Microsoft Small Business Financials Step Up to Dynamics GP Process: Real Life Experience

Over the years we have been Microsoft Small Business Financials promoters and have specialized in the product and helped clients & resellers all over the USA (and beyond).

We have quite of few clients that are taking advantage of Microsoft's 90% Step Up to Dynamics GP from Microsoft Small Business Financials Offers and thought I would post some insights on how this process works for those considering it.

First of all there are no gimicks about the cost: Microsoft IS giving 90% off of Dynamics GP for those who want to stay on maintenance. (My unofficial opinion is that this is the deal of century as far as getting Dynamics GP for nearly nothing!)

Some people ask me "What Immediate Benefits Will I See If I Go from SBF To GP?". My answer? A lot. A couple years ago I wrote an article "What MSFT Needs To Do To Make SBF Even More Compelling" and almost every one of those bullet points Dynamics GP fulfills. Let me just list some of the immediate benefits:

-Ability to Copy SOP Documents: Copy Quotes, Orders & Invoices.
-Use Ctrl+Q (QuickPrint) to print SOP Document with one keystroke
-Categorize Inventory Items, Customers and Vendors (no work arounds needed!)
-Easily type Invoice line item notes without splitting things into 4 lines of 50 characters
-Have sales graphs and other key graphs on your Home Page
-Have negative quantities on sales documents (to return an items when selling item)
-Use the new Navigation Lists to make finding customers, vendors, sales doc and more EASILY!
-Easily use multiple warehouses and track bins.
-Track Landed Cost of Inventory Items
-Now you have access to advanced modules not available to SBF like Collections,
-Use Integration and Customization tools built for GP: modify GP windows, integrate to webcarts and more...
-Get all the exciting new features coming in GP version 11 and beyond! see some here
-and much, much more.

If you want to see Microsoft's official list of benefits to you to upgrade, click here.

Will Dynamics GP be too complex for us or take a huge server? First the complex question: GP is more complex than SBF but because the screens are soo similar GP is a natural segway. There IS some getting used to. The first week will be some pain. We have some people that just take it after we do the data migration but most will want to schedule some training time with us. Also you will soon want to take advantage of some of the new GP features. We suggest just getting what you did in SBF first, then schedule the new GP features later. If you have a modern server and workstations, very likely no hardware replacements will be nessesary as the requirements are similar. If you have a server or workstations that already should be replaced, it might push them over the edge.

What are the costs and how long will it take to do the Microsoft Small Business Financials Step Up to Dynamics GP Process? #1 to get yourself a ballpark figure on licensing cost just take GP licensing and subtract 90%. (i know thats not exactly right but gets you an idea) Then add the maintenance of the full GP (18%). That is license cost. #2 there is the data migration. All of your history and data will come from SBF. (gp and sbf have same code base) There is a tool to do this data migration so if your real savvy you could do it yourself but most people get us to do it. Figure $1000 for one company. (quite a bit less if more companies). #3 You will likely want us to be on hand for the day you roll over to GP and at the minimum a day after so figure approx. $3000 there. #4 I would suggest at the minimum schedule a day sometime later to do more training.

I need to wrap up this article but I would like to post another one about the "issues" you will need to work through when Migrating from SBF to GP. They are not huge but it helps to know about them and a couple key training points moving from SBF to GP.

Our team at Landis Computer has invested a LOT of time, effort, sweat (and tears? ;-) promoting and helping people with SBF and I believe those who have been putting the power of SBF to use will be in good hands with Dynamics GP.

If you have more questions or would like more help with a SBF Step Up you can email sales@landiscomputer.com.

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