3.5 Company setup
There are a number of company settings, such as
addresses, tax registration, internet user defined field labels, and
additional setup options, that are grouped together on the Company Setup window in Dynamics GP. To open the Company Setup window navigate to Microsoft Dynamics GP | Tools | Setup | Company | Company.
Company Setup window
The name you entered for your company when you were creating it in Dynamics GP Utilities will show at the top under Company Name. You can change the Company Name
at any time, this is what controls the name that shows in the drop-down
list of companies available when you log into Dynamics GP, as well as
at the top of every window in Dynamics GP. For example, NJW has decided
there is no reason to have the , Inc. shown here, so they have changed the Company Name to Not Just Widgets. As soon as OK is clicked on the Company Setup window this change will be propagated throughout Dynamics GP.
When creating a test company, you can add<TEST> to the end of the Company Name.
This will cause a message to pop up every time a user logs into that
company, letting them know this is a test company and should not be used
for live data. If you are using the Payroll module, this will also
cause employees created in the test company to not be counted against
the purchased registered employee count. You can see the SQL database
name for this company under Company ID—this is informational only and cannot be changed.
Because a company could have multiple addresses,
each address needs to be assigned an Address ID. These are alphanumeric
and can be up to 15 characters long. The recommendation for company
Address IDs is to pick something simple and meaningful to users. So if a
company has two offices and three warehouses, one option for their
Address IDs may be: NJ OFFICE, NY OFFICE, NJ WAREHOUSE, NY WAREHOUSE,
and PA WAREHOUSE.
On the Company Setup window, enter the Address ID for the main company location. The Name field under the Address ID is where the full company name should be entered and this is what will be printed on reports. Enter the Contact, Address, Phone, and Fax details for the main location. Additional addresses can be entered by clicking the Address button, which will open a new Company Addresses Setup window.
There are two User Defined and two Tax Exempt fields that can hold additional information that may need to be added to various reports or just stored. The Tax Registration
field should be filled in with the company's tax ID (EIN), this will be
what populates on the 1099 forms printed by Dynamics GP. If you prefer
not to put the tax registration number here, the EIN can be filled in
manually every time you print 1099s. Defaults for the Sales and Purchases Tax Schedules for the company can optionally be filled in.
The Security checkbox will be checked by default—it is highly recommended to leave this checked. Unchecking Security will disable all the security settings in Dynamics GP. The following is an example of the NJW Company Setup window, after having changed the Company Name and filled in the details:
Internet User Defined
Clicking the Internet User Defined button on the Company Setup window will open the Internet User Defined Setup
window. There are eight labels that can be changed for the internet
information stored for a Dynamics GP company. These labels are shared by
vendors, customers, inventory items, salespeople, and company
addresses, so if you decide to change them, try to use labels that will
be generic across all those objects.
The Internet User Defined Labels
can be changed at any time, however, if they are changed after data is
already entered, additional data manipulation may be required to move
the data into appropriate fields.
The following is an example of the Internet User Defined Setup window with a few changes from the defaults. As the last two fields (corresponding to Label 7 and Label 8) have browse buttons next to them, NJW has decided to make them file locations for customer or vendor contracts and proposals:
As soon as the changes are made, these labels will now be used on the Internet Information window (accessed by clicking the internet icon to the right of the Address ID field):
The E-mail Addresses section on the Internet Information
window is used if you are sending e-mail documents from Dynamics GP to
your customers and vendors. These should be in the regular e-mail
address format and, you can enter multiple e-mail addresses separated by
a semicolon (;) in each of the fields.
On the Internet Information section any e-mail addresses must be prefaced with a MAILTO: to work. URLs and file locations can be in the regular format, as shown in the previous examples.
Company options
Clicking the Options button on the Company Setup window opens the Company Setup Options
window. Here you will find a lengthy list of options that can be turned
on or off as needed for various functionality inside Dynamics GP. A
detailed explanation of each option can be found by clicking the Help icon or F1 on your keyboard and selecting Fields.
Most of these options are either only applicable to particular countries or rarely used, and only two are checked by default:
Use Shipping Method when Selecting Default Tax Schedule:
Typical Dynamics GP functionality is to determine what tax schedule to
use for purchasing and sales transactions based on the type of shipment
method selected. For example, on a sales invoice, if the shipment is
being delivered to the customer, then the customer's tax schedule is
used. If the customer is picking up the shipment at your location, then
your company's tax schedule is used. Unchecking this option would cause
Dynamics GP not to take the shipment method into consideration and would
always use the tax schedule for the customer or vendor on transactions.
Allow Summary-Level Tax Edits: This
option allows tax summary values to be edited, which may be useful for
some reports. Changing summary values does not change any transactional
data or calculations. Most companies do not use summary values, however
it does not hurt anything to leave this option enabled.
For most Dynamics GP implementations the two options above are the only ones that need to be selected.
3.6 Fiscal Periods
Fiscal Periods define the structure
of your accounting periods and years in Dynamics GP. Each company set up
in Dynamics GP has a completely independent fiscal period setup. During
installation, Dynamics GP will create a default fiscal year based on
the calendar year of the application installation date. Prior to
entering any transactions into Dynamics GP, be sure to go through the
fiscal period setup, especially if your fiscal year is not a calendar
year with twelve standard months.
To open the Fiscal Periods Setup window navigate to Microsoft Dynamics GP | Tools | Setup | Company | Fiscal Periods.
Depending on how much historical data you have decided to enter or
import, you will need to set up each fiscal year required. For example,
NJW uses a calendar fiscal year and has decided to import ending
balances for 2007, and then monthly balances for 2008, 2009, and 2010.
The following are the steps to create years 2007 through 2010 for NJW:
1. Type 2007 in the Year field and press Tab.
2. Change the First Day to 01/01/2007 and the Last Day to 12/31/2007.
3. Confirm that the Number of Periods is 12. (This should be the default.)
4. Click Calculate, this will fill in the grid with twelve lines, one for each month.
5. Confirm that the Date column has the correct beginning date
for each period/month. If your fiscal periods are not calendar months,
you will need to manually type in the beginning date for each period in
the Date column.
6. Optionally, change the Period Name for each Period
to the name of the month. This is not required, and certainly for a
calendar fiscal year, it is easy to understand that Period 5 is May.
However, the Period Name is what will
show on all Dynamics GP reports and inquiry windows and it is much
easier for users to see the month names here. For a non-calendar fiscal
year this is even more important. To speed up progress on this window,
once you finish typing in a month name, press the down arrow on the
keyboard to go to the next month.
Note that there is no Save button on the Fiscal Periods Setup
window. All changes on this window are applied as soon as they are
made. If you are looking to test or experiment with changes on this
window, switch to the Fabrikam sample company instead of testing in your
live company.
7. Once done with 2007, repeat steps 1 through 6 for 2008 and 2009.
8. As 2010 was automatically created during the installation, click on the drop-down arrow for Year and select 2010. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for 2010.
When done, your Year drop down should look like the following example:
The Fiscal Periods Setup window for the year 2010 should look similar to the following:
When you exit the Fiscal Periods Setup window you may get a pop-up with the following message:
As you have not entered any balances or transactions
yet, this is not an issue and you do not need to perform any additional
steps at this time.
