Microsoft Great Plains Multicurrency – overview for implementation consultant
 

by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Great Plains is main Microsoft Business Solutions accounting package for the US market, where multicurrency issues are rare.  However even US companies may have branches in foreign countries where they use Great Plains.  Microsoft Great Plains is also in use in Spanish speaking Latin America, UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa.  When you first think about multicurrency – you probably have in mind the revaluation question.  Currency triangulation – which was the need when European currencies were fixed to Euro is now not actual any more.

1. Sales and Purchasing multicurrency – when you are selecting accounting package with multicurrency, you need first understand if it has multicurrency on the Sales and Purchasing modules level, not just in GL.   The problem behind if like this.  When you have sales in foreign currency – you will probably get the payment later on when currency may potentially lose some value against your functional currency (like US Dollar or Euro – however in our days Dollar is very good candidate to do so, but this is outside of the scope).  Then – even if you do have payments upfront in foreign currency – you probably don’t plan to convert this currency to functional for repatriation, you probably keep it in the local bank and so your foreign money is subject to fluctuation in comparison to functional currency
2. Unrealized and Realized Gains and Losses – gain or loss is unrealized when transaction is not yet settled (like payment is not received and not applied – but you would already like to know if you have unrealized gain or loss).  When transaction is settled – then realized gain or loss might be in place – this is simply the difference of what if you would get immediate payment and got payment now.
3. Revaluation – this is when you decide to recalculate your Sales, Purchasing transaction and post realized and unrealized gains or losses.  As the result you usually want GL transaction to be created
4. GL Multicurrency – is simplified version.  You may have transactions entered directly in GL with foreign currency selected – in this case it is subject for possible revaluation.
5. Microsoft Great Plains Multicurrency – it is on the level of the following modules: GL, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing, Bank Reconciliation, Project Accounting.  So it is full-featured multicurrency.

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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 developer.