Euro account.

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Smartconnect Inventory Import Problem

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

SmartConnect, by eOne Solutions, is a wonderful tool, generally a giant step up from Integration Manager. But I recently encountered a situation where Integration Manager worked better than Smartconnect. I was importing inventory items into a company that had manufacturing included in its set file. When I used Smartconnect to do the import, the requisite records were not created in the manufacturing table and I was not able to use the items in SOP, receiving a message that the item was not effective. I was able to work around this by using a SQL insert statement to populate the table. However, when using Integration Manager to import the items, I had no such problem, the manufacturing table was automatically populated. So in this specific circumstance Integration Manager performed better than SmartConnect.

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Multicurrency Reminder

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Heads Up for Multicurrency Users

If your company uses multicurrency processing and you start using a new currency, one of the setups you have to complete is assigning the currency to GL accounts. You naturally think of the accounts you hit with sales and purchasing transactions, and maybe your bank account, but don’t forget the retained earnings account. If you don’t assign the currency to the retained earnings account, your year end may not close properly. The following excerpt is from the on-line Multicurrency manual:

We recommend that you assign all currency IDs to the retained earnings accounts for each company to be sure that all profit and loss amounts can be closed to the retained earnings accounts.

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2011 U.S. Payroll Tax Update for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, 10 and 9

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Round 2 Tax Update for 2011 has been released. Round 2 update includes a data and code change. This update requires that the Automatic/Manual Update be processed along with installing the msp file on all workstations.

Important Note: The FICA/Social Security withholding changed for employees from 6.2% to 4.2% in 2011. Round 1 included the change to both the Employee and Employer portion due to Microsoft Dynamics GP calculation being based from one amount. Due to this, General Ledger posting, inquiries and reports that show FICA amounts for employers will be calculated using 4.2% for payruns that are processed with Round 1. Round 2 Tax Update includes changes to the employer portion to bring back to 6.2%. We understand the challenges you face with this: however, it was important to release with accurate employee paychecks starting January 1, 2011.

Round 3 – scheduled to be released Mid-February
- Illinois
- Maine
- Maryland

Round 4 – scheduled to be released Mid-March

- 941 Form changes

CriticalEdge will be contacting all of our payroll customers to schedule the installation of this payroll tax update

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