Great Plains Reseller Newsflash: Gp Accounting for Dos Support

There might be the reasons why you are sticking to old Great Plains Accounting application for DOS or Windows, likely versions 9.5 or 9.2.  And we believe that you already got an upgrade to Dynamics GP quote from local Great Plains VAR or consultant, and likely the price is out of your expectations and reasonable budget for 2008 and 2009 seems to be also grim.  The biggest challenge for Great Plains Accounting users and IT department is to get GPA consultant either local or nationwide, who still remembers this old ERP system.  Second typical problem is existing GPA consultants are usually functional, not very technical and if you would like to move your Great Plains Accounting to new hardware and something like Windows 2003 Server – this exercise might be too complex for these folks.  However there are still GPA support options available:

1.       GPA technical support.  Most feasible to get it from nation-wide Great Plains Partner, who carries technical and functional support call center, where GP technicians specialize in narrower product lines.  GPA is likely supported by consultants, who are comfortable also supporting Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL Server 2000 and Btrieve.  GPA has similar functionality, such as GL, AP, AR, Sales Order, Purchase Order, US and Canadian Payroll, Projects, System Manager modules, similar to initial Great Plains Dynamics, introduced in earlier 1990th.

2.       Moving GPA for DOS to new hardware and OS.  Our recommendation is to move GPA to Windows 2003 Server (or Small Business Server 2003 R2) with Pervasive SQL 2000 SP3 and GPA users should use Windows XP SP2.  This is doable and this migration will open another 10 years of enjoying this archaic DOS based MRP and ERP application, which is in fact extremely reliable and technology pitfalls proof.  These qualities make it really leader in cost efficiency, assuming that your business processes are the same as they used to be in late 20 century

3.       Great Plains Accounting licenses.  If you need new licenses, unfortunately there is no way to purchase them from Microsoft Business Solutions, support was retired in 2001 or around that time

4.       GPA upgrade.  Natural path is to Dynamics GP Business Ready, current version is 10.0.  However if you prefer budget version and consider SAP Business One – this is possible to move beginning balances to SB1, train your users and launch it in production in a couple of weeks