GSL Blog
U.S. 2012 Tax Tables have Released
Written by Lindsay Walsh
December 23, 2011
Microsoft has released the 2012 U.S. Payroll Tax Update for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 and 10.0.* If you’ve been following the news, the extension on the payroll tax cut is still up in the air. The IRS has advised Microsoft to revert back to what is on the Notice 1036, which is 6.2% withholding and a $110,100 limit on Social Security. The IRS is not optimistic this will be decided before the end of the year, and it is better to over-withhold than under-withhold. If it changes back to 4.2%, Microsoft will re-release the tax update, and Gilchrist Scott will re-post instructions on how to correct any over-withholdings.
Since the 2012 tax tables include the change from 4.2% to 6.2%, it is important to install this update AFTER creating the year-end wage file for the 2011 year.
The tax update also contains changes for the following states:
California
District of Columbia
Hawaii
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
New Mexico
North Dakota
Oregon
Rhode Island
Vermont
Contact us with any questions regarding your year-end process. (207) 761-2133 or support@gilchristscott.com.
*Support for version 10 ends October, 2012.
The New Way to Do Business: Extending Connections with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010
Written by admin
December 22, 2011
“Works well with others”—a term you’ll remember from childhood report cards. In today’s business world, that term spans everything that technology can offer organizations for extending connections. Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 brings home a high mark, taking full advantage of Web services, integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and a simplified platform to bring together employees, customers, and vendors across applications and systems efficiently and cost-effectively.
To start, developers can quickly choose from more than 350 Web services that offer better performance and easier integrations. We’ve also developed a straightforward integration platform based on Web services
that connects applications to and from Microsoft Dynamics GP and enables developers to create independent integration adapters. And connections through Web services integrations no longer depend on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)—eliminating the need to buy separate servers and greatly simplifying infrastructure and IT management.
This latest release helps sales, service, and business management staff collaborate through built-in integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Sales and service information flows directly to the back office and provides people with a complete view of customers, contracts, pricing, product and service availability, and more. In addition, we’re offering an important innovation with the Extender tool. Without writing new code, organizations can capture and consolidate business-specific information—for example, every unique detail related to a customer, client, or vendor—that’s previously been housed in separate systems. People now have a centralized source that simplifies reporting and tracking and lets them work together more easily on cross-team and cross-department tasks.
All our innovations work to strengthen business relationships. One quiet, but important example: while working in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, employees can connect at a deep level with customers and vendors through instant messaging. They can hold ad hoc conversations, hold a Microsoft Office Live Meeting, share views of customer and vendor information, and create and deliver sales quotes, sales orders, and purchase orders—all within an instant message.
We’re delivering a solution that extends connections so that everyone in your organization—and the systems that help your business run—work well together.
Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. The new way to do business.
Windows Service Application & Web Services for near-real-time Integration
Written by Darren Woodbrey
December 1, 2011
A customer recently brought us a requirement to create a two-way integration between GP and a third party POS system. This integration needed to include Customer Master Records, Vendor Master Records, Address records, Items, Sales Invoices, Sales Payments, POP receipts and IV Adjustments. To make it more complex, the two systems needed to be in control of certain types of records. The POS system, for instance needed to be the “master” when it came to Customers, but GP needed to be the “master” for vendors. This integration also needed to be near real-time.
My first thought for this Integration was Dynamics GP Web Services and / or eConnect. These tools provide a tight integration with GP and satisfy the near real-time requirement. GP Web Services needs to be called using an ASP.Net application like a web site or Window’s form application and is event based, like any other ASP.Net app, so something needs to occur in the app before web services code can be called. The POS system was not written in .NET and the only way to get information in and out was through direct SQL statements or DTS package exports. The DTS package, while old school, caught my attention for a moment because this lead me towards using Integration manager. IM is a manual process that will integrate data from a text or Excel files into GP. This, however, did not satisfy the near real-time requirement so it was quickly scrapped.
I needed to come up with a .NET application that runs on some kind of a timer to call the GP Web Services. Sounds like a great scenario for a Windows Service Application. There is a template in Visual Studio that creates an installable Window’s Service based on .NET and this sounded perfect, so I decided to test it out. I created a holding table in SQL that is populated by SQL triggers when a document or master record is create or updated in GP. I then used a .NET timer control to trigger the GP Web Services. This will, in essence, act as a polling application. The code on the timer will check the holding table for any new records then query the tables for the type of record in the holding table and use GP Web Services to bring in or query GP documents to move them into the POS system.
An added bonus feature is that the application can write events to the Window’s event log. Successful and, more importantly, error messages are recorded and easily queried just like Window’s events. An e-mail feature was also added to warn certain users when certain types of records were integrated. Another great feature is that the Window’s Service can use an .xml config file to hold settings. This allows the ODBC connection settings to the third party app, amongst other types of settings, to be stored outside of the source code which makes this application easily modifiable for different client requirements. While this solution is not yet in production, initial testing looks terrific and seems to be a great fit for these requirements.
This is just another custom solution from Gilchrist Scott Development. If you are looking to integrate another application with GP and do not want to bother with manual processes such as Integration Manager, then a Windows Service Application from GSL may be for you. Please contact us at 207-761-2133 for more information.
Supply Chain Management
Written by Lindsay Walsh
November 15, 2011
In this demonstration, you’ll see how Microsoft Dynamics GP can help meet your business needs in the areas of customer credit line management, shipping, and order allocation.
Bonus Depreciation and Bonus Licenses!
