Issue #2 in that blog was regarding permissions during the Generate Cheques routine and the message "There is an error in the Transmission Header - Incorrect Length".

At that time, the fix seemed pretty obvious and it worked during testing on Windows 7 machines.  I wrote about it, forgot about it, and moved on.  Months later I learned the client doesn't use Windows 7 on the machines that they use payroll for (those machines happen to be older Windows XP machines) so the error never came up again and I had completely forgotten about it.

Fast forward to last month and another client of mine upgraded all of their workstations to Windows 7 and the error re-surfaced.  It is a Canadian Payroll error that only occurs if you use Canada Savings Bonds - when the CSB file is saved, it defaults to the GP2010 application directory without any option to change that destination.

The Issue

Windows or Dynamics GP (I'm not sure which) seemed to be using the LEAST amount of permissions for a given user to assess if it could save a file in the GP2010 application directory.  Their IT department had added the users affected and given them full control to no avail.  They figured that the only solution was to "Run As" Administrator (launch Dynamics GP as Administrator did fix the problem but as a general rule that is a horrible workaround!).

The Resolution

This time I have a confirmed resolution for this: and yes, it is permissions related.  After playing with various changes to permissions and confirming the issue STILL occurs for a Domain Administrator (yes!), I came to the conclusion about the "least permissions" angle.  So I looked at the least permissions the user had and they were part of the general "Users" group and in that group, the permissions were the default read-only permissions.  Changing that to allow "Write" solved the issue.  In this client's case we actually changed "Users" to "Modify" and "Write" just in case modifying an existing file someday comes up.

I can't confirm this from a "windows User Account Control" perspective since that is not my area of expertise (the "least permissions" thing) but it definitely seems to be on the right track.  At the very least, the customer is happy once again because removing UAC or launching Dynamics GP "as administrator" is not a long term solution!

Generally speaking a report will have at least 5 sections to it, in this order:

• Report Header - this prints on the first page of the report only
• Page Header - depending on your settings, this prints on every page or on "page 2" onwards.
• Body - the guts of the report
• Page Footer - same as Page Header, this either prints on the bottom of every page or only on Page 1 to the second last page of the report.
• Report Footer - this prints on the last page only

Page Header & Footer

First, let's start with the Report Definition window, specifically the Printing Options section.  This will help you determine when your Page Header (PH) and Page Footer (PF) sections will print.

In my screen shot, this particular report will NOT print a "first page" Page Header but will print a "last page" Page Footer. Looking at the layout of this report, here is a description of what will and won't print on the first page.

At the very top is the PH (Page Header).  In my case, this will not print on the first page, but it will print on Page 2 to the last page of the report.  You'll notice part of it is exactly the same as the RH (Report Header) section.  On this report, the Report Header (first page) shows the legend of what the report options were, which only need to print on the first page.  I could change this - and print the same thing on every page by moving those sections to the PH section and hiding the RH section.

Similarly to the PF and RF sections (Page Header and Report Header respectively), on this report the PF was already hidden and I needed to go into the Section Options to unhide it for this pic.  It is completely empty because this particular report doesn't need two footer sections or a footer on each page.

When might you want a PF section? Perhaps you have a report where you want a subtotal of the report data on the bottom of each page - that's a good time to have a page footer.

What does this mean when you're editing or creating a report?

This impacts where you put things as well as where you need to edit or move titles. One very common mistake I see is someone edits a report but uses sample data that is only one page long.  They never test what Page 2 beyond looks like.  Then Page 2 prints and lo and behold, the titles don't line up.  Why? They didn't make the same changes in the PH section that they did in the RH section.

Similarly, I've seen people make a ton of changes to the PH section only to ask why their new changes didn't show up.  If you print a one page sample, and didn't make the same changes in the RH section, your changes won't print (assuming you have the same Report Definition settings of no first page header).

So, test with a multi-page report if you can and make sure you keep your PH and RH sections in sync, if they are intended to be similar like they are for many reports.

Other sections

There are tons of other sections on most reports in Dynamics GP, which are all sections of things where reports are grouped or sorted.  Below is what the section options window looks like. You can open this window by going to the Tools menu in Report Writer.

First, this shows you what sections are visible in your Report Writer layout window.  This is the part of Report Writer where you become a bit of a detective sometimes to figure out what the default sections are, if they are not obvious. In my report, a Payables Historial Aged Trial Balance, there are 2 extra header sections and one extra Footer section. To view more about the extra sections, click on one, then click on Open to view the settings.  That is what tells you what the section is for.

