Here’s what’s happening with Management Reporter for GP.
In December 2010, Feature Pack 1 for Management Reporter was released for Microsoft Dynamics GP. Here’s what Feature Pack 1 does for you:
- Currency Translation – New functionality added to expand existing currency translation capabilities. This update works with new features offered in the install of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Service Pack 1.
- Formatting – Issues with currency symbol, conditional printing and cell shading have been resolved.
Forecaster Integration—well, it’s not exactly here yet. But yesterday a Forecaster Data Transfer Tool was released. This tool transfers budget data in Forecaster to the budget tables in Dynamics GP (as well as SL and AX). Once the data has been transferred, Management Reporter can pull it.
Anybody using currency translation in GP 2010 with MR yet? Please comment!
Hi,
I have been trying to use the MR multicurrency. Seems like it could be quite good, but am having difficulties pulling some currencies from GP sometimes. The set up seems to all happen in GP, so I think that my issues are coming from the GP setup.
In GP you set up the exchange tables, then you have to assign the currencies to Current, Historical, average, budget etc. I think this eliminates the need to do it in the ROW definition that FRx needed you to do, as you then need to assign fx types to the nominal accounts in GP.
Since it is pulling data from GP, and seems to link together, i’m not sure how other software will be able to pull in FX rates.
I’m relatively new to the product so am just working my way through it, and there don’t seem to be many good guides regarding multicurrency translations.
Also, just a quick questions. I imagine that MR and FRx would be the same. Is it possible to pull in data from 2 different companies in the Row Definition? I need to show sales for company A and company B (both have the same nominal codes), I need them showing in the same column.
Thank you
Chris
Thanks for the currency comments!
Re your ‘2 different companies’ question, that’s a consolidation that can easily be accomplished by using a reporting tree with both companies included. The row is simple because both companies have the same main account. Good luck. Jan
I’ve been doing extensive testing of currency translation with MR FP1 and GP2010. It’s very well done, and it’s also the ONLY reason I would recommend moving from FRx to MR at this point. Moving currency translation out of the report writer and into the ERP system was a great move, and so far it works very well. it’s particularly good for someone who has lots of accounts that need to be translated at historic rates; just setup the appropriate translation table in GP and forget about all those historic folders and layers in FRx.
Having paid a compliment, now I have to say that overall I think MR is an awful product. It’s horribly unstable and uses far too much technology for a small-to-mid-range report writer. Count up the pieces and see what can go wrong: MR client, SQL database, MR SQL service, ERP provider, and IIS. In addition, several nice features were left out of MR (Webport, row linking, effective dates, and the beloved ‘sum’ button).
Think of it as FRx Lite: all of the instability with half the functionality.
THANKS re currency.
(I’m DYING for effective dates.)
Hi Dave,
I’m a developer on the Management Reporter product (and FRx before it). We certainly have some areas to work on and will continue to do as much as we can in upcoming service packs and other releases. I’ve shared your comments with our Program Managers and Development Manager. I’d like to hear your experiences and issues that cause you to describe MR as horribly unstable – hopefully your input can help us improve.
On the technology side, you’re right – it’s tough. Small-to-mid-range isn’t our only goal. To support all of the Dynamics ERPs, we must be more secure, support more users and more data, and provide features that may not be as attractive to smaller customers. FRx is great for simplicity, but it isn’t very capable of handling a lot of users or data, nor is it scalable. We have to try to find the right balance to support big and small and our best way to meet those goals is through use of Microsoft technologies, including IIS and SQL Server.
I look forward to hearing your feedback and will do my best to put it to good use.
Thank you,
Jeff
Sorry, I left my last name off that post…
I want to use currency translation in row definition is it possible? how?
Management Reporter handles currency translation completely differently from FRx. It pulls already translated currency from the source ERP. Cheers—Jan
Tested out MR2012 with GP and found that I can doing Currency Translation perfectly for the month only. If I try and run a report that has multiple months then it fails. If doing a quarterly report (Jan/Feb/March) and March is your base period on the report it will translate all of your columns using the March currency translation. (jan with March Fx rates, Februay with March Fx rates, March with March Fx rates. Only other thing I still can’t do, is get MR2012 is to give me a Gross Margin Percentage. Seems to have issues with that.
BTW, got told that I had to vote to get this fixed. A little more than upset on that one. How do you report in Jan/Feb/March one set of financials in then do a quarterly report and nothing matches. Just that old axiom in accounting called consistency that Microsoft seems to be ignoring. And they sell accounting software?
Hi all,
I am testing MR currency. I can’t getthe translated numbers to show other than zero, but probably a setup issue.
-GBP functional currency
-want to report in USD
-have column Currency source set to Reporting USD
-create a GBP-USD rate table, assigned it in m/c setup and put in some test rates
-not sure what I am missing yet
How are you all handling the CTA? It won’t allow applying a HIST and SPOT to the same account so you can’t do the calculation that way. I am not a fan of the rounding plug options so wondering if people found a way around it without linking to excel rate sheets.
thx,
Doug
Sounds like you have Currency Source correct; that’s what tells system to translate. Maybe check Currency Filter since that will reduce the number of transactions pulled.
Thanks Jan, I had an issue with the test rate tables I had set up.
The question stands to anyone on how they are calculating CTA with MR.