In Touch with Dynamics GP

This blog is intended to be a useful resource for Microsoft Dynamics GP users and professionals in the UK and the wider Microsoft Dynamics GP community as a whole.

Monday 27 September 2010

The Clock is ticking for Dynamics GP version 9

This post is by way of a quick reminder that as of 11th January 2011, Microsoft will no longer be supporting Dynamics GP version 9. Therefore if you wish to stay on a manufacturer supported version of Dynamics GP and you are on version 9, you now have three months to plan, test and complete an upgrade to one of the supported versions.


A lot of clients have been holding off upgrading to Dynamics GP 2010 until service pack 1 was released. This was released last week and we have now installed it in our in house test environment.

Also Service pack 1 for Management Reporter (2010 FRx replacement) is now also available which will allow successful installation on UK regional settings.

If your interested in upgrading to Dynamics GP 2010 please contact helpdesk@touchstone.co.uk or myself andrew.hall@touchstone.co.uk

For further information on support life cycles of Microsoft products use the below link.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselectindex#D

Monday 20 September 2010

All Change on 20% Tax Again January 2011

Tax Changes in Dynamics (GP)



This is a quick re working of the advice we put together last time the VAT changed from 17.5 to 15% and then again from 15% back to 17.5%. This change is happening in January 2011 so now would be a good time to start thinking about how this might affect your systems. The changes in VAT where originally set out in the Chancellors emergency budget 2010 (The full details are in the HMRC link at the end of this article). Because of the nature of Tax calculations in Dynamics (GP) this article is intended purely as a Guide and you will need to choose the appropriate actions for your circumstances.



Note: We have kept these notes fairly generic as we have clients on several different versions, however in version 10 and 2010 where we give a path to Setup>company etc these are found under Tools> setup > Company



Tax Details



We advise that everyone will need to set up a new set of tax details to replace the 17.5% details currently used. We recommend that you did not simply change the rate on your existing detail as this could cause you reporting problems and issues when trying to post back.



To set up a new Tax detail you need to go to Setup>Company>Tax details

You needed to set up a minimum of two details, one for sales and one for purchasing. This needed to be done in each of your companies.



Tax Schedule



Here you have Two choices.



Option 1: We advise that you could retain the existing Tax schedule and simply remove the 17.5% detail from this schedule. Then add the new 20% detail to the schedule and to the ALL Sales and ALL purchasing schedules that you have setup on the company. Schedules can be accessed from setup>Company>Tax Schedules. This has the advantage of not then needing to change any setup on classes , debtors, creditors , items or projects. Simply put where ever the old 17.5% detail appears in a schedule on its own (No other details)you will need to replace it with the 20% detail and wherever it appears with other details you will need to add in the 20% detail.



Option 2: is to setup two new Tax schedule (one sales one purchasing). Again this is done through setup>company>Tax schedules. Once these have been crested you will also need to add the 20% Tax detail to the existing All sales and All Purchasing tax schedules. However if you create a new schedule you will need to change all the card records within dynamics that have a schedule attached. These are Debtor maintenance, Creditor Maintenance, Item maintenance, Cards project categories, SOP setup options default tax schedules , and the appropriate Classes for all of the above , this will also need to be done in each company.



VAT Reporting and Vat input and Output codes



If you are using the standard Vat reporting within Dynamics (GP) this all works off of Tax detail ID so if you have created a new detail there should be no issues. However some of our clients are reporting directly off of the GL account code. If this is the case you will need to setup two new GL accounts for the new tax rate (input and output accounts) and add these accounts into the new details you have created.

Setup new accounts under cards >Financial>Accounts remember it will need to be a balance sheet account.

The Account can be associated with the Tax detail Setup>Company>Tax detail id.

You may wish to do this even if not reporting directly of the GL.



Sales Order Processing



SOP will cause some issues as any outstanding transactions created this week will retain their 17.5% tax detail when transferred to invoice (This is not a problem for POP as this recalculates). The Tax setup options for SOP are on the options Tab of the Sales Order setup window found under Setup>Sales> Sales order processing. To get round this issue you will need to go back and change the tax on the order to the new rate before transferring to invoice.

For a method of recalculating the tax on SOP Transactions, have a look at David Musgrave's blog as there is now functionality in the support debugging tool which will allow you to do this.




http://blogs.msdn.com/b/developingfordynamicsgp/archive/2010/09/21/changing-sop-tax-rates-using-the-support-debugging-tool.aspx





Nolan’s Advanced VAT



We have spoken to Nolan’s and they are issuing no specific advise however like us they are advising to create new details rather than update existing ones. These are found in the same place as the standard Tax details as these are alternate windows.

Note: if using Nolan’s advanced VAT you can set an account to be Taxable, in which case a tax schedule is held against the account as well as an individual Tax ID , these will need to be changed as well where they are using the 17.5% tax detail. These are accessed under cards>financial>Account .



Project Accounting



Depending on how your projects are setup , you may need to change the tax schedules on Cards> Projects> cost category.



Further Advice from the Government



For further detailed information and HMRC guidance about the original change, please visit the HMRC Website at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/forms-rates/rates/rate-rise-guidance.pdf





No advice has been issued by Microsoft at this time , but when they do we will update you.