Introducing
Microsoft Great Plains
Small Business Information
Systems
Professor Barry Floyd
Agenda
 Installing Great Plains as a standalone
systems
 Backing up and restoring data
 Overview of Great Plains
 Payables Management
– Setup issues
– Processing transactions
– Reporting
Objectives
 See a more powerful ERP system
 Contrast similarities and differences with a
system such as QuickBooks
 Be able to effect transactions in Great Plains
 Associate roles/personas with activities and
tasks in Great Plains
Great Plains Positioning in
Marketplace
 Microsoft Great Plains 8.0, a cross-industry
solution for the midmarket business segment, has
been enhanced to deliver richer distribution,
manufacturing and project accounting; a Microsoft
Office look and feel; seamless integration with
Microsoft Office; a deeper focus on Microsoft
Business Solutions Business Portal functionality;
and improved usability. Microsoft Great Plains
offers rich out-of-the-box functionality and a broad
set of independent software vendor (ISV) solutions
References
 http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/gp/defa
ult.mspx
Great Plains Overview
 Key Series
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Financial
Sales
Purchasing
Inventory
HR and Payroll
Manufacturing
Projects
Field Service
 Can use some or all of these series, data is posted to each
‘series’ and then is integrated with other Series as desired.
 Go to Help and enter “Series” and click on “Described”
File
View
Tools
Transactions
Inquiry
Reports
Cards
 Cards in Great Plains are the “master
records” of information, such as your chart
of accounts and your customer, vendor, and
employee records. To access a card in
Great Plains, choose the Cards menu from
the menu bar and select a series. A menu
will appear, from which you can choose a
window to enter information in.
Help
 Very important for understanding Microsoft
Great Plains.
 Provides detailed (but complicated)
descriptions of setting up and using Great
Plains
Payables Management
Using Great Plains
What is Payables Management?
 The paying of goods, supplies, or services
 Approving vendor invoices for payment
 Monitoring and evaluating efficiency and
effectiveness through access to detailed
information in inquires and reports
The Big Picture!
What Payables Management Covers
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Setup and Cards for Vendors
Transactions
Inquiries and Reports
Utilities and Routines
Using the Setup Routine
 Begin by setting up defaults for
Payables Management.
(Tools>Routines>Purchasing>Checklist)
Purchasing Checklists
Payables Management Setup Screen
Vendor Classes
Setting up Vendor Classes is a
way to group vendors according to
common entries.
Why use a Vendor Class?
 Creating a class will make it easier to setup
individual vendors by designating defaults
for that specified class.
 You can also make changes to groups of
vendors quickly by changing the class
record and rolling down the change to all
vendors in that class.
Vendor Class Setup Screen
Setting up Default Account for
Vendor Classes
 After entering in the options it is time to
determine how you will be recording
different transaction with these vendors.
 On the bottom right of the setup screen click
on the Accounts button.
Setting up vendor class default
posting accounts
Vendor Cards
 Now that we have setup our Vendor Class
we can begin entering in individual vendors
to that class.
Entering Vendor Information
In class exercise
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Add a new vendor ….
Choose the class USA-US-C
Create one PRIMARY Address
Check to see the accounts associated with
this class.
Transactions
Invoices
Manual Payments
Entering An Invoice
Transactions>>
Purchasing>>
Transaction Entry
Entering an Invoice
Inquiry – Payables Summary
Paying An Invoice
Paying An Invoice
Inquiries
Purchasing Lists
Reports
 Reports > Purchasing > Check Information
– Click New
– Choose Demo
– Click Destination … choose screen
Summary
 Great Plains supports Payables
 We have only scratched the surface
 We’ll review other apps in the next couple of
days
 Add your own vendors to Great Plains
 Add other vendors from Companies in the
class.
 Review Great Plains on Purchase Orders