In this particular case, the section is a grouping by Vendor ID. The sections are "Print when this field changes" meaning, for each vendor ID change, print this section.  If you look back at the layout window screen shot above, you will see this section called H1 (note: it's listed first, therefore it's the first header, the numbering is in sequence from top to bottom).  The H1 section contains only Vendor information, no transactional information, because that wouldn't print properly up here... it also contains some headings, so that within a report for this vendor (aging detail in this case), the headings print before that vendor's transactions to make it easier to read.

Here is where you have some options.  Some people prefer the headings to print once per page, not once per section.  In that case, I would move the headings (the Aging Bucket fields, etc.) up to the RH section AND to the PH section.  Remember, this report prints the RH for page 1 and the PH for page 2 onwards.  So, I need it on both headers so it prints at the top of each page.

Here is what the report looks like before the change:

I've modified this report a bit already to highlight each new vendor section and the total due - but I left the headings at the "per vendor" section. Each vendor has the same headings.  Here is what it looks like moved to a different section:

Now the headers are at the top of the page, and there is no additional info between the vendors.  Personally, I find this harder to read but it does save space and make the report look a little less cluttered.

When it gets a little more complicated!

One last example of where being a detective comes in handy. Project Accounting is one reporting dictionary where so many things are configurable in the product itself, that the Report Writer side seems entirely generic and a giant mystery!  Here's a screen shot of a Project Accounting invoice and it's a bit scary looking at first!

Every section is generically named - Group 1 Break, huh? Then you go into a section, and the "Print when field changes" doesn't exactly help. One key field that may help is "Suppress When Field is Empty" - this is a calculated field, that defines when this section prints or doesn't print.  Sometimes I will look at the calculated field to see if I can figure out what the break or related data is.

Unfortunately in this case, the calculated field simply refers to the same field name above, a generic "group 2 break" field.  So, that doesn't help me here.

Next, I will look at the fields that are in that section. Most times this is where I start to figure out the sections.  For example, this section only has one field which is a calculated field.  Here is what it says:

From this point on, I should point out, if you don't have an understanding of the underlying structure of the module you are creating a report for, that is the best place to start... someone who doesn't know anything about Project Accounting would be hard-pressed to figure out the sections by looking at the report.  For me, having used PA for years and years, this is where it starts to make sense.  This section I now know is a heading that simply describes the content to follow - either Billings or Fees.

What if that doesn't help?

I'd be lying if I said I could figure it all out just by doing this.  Sometimes I don't want to spent the time looking at this level of detail so I will take another approach: put a unique piece of text in each section I need to know more about and then print the report - or print several of the reports with different options enabled.  Looking at the raw output tells me what prints where and hopefully that will help me figure out if it's a section I could hide or need to keep.

In Summary

The biggest caveat I can give you for sections - particularly around whether you can delete or hide sections - is to go slowly and try things out, continually printing test reports to see the effect.  Test with lots of data, especially in a report with multiple sections.  The sections are usually grouping and totalling things and a major change in a section will result in incorrect data. 

TIP: know your test data.  Create your test data before you start modifying too much, so you have a baseline report that has correct groups, subtotals and totals before you make major changes.  As you make changes, specifically hiding or removing sections, check all of the subtotals and totals.  Removing a group that matters, will make a subtotal or total incorrect in a hurry and should stand out.

Hopefully this gives you a bit of headway into what the various sections mean and how to navigate them.

What are Drawing Options?

These are the options you get when either double-clicking on a text field or graphic field like a line or a box, or using CTRL+D on a data field.  There are several pieces to it and options that you have. Here I will describe how they work and how to use them effectively.

If you haven't yet ready my article on formatting text, that may be a good place to start which gives some info I will not be covering today.

When you open the Drawing Options window, what you see differs depending on whether you opened this window from a text field, a data field or a graphic (line, box etc.) field.  This screen shot is from a graphical report that I’ve been modifying in this series. If you are in a Text report, every Drawing option is greyed out.

One tip before I start, if you are making the same change to a bunch of fields, you can select multiple fields at the same time and then change the drawing options at once. That speeds things up when you are doing a bunch of similar changes.  Use the Lasso or Ctrl-Click methods I mentioned in my earlier post about formatting text.

