Microsoft Great Plains: Data Conversion & Migration Scenarios ? Overview for Consultant

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains serves multiple industries in the US, plus it has strong presence in Latin America, U.K., Australia, Canada, Middle East, South Africa. Great Plains is natural solution for growing company, when small business accounting application, such as QuickBooks, M.Y.O.B, Peachtree, Quicken or others should be replaced with ERP, better positioned to serve mid-size business. With the switch to Microsoft Great Plains you need to decide on data migration and conversion. Let us give you highlights on your options:

? Beginning Balances approach. This is the simplest way. What you do is ? enter beginning balances in Great Plains General Ledger (GL) and begin using your new system. When you need to enter invoice for existing customer ? you create customer record in Great Plains and go ahead with Invoice in Accounts Receivables or Sales Order Processing (SOP). The same symmetric procedure is for vendor invoices in Purchase Order Processing (POP)

? Master Records migration. If you have large number of customers and vendors, plus multiple addresses for customers, numerous inventory items, sophisticated chart of accounts with several thousand accounts in GL ? you need to migrate these master records from your old accounting to Great Plains. The best way is ? purchase Great Plains Integration manager and do it in-house or with minimal help from external consultant. If Integration Manager license seems to be expensive and you have SQL expertise in your IT group ? you could your programmer populate master tables: GL00100, RM00101, RM00102, PM00200

? Open & Work Data Migration. In Great Plains Accounts Receivables and Accounts Payables invoices have open status if payments are not yet applied to these documents. We recommend you to use integration manager to bring customer and vendor invoices and payments and post them in Great Plains. This way will allow you to save on consulting services and keep good relationship with you Microsoft Business Solutions Partner. We do not recommend using SQL scripts for bringing open data into Great Plains ? you will have posting issues, related to incorrect distributions. In other words do not populate such tables as SOP10100, SOP10200 via direct SQL stored procs.

? Historical Data Migration. We recommend stay away from this migration unless it is absolutely necessary ? you may have order takers needing immediate access to customer historical records to place new order. In this case having two system: legacy accounting for data lookup and Great Plains for new documents ? may not be efficient. Then you do direct historical tables population: SOP30200, SOP30300, etc.

? Data Conversion. Conversion means the process of extracting data from your legacy application and massaging it to be ready to be fed to Great Plains. In case of each specific system you should use specific approach. In case of QuickBooks you simply print reports, save them in text file and massage there ? usually in Excel or Lotus 1-2-3. The specific of small accounting applications is proprietary database platform, which makes traditional tools, such as ODBC connection complicated.

Good luck with conversion and migration and if you have issues or concerns ? we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Microsoft RMS, Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Minnesota, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com

---

Fleet Maintenance Software Reviews

Innovative Maintenance Systems (IMS) is one company that offers solutions... Read More

Microsoft Navision Customization and Reporting ? Tips For Programmer/IT Specialist

C/SIDE (Client/Server Integrated Development Environment) - The core of... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Implementation: Collection Management ? Overview For Consultant

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is very good fit for... Read More

Microsoft CRM and No-Frills Cadillacs

In today's business world it's all but impossible to escape... Read More

Microsoft CRM or Siebel

Siebel is traditional CRM market leader, however and mostly due... Read More

Microsoft CRM Integration with Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS) ? Overview

Microsoft Client Relation Management system (Microsoft CRM) and Microsoft RMS... Read More

How To Create A Data Capture Procedure Checklist For Your Small Business CRM Software

Fortunately one of the most common reasons cited for the... Read More

Marketing Your WinRunner Team

It won't matter how effective your WinRunner Team is if... Read More

SpyBot - Search and Destroy versus Microsoft AntiSpyware (Beta).... My personal experiences...

Ok... Where to start?Well, I guess I will start at... Read More

Business Planning Software

Once a business idea is selected, it is highly recommended... Read More

Navision Customization: C/SIDE, C/ODBC, C/FRONT, XBRL ? Development Options

Microsoft bought Navision, Denmark based software development company, along with... Read More

Where to Find Free Fleet Maintenance Software

Costs of fleet maintenance software can vary widely. It is... Read More

Keep Your Software Simple! A Review of EditPlus

I like my software simple. If it's too complex or... Read More

Enterprise Resource Planning Overview

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Overview covers What is ERP, Brief... Read More

Navision Attain C/ODBC Crystal Report ? Customization Example

Microsoft Business Solutions Navision is main ERP application for European,... Read More

What is Fleet Maintenance Software?

Simply put, fleet maintenance allows companies to monitor and maintain... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Customization Tools Evolution ? Overview for Consultant

When Great Plains Software introduced the first graphical accounting application... Read More

Defining OLAP Solutions and Data Warehouse design

This tutorial covers OLAP solutions used by Data warehouses and... Read More

Ukraine: a Prospective Player on the World Software Outsourcing Market

The destruction of the Soviet Union about 15 years ago,... Read More

Microsoft Navision Database Selection: C/SIDE or MS SQL Server - Overview For IT Specialist

There are certain pluses and minuses in both cases and... Read More

What is Fleet Maintenance Management?

Fleet Maintenance Management is a critical position in any company... Read More

A Guide To Purchasing Professional XP Icons Online And Enhancing Your Applications

Icons are used everywhere; right from software applications, to internet... Read More

Accessing XML Using Java Technologies

The most important benefit of XML is its simplicity. Though... Read More

ERP System of the Future: Database, Business Logic and Interface

We will base our prognosis on our Microsoft Business Solutions... Read More

Microsoft CRM for Corporate Business ? Working Offline

If your company has regional and worldwide operations, you might... Read More

Your Computer May Be Infected, Heres How To Check (NOT about virus)

NOTE: Please take time to read on - it may... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains implementation: Restaurants Supply Chain Management Example

Microsoft Great Plains serves majority of US based horizontal and... Read More

IT Department Skills to Support Microsoft Great Plains and Microsoft CRM

Microsoft Great Plains as ERP and Microsoft CRM as... Read More

The True Meaning of Freeware

The vast majority of us will have, at some point,... Read More

My Experience - Making a Vision into Reality

Disclaimer: All the thoughts expressed are my views only! Your... Read More

10 Ways to Learn a Software

Following tips help you to learn a software in lesser... Read More

Google Brings the Earth to Your Desktop

Google Inc. has launched a new software package that allows... Read More

Crystal Reports for Microsoft Great Plains ? Overview for Developer

Microsoft Great Plains is main accounting / ERP application... Read More