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Great Plains Integration Example: importing MS CRM hours to GP Service Invoice

by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Dynamics GP customization tools selection changed with the introduction of eConnect. If you are on version 9.0 or higher (current GP version is 10.0 – August 2008), we recommend you to deploy eConnect in GP integration routines programming. In this small publication we would like to orient you in Microsoft CRM consulting hours capturing and moving them into Great Plains SOP invoice for billing out to your customers. This example allows MBS consulting practice to build their time billing and accounting systems virtually for free, as Microsoft Dynamics certified partners at this time enjoy GP and Microsoft CRM licenses for free

  1. Service Activity in MS CRM. You can schedule, assign your CRM users and resources, associate with Account, Contract, Contract Line or even case. In our example we have case, created on contract line level as future Service Invoice in GP
  2. Account contract and contract lines. In MS CRM you budget your time and assign hours (more precisely minutely) rates on the contract line level. Then you invoice contract to enable creating case, associated with contract line and toward this case your consultants log their time in the form of tasks.
  3. Closing the cases and transferring them to your custom time log table. First of all, you should know that in MS CRM database you should not create custom objects, such as table, view, stored procedure. Instead you should create new database and place your custom objects there. Having time log table, you should create nightly SQL job, which will move closed cases and their tasks into time log table and mark these cases as transferred
  4. Creating Service Invoices in GP. This job is done by eConnect application. You scan time log table, and create SOP Invoice with non-inventory item lines simply by placing consultant name as item number and description as task title. Finally, when your eConnect routine creates Sales Invoice for the case, you should mark case as integrated in your time log table
  5. Dexterity nature of GP tables and fields. Great Plains Dexterity places some limitations on the length of GP SOP invoice line records. Please, read about the field descriptions in GP tables in Tools->Resource Description->Tables

Author Resource Box

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum http://www.albaspectrum.com help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving Great Plains USA and Canada nationwide. Local service in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Diego. Please visit our information portal Pegas Planet: http://www.pegasplanet.com . If you need custom programming for GP, we are happy to help you with Dexterity, eConnect, VBA/Modifier, SQL Stored Procedures, Crystal Reports. We also provide instant support to new and existing clients via web sessions for the customers in CA, IL, WI, NY, FL, IN, MI, TX, GA, NE, NM, AI, NC, SC, OR, WA, DC, DE, PA, VI, AZ, LA