The Font section

The top left corner lists all of the fonts available to you on this computer. It’s barely visible in this picture, but the font I’m using happens to be Calibri, which is highlighted.  The symbol beside the font just tells you what kind of font it is – TT meaning True Type.  The standard text formatting options are available under Font Style of Bold, Italic and Underline. Font size, you’ll notice, is a drop down list.  TIP: you can also type in a font size.  From time to time I have had to drop to a font size smaller than the smallest available and simply clicking in the box to type in the value you want works. 

A few words of caution when selecting fonts and styles:

• Pick a font that is common. You don’t want to pick your special corporate font to find out that most computers don’t have it loaded and the reports don’t print correctly as you intended!
• Every font has different characters sizes and kerning (spacing).  Depending on what kind of report you use, some fonts are easier to read than others, and fit in certain size fields better than others.  The more text you have, the more you’ll want to stick with a font that takes up a little less horizontal space than others.
• Go easy on the bold & italics! Lots of either are often harder to read than not having them at all.
• Font size can make or break a report. On one hand you want to fit all the information on the page right?  Try to be creative with placement of fields to avoid having to make a font choice so small it’s unreadable.
• When you are testing your report, try to ensure that fields with descriptions contain suitably long names or descriptions in them, so you can see what fits when a field has the maximum typed in it. 
• Lastly, on more of a design note, try to be consistent. If you use a large font for a set of headings, use the same size for all of them. Nothing worse than looking at a report that uses inconsistent sizes of fonts and styles all over!

Colours & Patterns sections (revised!)

I've re-written this section of the article, after a conversation with a reader of the blog and some more testing to clarify a few things.  Now I can really say colour is more interesting!  (And yes, I will insist on spelling it "Colour" since I am proudly Canadian!). 

My light bulb moment: something I didn't really clue into before I did some more testing, you can select ONE pattern in the upper right hand corner.  It's not one pattern per colour choice, it's not solid for fonts, shading for background and then a pattern. Uh uh.  One. Pattern. Period.  Here is how your choice of Pattern (upper right) affects what your options are in the Colour (bottom left) section are:

1. Clear

• No background or foreground colour options.
• This has no effect on the text or line colour choices.

2. Solid

• Background colours are enabled.

3. Shading "Pattern" (25%, 50%, 75%)

• Background and Pattern (foreground) colours are enabled.
• The shading terminology is directly related to the Pattern colour choice. For instance, if you leave the Background "colour" as White, and select a Pattern colour, 25% shading means exactly what I would expect: a 25% of the colour you choose.
• You can select two colours (one background, one foreground) to create a new colour (think of your primary school colour wheel experiments: red and blue make purple!).

4. The other patterns

• Background and Pattern (foreground) colours are enabled.
• The Background colour is a solid colour of whatever colour you select.  The Pattern colour is the foreground colour of the pattern - for instance, the lines on the diagonal pattern.

Back to my regularly scheduled article!

Here is the rest of my article, with the now-redundant pieces removed! 

Starting simply with the colour options, you can select a default colour from the list. The Sample box shows you visually what it might look like.  Often I’ll increase the font size just to get a larger sample preview when playing with colour options.  You can click on the More Colors button to get a broader palette to choose from and to go even further you can define custom colours.  If you want to use your corporate colours for some titles, you simply need to know the equivalent HSL or RGB values of that colour. To save the colours you want, click on Add to Custom Colours and they appear in the bottom of the More Colors list.

TIP: Typically corporate colours are most commonly one of two types of values – a Pantone colour reference (PMS 109) or if it’s from a website, a Hex value like FF6633 (a beautiful colour of orange!).  Use your favourite search engine to look up “Pantone to RGB” or “Hex to RGB” and you’ll find a bunch of websites that help you find the right values.

Now that you know the colours, the trick is you select the radio button of the thing you want to change first.  It defaults to Font (or Line), so if you haven’t picked anything and changed the colour, you just changed the colour of the line or text.  The background option is the background of that specific object, not the page background. 

Here is an example of an object with a red background and a blue Up Diagonal pattern – the diagonals lines are blue since the Pattern colour is the foreground colour.