Written by admin
November 1, 2011
In the past, we’ve discussed how there are two levels of pricing for Dynamics GP, Business Essentials and Advanced Management. These licensing models offer anywhere from $35,000 - $100,000 + worth of software functionality. Right now through December 22nd, Microsoft is offering the following special promotion:
If you purchase 5 licenses by year end, you pay only $3,000. This is for either version of software, the Business Essentials OR the Advanced Management. This is a potential savings of anywhere from $8,000 - $17,000! Even if the timing is not right, but you know GP is the solution of choice down the road, you could still purchase a very elaborate system for pennies on the dollar and simply hold onto this system until you are ready to implement.
The other interesting note as it relates to year-end, is a piece about Bonus Depreciation (this if you remember was a part of a Tax Relief Act). Basically, this purchase could be completely depreciated if purchased by December 31st:
In general taxpayers who placed-in-service “qualifying property” after September 8, 2010 and before December 31, 2011 can get 100% bonus depreciation for these assets. Not wanting to waste a good set of regulations, the old bonus depreciation regulations will apply until the IRS issues a new set. As it was before, bonus depreciation is mandatory unless the taxpayer elects out of it. The election out can be by class of asset or for all qualifying assets in a company. The basic rules are as follows:
1. The original use of the property must begin with the current taxpayer. 2. Used property cannot qualify, although current improvements to that property may qualify.
3. The property must be purchased and placed in service from January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2012. The “written binding contract” (WBC) rules do apply to the placed-in-service dates. In other words, if the property is purchased or constructed pursuant to a WBC dated before January 1, 2008, it is not eligible for bonus depreciation. However, if the WBC is before September 8, 2010 and the property is placed-in-service after September 8, 2010, it is eligible for 50% bonus depreciation with one exception, discussed below.
4. The property must have a General Depreciation System (GDS) life of 20 years or less.
Don’t forget the other promotional specials going on now through December 22nd!
Contact us for more information.
Let the Countdown Begin: Convergence 2012 Houston
Written by Alicia Berglund
October 31, 2011
Save the Date
The Microsoft Dynamics® Convergence® 2011 conference was a smashing success, and now is the time to look toward a new frontier. Start planning now to join us next year for Convergence 2012.
March 18 to 21, 2012
George R. Brown Convention Center
Houston, Texas
Convergence is the best opportunity for you to get a firsthand look at the latest innovations that will help you optimize your business and improve your bottom line.
A World of Reasons to Attend
Convergence 2012 is “A World of Opportunity.” It will be an experience rich with business value where you’ll learn, share, and establish new relationships. Since this Convergence is actively targeting a global audience, the opportunity for you to make new and valuable connections is greater than ever before.
We Hope to See You There
Contact us if you have any questions about Convergence 2012. We look forward to seeing you in Houston next March!
Ghosts, goblins, and budgets!
Written by Denise Libby
October 24, 2011
It’s that scary time of year again for ghosts, goblins, and budgets. Gives me chills just thinking about it.
But it doesn’t have to be too scary. I’ve been working with several companies on their budgets and have found some things that you may want to keep in mind when importing your budgets.
1) What version of Microsoft Office are you using? We have seen where Microsoft Office 2010 has the ability to hide data in cells and could possibly be masking data. Sometimes you may not know that data is hiding until you export to a text file. This is not something that happens all the time, but if you find that you have issues importing it could be hidden data.
2) Naming of Fiscal Periods: Typically you would go to Cards->Financial->Budgets and follow the steps in the wizard to create your Budget Template in an Excel spreadsheet. This gives you the default format that Dynamics GP is expecting when you are ready to import your new budget figures.
If you‘ve made changes to the Period Name by going to Microsoft Dynamics GP -> Tools -> Setup-> Company -> Fiscal Periods, you will want to make those same changes to your exported spreadsheet columns. The export will have the original Period Names for each period, not the changes that you made, and the import will fail because it can’t reconcile the changes for the import.
The error you receive will mention incorrect number of fiscal periods, but the real issue is that you renamed the period descriptions, and those have not exported with your Budget export to excel, and it cannot match up those columns when importing back into Dynamics GP.
Hopefully this saves you some time and effort, because we definitely know how hectic this time of year can be.
US Payroll Year End Update
Written by Lindsay Walsh
October 17, 2011
Mark your calendar - the US Payroll Year-end Update for Dynamics GP is scheduled to release November 17th. This update will be required for all U.S. customers to install.
Changes include:
- W2 and W3
- EFW2 (magentic media)
- 1099 R for pension payroll
- 1099 payables Dividend
- Fixed assets luxury depreciation
- FICA Social Security
There are also changes to the SQL tables included in this update, to add the new EmployerKind data in the Dynamics and Company databases, in the following tables:
- W2000006
- UPR40100
- UPR10100
There will also be several Bug Fixes for other modules, including Inventory, Manufacturing, Project Accounting, Sales, Field Service, eConnect and Extender.
As a reminder, the release schedule is tentatively scheduled as follows:
- US Payroll 2011 Year End update will release mid-November 2011.
- Canadian Payroll Year End Update will release mid-December 2011.
- US Payroll 2012 Tax Round 1 will release mid-December 2011.
- US Payroll 2012 Tax Round 2 will release in January 2012.
These updates are only available for supportedversions: Microsoft Dynamics GP 10 and GP 2010. Click HERE for information on our 4th Quarter Upgrade Special.
Contact us to schedule assistance with these payroll updates, or to discuss an upgrade.
