Integrating with Dynamics GP - Part II

One of the more complex integration in this project were the customer payments integration and Revenue. The entry point of the integrated data in GP will be in two (2) windows: General Ledger and Bank Deposits.

The General Ledger integration were the entries originally created from the Revenue & Expense Deferral (RED) module. Now that the subledger is non-resident to GP, we have to create the middleware to do this. It was a mix of SSIS & Dexterity and since the host system was on Oracle we had to create Linked Servers.

The Bank Deposits is pretty straight forward as customer payments were received from the billing system, the entries are booked to GP as cash and a separate GL entries are created.

Another complexity in this project is the data migration of the subscription contracts in GP. We were using a 3rd-party product and we made customizations which slices the contracts on an annualized basis. All active contracts were migrated so billing can continue on the new system.

Lastly, reporting and Smartlist. Given that subledger reports will be coming out of the new system, the reconciliation process between GL & Subledger will change. Smartlist reports for subledgers goes away as well.

Integrating with Dynamics GP

I've been through a lot of GP integrations and most of them were very straight forward. In my current environment we have integrations from different sources including Salesforce to SOP module, IT Asset management to Fixed Assets module(including bar-code implementation), ADP to GL, and others.

The current work will be considered the most challenging as we're moving the AR subledger to a new Oracle-based billing software and GP will be processing General Ledger entries from this system. So what's involved? The following transactions will be created in the new system and all the journal entries will be push to GP - customer payments (Lockbox, Wired,etc.), invoices, credits, write-offs, refunds(AP entry) and others.

I guess the experts are telling themselves this is NOT much of a challenge, well not really and why? That's just the first part of this integration and since we're a subscription-based environment like Salesforce, we need to create deferred schedules for each document integrated. I'll stop there for now and let you create your own architecture for this integration.

Importing data to GP

I've seen a couple of post requiring data to be imported into GP but needs to be QA'ed. Example, let's say you have an e-Commerce system where orders get created and are manually entered in GP as Sales Orders. While entering in GP, the user make changes to amounts, quantities, prices, costs,etc.

Over the years, Microsoft Dynamics had been creating tools to make integration easier to manage. You can create interfaces using GP Web Services and this can reside outside GP where you can QA data before the actual import happens. The advantage? You're not using any GP license.

Another tool you can use - eConnect. A lot of GP vendors have created eConnect templates for ease-of-use and faster ROI.

You can also look at SQL Server Integration Services. This improved version of DTS is a true ETL solution for enterprises.

My 2 cents, spend more time choosing the right tool as each can have their pros and cons. Also consider creating a Staging database when you're not sure if data is reliable enough to be imported to GP.