Alignment

The last of the sections is the Alignment section.  If you have used this before, you will know that the alignment doesn’t affect all types of fields.  Also, data fields visually in Report Writer do not change when you change this setting, you have to run the report to see the change.  Often data fields have their own alignment in the formatting section of the Report Field Options window which will override what the Drawing Options setting is.  For text fields and some data fields, simply choose Left, Center or Right justified.

Line Sizes & Colours

The one option that is greyed out when you are looking at Text drawing options is Line size.  Once you select a Line, Box, Circle or similar graphic, the Line section is enabled. There are four thicknesses of lines available.  You can also select colours for lines but Background and Patterns are greyed out.

General Notes on Layers, Boxes & Backgrounds

Design-wise I tend to avoid using backgrounds on text and insert background boxes if I would like a shaded background.  This allows me to size the background as appropriate without also altering the dimensions of the text field(s).  One tip if you are going to do this, remember your layers!  Under the Layout menu, there is a Send to Back and Send to Front command.  This works well to hide or unhide things as you can easily put in a box, "send to back" so it's behind the text you have.  If you do this, use a "clear" background on your text not a solid colour.

Below is a quick example of the output of a few changes (most of which will be changed back to normal when I'm done!).  I've got the "approval" section in colour, to highlight it easily for readers.  The Batch ID and Batch Comment both have a background colour of Black 25% shading.  For comparison, the Batch Total and Trx Total section I put a box behind those two fields with the same colour.  Personally, that looks better to me than the background colour on a text field.

Next time?

I hesitate to promise more in the Report Writer series but in re-reading my series of articles, I do see some more topics that I can cover... hopefully those won't take another year to complete!

Until next time...

 (Edited May 10, 2012 - Update to the Colour & Patterns section)

You read that correctly!  Microsoft has decided to change the way they work with some of their utilities and tools.  Previously there were charges to get access to tools or utilities like Customer Modifier and Customer Combiner (and Vendor, Account, Item etc.).  On the partner side, we had to purchase those outside of the normal ordering processes (they weren't "modules" like ordering something like Integration Manager was).  They want to streamline that to eliminate some of their Direct Billing policies and that means Dynamics GP customers win!

What's Free?

Well here is a list of what I know of, and it's effective March 1, 2012.  Keep in mind this has only recently been announced so don't be surprised if your partner doesn't know all of the details about it yet - the information is just trickling out now and not everything on Partnersource is yet updated for us.

Professional Services Tools Library

All of it, some of the tools were already free, now all of the tools will be free.  There are so many tools in this library, it's impossible to explain them all here!  Here is a quick list of the ones that in my opinion are AWESOME to have available for free.  More information on all of the tools and what they do is here (this is the general GP2010 installation guide download page - look in the list for ProfServicesToolsLibrary.pdf).

• System tools: Database disabler for maintenance, Shortcut copy, Update user date
• Financial tools: Account modifier/combiner, Chequebook modifier, Fiscal Period modifier, GL master record triggers, Fixed Asset modifier
• Sales tools: Customer & Territory modifier/combiner, Salesperson modifier, RM transaction unapply from history, RM master record triggers
• Purchasing tools: Vendor modifier/combiner, Select Cheques combiner, PM master record triggers
• Inventory tools: Item Number and Site modifier/combiner
• Payroll tools: Employee modifier (US payroll and Cdn Payroll)
• Misc tools: Doc date verify (not more bad dates outside of fiscal years!), Default "add item" in SOP/POP, Company copy (copy setup to another company)

AutoDim

Utility allows you to launch Great Plains and run one or more integrations or integration groups and have Great Plains exit upon completion of the integrations. This product also supports integrating into several different companies.

AutoPost

A COM dll that can be called from IM or an outside application to post some types of Dynamics Batches.  Currently the application supports posting of SOP, GL Trx Entry, IV Trx Entry and RM Cash Receipts batches. NOTE: Because this application uses the Continuum API, the Great Plains client must be running and a user logged into a company for this application to work.  The posting process would then use that user & company to post the desired batch.

NoteFix

A utility to help identify cross-linked notes (two records assigned the same Note Index).

Payroll Detailed Activity Tracking

The Payroll Detailed Activity Tracker will track changes made to employee records (US Payroll only).  This tool is available for SQL users.  This was essentially a tool that was available prior to introducing the Audit Trails product.  It creates triggers to track changes to payroll records in various US Payroll tables.

