Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP is very popular in USA, Canada, South and Central America, Caribbean among mid-sized companies in manufacturing, service, distribution, pharmaceutical, wholesale and retail, healthcare, placement, project organization, without for profit and other industries. It supports ERP and MRP functionality, where its production modules are tailored to discrete manufacturing. Light manufacturing could be implemented directly in GP’s BOM module. There are several reporting tools recommended for Great Plains: Report Writer, SQL Server Reporting Services, Crystal Reports, and of course if you need a powerful link to General Ledger, FRx Reports is recommended. In this little post we would like to give you an introduction to FRx:
1. Installation of FRx. For Great Plains Dynamics GP version 10.0, you will need to install FRx 6.7 with Service Pack 9. Download the Dynamics GP Partner Source Service Pack for your customers. Please note that the FRx installation media is a separate CD and you cannot find it on the Great Plains CD #1 and #2. FRx requires its own registration keys: serial number, authorization, and registration number(s). The keys depend on your organization name and number of users, so please change them according to your purchased license
2. Create the first most popular report. In our opinion, you will love to design the first report on the current year profit and loss statement with monthly summaries, probably compared to budgets, if you are a larger company. To create such a report, open the FRx designer and create a new row format. Here click Edit, Add Chart of Accounts Rows and in the selection window change all your segments to All &&& and under Account Range Start and Account Range End put your income account ranges. This will make the first section – income. Repeat the same procedure for Cost of Sales, Expenses, Other Income, and Other Expenses. For each section, you must also add a section description, such as Revenue, and a summary (TOT), such as Total Revenue. The next step is the creation of the column layout. Here you add DESC in column A, then GL, Actual, YTD in column be, and reporting periods one through twelve to represent January through December. Note that this first report does not implement company consolidation, the reporting tree (where you could track profit and loss by department, product, or sales territory)
3. Troubleshooting FRx. One of the most popular errors you may encounter is “Invalid path specified for drive of work”. This is likely to happen when you install FRX as a domain administrator and then try to activate it for users with restricted security knowledge. Open FRx, click Administrator, Processing Options, and change Optional Work Unit to the folder available to all users in your domain. Other files and places to check. If you are moving the SysData folder, where all the FRx report specifications are located, make sure you have it available for users to read and write, in some situations.
4. FRx Support at Customer Source. If you are up to date with the Microsoft Dynamics GP annual maintenance schedule, you should be able to open the case in your customer portal with the MBS GP support team. If you are not current on the annual improvement program, you can still call on Dynamics GP and FRx technical support, however, the cost of your case will be higher.