Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it. Now it is defined to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele. Small businesses utilize Small Business Manager (which is based on the same technology Great Plains Dexterity dictionary and runtime), Great Plains Standard on MSDE is for small to midsize clients, and then Great Plains serves the rest of the advertise up to big corporations. There are several reporting tools available and you definitely positive need to understand which one to use for different types of reports.

If you are developer who is asked: how do we create report for Microsoft Great Plains read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

1. Great Plains Report Writer (ReportWriter) this is built-in reporting tool. All the original report in Great Plains are written in ReportWriter. ReportWriter itself is Dexterity module. You should make use of this tool if you would like to modify existing Great Plains reports, such as Blank Invoice Form - here you may place your company logo, change the positioning, fonts, colors, etc. ReportWriter will allow you also do new reports - simple option if you want to export all the records from one Great Plains table - make use of it. New report, however doesnt have interface where you would enter parameters - so it is not useful for real custom reports. Another limitation of ReportWriter - you might not do cross-modules report - when you positive need sales and purchasing info on the identical report for example.

2. FRx. This is excellent tool when deal with financial reporting - it works on the General Ledger level (Balance sheet, P&L, Cash Flow Statement, etc.). It also allows you to do multiple companies consolidation - when you do consolidated Balance Sheet (with inter-businesses transactions elimination).

3. Smart List - Export to Excel this is nice feature in Great Plains - you could create a list with simple criteria and then export it to Excel.

4. Crystal Reports. It gives you unlimited functionality. Obviously flexibility requires you to know Great Plains table structure: Launch Great Plains and go to Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Find the table in the proper series. If you are looking for the customers it should be RM00101 customer master file. If you need historical Sales Order Processing documents they are in SOP30200 Sales History Header file, etc. Create ODBC connection to GP Company database. Use the same technique as when you create standard ODBC connection for GP workstation but change default database to clear-cut company database. Create SQL Query to probe the data we always recommend tuning your query and see that you are taking adequate results in any case Crystal Report is just a nice tool to show the results of your query.

5. Direct Web Publishing off Great Plains databases yes - it is user friendly now with Visual Studio.Net and you can hire grand programmers. This is great - Microsoft Business Solutions products: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta will be integrated into so said Microsoft Business Portal - which will have web interface - you might get the idea if you look at Microsoft CRM web client - so derecti web publishing is sizeably good taste.

6. SQL Queries. If you have SQL background - this is grand field for you. You know - with properly formatted SQL query you may realize simple EDI export/import for the integration with legacy systems.

Happy designing! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization business , based in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, VB/C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

akarasev@albaspectrum.com