PO Returns

When invoicing a receipt in POP, this customization will check the previous quantity invoiced and the quantity returned for the line item. The maximum quantity allowed to be invoiced is based the following formula: Quantity Shipped minus (Previous Quantity Invoiced plus Quantity Returned). This customization will not allow invoicing of more than this amount.

POP Over Receipt Tolerance

Utility that allows a receipt tolerance percentage for quantities.  A setup window allows the user to enter a tolerance percentage, that percentage is then used when a Purchase Order is received.  The highest quantity that can be received is the original quantity ordered plus the percentage amount.  For example, a Purchase Order is entered for a quantity of 10.  A tolerance percentage of 20% is entered.  The highest quantity allowed to be received would be 12.

RM Auto Apply Utility

This application will allow the user to Mass Apply posted RM Credit Documents to posted RM Debit Documents.  The user can select a range of Customer, Debit Document Dates, Credit Document Dates, and a Credit Document Type restriction if desired.  The credit documents will apply to the debit documents in the order specified in Receivables Management Setup window which is the same order that Dynamics Apply Sales Documents Auto Apply button uses.

Shipment Notification

Will allow drop ship sales orders to be transferred to invoice prior to invoicing the purchase order. 

SOP Default Site per Line

This customization changes the site that is defaulted on line items.  Instead of pulling the site from the Default Site on the SOP Entry window, if there is a default site assigned to the item in Cards>Inventory>Qtys/Sites, then that site will default for that line item  If there is no default site id for the item, then the customization will default the first site that is assigned to the item.

SOP Sort Line Items

This utility allows the user to define custom sorting options to display line items in Sales Order Processing.  For example, a sort could be defined by Item Number and then the currently selected SOP Document would display the line items in Item Number order instead of the standard by order entered.  This utility does not physically reorder the records in the underlying tables; it only displays them differently in the Sales Order Processing window.  This application also does not affect the way that sales documents print. (SQL database only)

SOP to POP Line Reordering Utility

 This utility will reorder the line items of Purchase Orders generated by the SOP to POP transfer process to be in the same order as they originally were on the Sales Order document(s).  The preview report will still show an alphabetical list, but on the actual Purchase Order document the line items will maintain their correct sequence. This is critical for companies who rely on matching up PO printouts to Packing Lists or Picking Tickets in SOP.

SOP Tax Schedule Roll down

This appears to be an old utility relating to a change in functionality from verison 6.0 to 7.0.  This KB article explains some of it, I'm unsure at this point if there is more to this utility!

How do I get these tools?

If you are an existing Dynamics GP customer, ask your partner.  They are available via partners only at the moment, that may change.  Partners, the PSTL keys will need to be on a request basis until Partnersource is updated with a master key for free use for anyone.  The information I have is to contact ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com to obtain a key in the interim.

In the next release of GP, Dynamics GP2013, the PSTL will be on the CD as well.

In this case, "I" didn't find the answer, I found it buried in a community forums post from Sivakumar, one of the Microsoft Dynamics GP MVPs.

The Issue

I was attempting to import General Ledger transactions using eConnect via SmartConnect.  My client had multicurrency enabled and there was a default currency in place already (CAD). When you manually keyed in a journal entry, the currency ID defaults to CAD (in this customer's case), you don't have to select a currency.

When I was running the integration, the transactions were successfully created but the Currency ID field was blank.  Since it's a required field, that meant manually updating them each time - not a long term solution.

The Resolution

Thanks to Sivakumar, for the resolution.  It turns out that eConnect for whatever reason cannot check to see if Multicurrency is enabled, therefore it checks the CM00100 (Chequebook Master) table instead, to see if MC is enabled.  Strange but true.  What that meant was in order for it to determine what it needs to, at least one chequebook must be configured.

In this client's case, we were importing transactions for a holding company where they don't use A/P or A/R at all, so they had never set up a chequebook for it.  In the past, pre-SmartConnect, Integration Manager had imported things just fine but it was slow and time for something more robust - eConnect and SmartConnect was the answer.

So we simply configured a dummy chequebook for this holding company, and from then on, the transactions imported with a proper default currency ID!

The alternative would have been to hard-code the currency ID but in this case, it was nice to find the actual cause and fix it, instead of hard-coding a value that could change.

(Update: include link to Sivakumar's blog)

I call these things "gotchas" - I'm not sure that translates into all languages but generally means to me at least, something that "GOT" me, that I wasn't expecting or didn't think to look out for.

