Microsoft Great Plains customization – Freight Forwarding/Transportation
industry example
Andrew Karasev
Alba Spectrum Technologies
USA
1-866-528-0577,
1-630-961-5918,
help@albaspectrum.com
With this small article we'll begin series of
industry solutions highlights for Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft CRM,
Microsoft RMS, Navision and cross-integrations. Check our website on
logistics, distribution centers, warehouse management, barcoding, store
inventory item count, shipping/receiving, online web ordering, ecommerce,
international business, EDI, wholesale.
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains
version 8.5, 8.0, 7.5, Great Plains eEnterprise/Dynamics 7.0, 6.0, Dynamics C/S+
5.5 and 5.0 serve USA,
UK, South Africa, Australia, Middle
East horizontal market. As being relatively inexpensive solution, it is
reasonably open to be customizable to fit specific industry niche. In this
small article we’ll give you highlight on how Great Plains could serve specific
vertical demands of transportation and freight forwarding industry
Industry requirements:
- Agent Monthly
Settlement invoicing. Freight
Forwarders use agents and usually pay them on the monthly basis, depending on
the results. Freight Forwarded pays fees and collects money from customers,
and if collection exceeds fees – it pays to the agent, in the opposite case it
issues debit memo. Agent should receive detailed invoice.
- Shipment Inquiry
Form. Usually each Freight
Forwarding has custom or standard shipping tracking system. This system is
primary source of information about the shipment, then all the collections and
fees and associated customer and vendor invoices are moved to Accounting
Application, such as Microsoft Great Plains. From this accounting/ERP system
we need Shipment Inquiry functionality with the report on the profit/loss from
this specific shipment
Microsoft Great Plains
realization:
- Technology.
Microsoft Great Plains sits on MS SQL Server platform and typical technologies
are: Stored Procedures and also Great Plains Dexterity for Screens and Reports
– this is Great Plains Software (currently Microsoft Business Solutions)
proprietary software development language and IDE
- Integration –
is usually realized through Microsoft SQL Server linked server architecture
and distributed queries. These queries might be triggered or placed as MSSQL
Server overnight job. Transactions come to Sales Order Processing (SOP) and
Purchase Order Processing (POP) modules, where they are placed into batches.
Batches then should be processed by AP/AR departments
- Agent Monthly
Settlement. This should be realized as Great Plains Dexterity custom
window, with two scrolling windows on it, where you should list SOP Invoices
and POP Shipments with Invoices
- Shipment Inquiry
Form. Use the same Great Plains Dexterity custom window technology.
- Reports – you
are free to use either Dexterity report or Crystal Reports designer
Good luck and you can always seek our
help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us:
1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918,
help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew Karasev is Chief
Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains,
Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona,
Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe,
Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (
http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports
and Microsoft CRM SDK