Great Plains VAR, Technology Partner and Reseller Newsflash: FRx and Crystal Reporting

Microsoft Dynamics GP has the whole set of various reporting tools: FRx Financial Reporting, SQL Server Reporting Services, GP Report Writer, Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel, Smart List. Dynamics GP reporting tools selection for specific case is subject of this small publication:

1. FRx. If what you need is pure financial reporting: Profit & Loss Statement (P&L), Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flow, plus consolidated versions of these statements – then on the first place consider FRx. FRx has connector to Dynamics GP General Ledger: summary tables, posted and unposted transactions. If you would consider generic reporting tool, such as Crystal Reports – GL link has to be designed in Crystal from scratch, and this is not as simple as you may expect. Dynamics GP GL has Period summary tables, open transactions (for open year), historical transactions to give you some information for consideration. FRx connectors do all mentioned above. FRx consolidated reporting – if in Dynamics GP you have multiple companies, FRx reporting tree allow you to consolidate BS, P&L, SCF. If you need international consolidation, FRx supports multicurrency, plus you can export your overseas subsidiary GL into Excel Spreadsheet (from SAP Business One, for example) and consolidate international branches with Dynamics GP headquarters on MS Excel level

2. Great Plains ReportWriter reporting. Here you typically modify existing forms: SOP Blank Invoice form, GL Trial Balance, RM Historical Aging, Fixed Assets Depreciation Ledger, etc.. If Dynamics GP RW doesn’t have report that you need, consider SSRS or Crystal Reports

3. Crystal Reports. Here you typically create non-financial reports: Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Manufacturing, Payroll custom reports, often combining data with External data sources: Oracle, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Access, Warehouse Management Databases to give you few examples. CR can combine data from multiple Dynamics GP companies, as well as from Heterogeneous Databases on ODBC connection level as well as using native DB drivers. Before you dive into Crystal Reports design sea, we recommend you to review available reports for SSRS (Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services) for Microsoft Dynamics GP. In Crystal Report design we recommend you to separate DB records selection login from CR itself: consider work out report selection in SQL Server Stored Procedure (where procedure parameters translate into CR parameters) or SQL View. Horrible stories about Crystal Report records duplications are typically associated with the fact that CR designer tried to use Crystal Reports Wizard (which does ad-hoc queries from Crystal directly to DB tables) – all these you can avoid by separating CR design from DB query (in SQL stored procedure or view)

4. If you need further help, feel free to call or email us, we are experienced Great Plains Consultants, Programmers and Developers

Source by Andrew Karasev