Batch errors that don't tell you anything

I love this one: "Batch level errors exist" type of error when posting a project accounting Timesheet transaction batch.  Most times the batches will tell you what the exact error is.  However, in this case the client was getting a mysterious error but only when posting the batch.  If they printed the edit list, there were no errors. 

The end result: the error was a Canadian Payroll issue.  When you post a Timesheet batch with integration to Payroll (Canadian Payroll at least), you select the batch in Payroll to post the timesheets into.  In this case, the payroll batch had mistakenly been set up with a different Pay Period Type compared to what the employees are set up as.  I.E. the employees were set up as being paid 52/53 pay periods, and the batch was set up as 26/27 pay periods.  The pay periods didn't match, therefore the timesheets didn't post.  Since it was not a Project Accounting issue, all it knew to tell the client was "batch level errors exist"!

So if you run into something like this, do a quick check on the payroll batch setup as well as the employees (randomly check some of the employees in your batch for what they are set up for).

Canadian Payroll import does not appear to populate Project Accounting tables

This one was strange.  I don't recall us having this issue originally at the client during our initial configuration.  That was years ago and I may have forgotten that we fixed something at that time.  Anyway, this time, we were creating a new company and configuring everything, naturally using the CanPay import utilities to import our employees and paycode information.  Normally that is very easy - the spreadsheets and format is a little time consuming to get right, but it's quick and generally works fine.  However, in this case, it did not populate the PA Employee Options table (PA00601), and even more importantly, it left the Employed By field empty.  Normally this field defaults to "Company".  This was in GP2010 R2 - I haven't pursued it any further to see if this applies to other versions.

When the field is anything other than Employed By Company, the timesheets you enter in Project Accounting do not post to Payroll!  So when they initially went to test their payroll configuration, they created some timesheets and posted them only to find a handful of employees only made it through to the Canadian Payroll side in Quick Transaction Entry.  When they noticed that the people that made it to payroll were relatively new employees, we then looked at the tables and sure enough, the employees that were missing were from the original import and the Employed By field was blank.  We changed it to Company and all was good again.

Lessons Learned

I see too many clients NOT go through thorough testing, especially when they are used to the system and perhaps adding some new module or configuration, or in this case, creating a new company.  Had my client not tested this thoroughly, they would have been surprised on "day 1" to find a bunch of issues.  The first issue has nothing to do with testing of course but the second one is a good reminder that nothing replaces proper testing.  The first glance at employee records looked fine and they were focussing on the day to day stuff - did the rates and paycodes come in ok, etc.  The smaller stuff like Project Options seem so trivial in comparison that they get overlooked, until you run a payroll and test it all the way through the cycle.

The short answer is, it's very well hidden but it is there, and most users don't see it and generally it stays at the default value which is "Receivings Transaction Entry".  That means if you print transaction descriptions on a Accounts Payable cheque or EFT remittance, that's what you see.

Here is a view of a posted journal entry reference field, the source you can see is RECVG, and the default description which appears if the user does not change it during entry:

Here is where the field comes from, in Receivings Transaction Entry:

And here is what shows when posted:

Hopefully this helps some of you out there who have been looking for where to change this description!

The Issue

Someone creates a smartlist that has GL account numbers in it, perhaps it's a smartlist of a setup window, or of transaction distributions - whatever the case, they find the table and find Account Index fields, not Account Number fields.  They don't know what to do, so they link in the Account Master table and/or the Account Index Master table to get the full account number in string format.

Linking to get the account description?  That's normal.  Linking to get the account number?  THAT'S not needed... and I'll show you how.

How to display the Account Number instead of the Account Index

Here's a screen shot of a new Smartlist Builder window.  Notice I have removed the Account Index Master link?  I've linked the Account Master table still, because I wanted to get the Account Description field.  In this screen shot, I've selected a field that is an Account Index field, meaning by default it will show a numeric value which is the primary key for that Account Number in every table in Dynamics GP.  However Smartlist Builder has options, click on the Blue Arrow which is crudely shown in this picture.

Behind the blue arrow are several options.  In this case, the one we want is circled: telling Smartlist Builder that this field is an account index and to show the Account Number instead.

The End Result

Using the field options, you can set all the account index fields to show the Account Number automatically, and if you don't need an account description for your particular smartlist, you just saved yourself from having to link unnecessary tables all the time!

The Year 2011 in Review

Last year I started the year with a blog article about my resolutions, business wise.  How did I fare?  Well... some good and some not so good answers on that!

• Blogging once per week: that certainly sounded easy a year ago, but I quickly found out, after about 4 months, that life and clients take priority!  I just wasn't able to keep it up, and I continue to be impressed by those that can blog regularly, it takes a lot of commitment.  I count 28 articles last year... well short of my goal!
• Update my GP certifications: this was an easy one.  I don't write new exams every time they come out, I simply don't find value in doing that but I do always want to make sure I stay current by taking the exams again when older exams expire.  Last year, I re-wrote and passed my Dynamics GP2010 Financials, Project Series and Inventory & Order Processing.  Goal achieved!
• Read more books: I wrote about not wanting to be on a computer all the time so with tongue firmly in cheek, I can honestly say I read more last year than I have in recent years - except it was mostly ebooks!  (LOL)  Well, the resolution was about the reading, not the method right?  My actual measurable resolution was to read 1 book a month... I read 10 books, just short of my goal.
• Learn 5 new GP things: This was a two part goal, to learn 5 new things, and part two, to blog about them.  I'll start with part 2 - that was a complete failure!  I did learn some new things but I didn't get around to blogging about it.  On Part 1 though, while I didn't literally write each new thing down, I'm quite sure I achieved this, even if the things I learned weren't major modules.

What's in the plan for 2012?

This year I have resolved to make some more reasonable goals!  I also read an interesting article about making monthly, not yearly, resolutions.  So, for some of my personal resolutions, I plan to do just that - set a goal for a month and see how I do, adjust if necessary, and continue in subsequent months.  Here are some of my goals for this coming year:

• Blog 3 times/month.  Weekly is a little hard for me to manage but this year I plan to do a better job of getting regular articles written.  Heck, I might even finish the Report Writing series I started last year (LOL)!
• Read more.  That was a good goal last year, and I plan to continue that one this year - business or pleasure, reading an average of a book a month.  I've also got piles of magazines to catch up on so taking time to read will be a priority for me.
• Re-immerse myself in development.  This one is more of a personal goal with professional benefits!  A few years ago I wrote a windows application to track a little home head-to-head NFL weekly pool VB app with SQL data.  It was a ton of fun to write, forced me to learn a lot of development things I had never known about before.  I'm proud to stay the application still works like a charm, four or so seasons later but it's time for version 2.0!  I'd like to push myself and make some improvements so I plan to find time to re-write the application from scratch in time for the 2012-2013 season.
• Dig into SQL Reporting Services.  I've taken the courses but way back in SQL2000 when it was first introduced.  Since then I've had limited opportunities to continue playing with it to learn more.  When you don't use something, you simply get out of date with it.  This year, no excuse!  I'm going to dig back into it and stay up to date with it by moving one of my clients onto it this year.

That's a good start... and lots of things to achieve!

Reminder for those of you (hopefully none of you) who are running GP9 or earlier - there are no tax updates for your version anymore... hopefully you're in the midst of an upgrade to GP10 or GP2010.

On to the real content now... here are the details for the tax updates.

Release 10.0:

Download Link (Customersource)

Versions after install:

• Dynamics: 10.00.1779
• Canadian Payroll: 10.0.1827

Release 2010:

Download Link (Customersource)

Versions after install:

• Dynamics: 11.00.1860
• Canadian Payroll: 11.0.1897

What's Changed

No table changes!  Woohoo!

There are the usual tax rate changes for 2012 and a handful of changes specifically relating to year end:

• Updates to T4, T4A, RL-1 XML file formats & form layout changes
• New T4 Box for Volunteer Firefighters (see below)

Here is some information on the Volunteer Firefighters pieces.  It would require table changes and they HAVE NOT made the necessary table changes to accomodate this.  (I won't say "yet" because there is no plan at the moment to make the table change - clearly that means there aren't enough customers affected to push this through development).

The workaround if you need these features (tax credit and exempt amount)

• For the tax credit, enter the amount in one of the other tax credit boxes, for instance, "other personal tax credits"
• For the exempt amount, it could be entered manually at year end in the T4 edit window (code changes have been made to allow the entry of box 87)

Hopefully this is an uneventful year... the last few years we've dealt with table changes of varying degrees!