Great Plains Product Tour

The following article is designed to walk you through some of the look and feel and functionality of Great Plains . The objective is to provide prospective purchasers the opportunity to learn a little bit about the product before taking that next big step of contacting a sales representative. Hopefully, this information will help you pre-qualify the product and determine whether it is a reasonable candidate for consideration.

User Interface

Great Plains has a different user interface. Not only do we love the color (not grey), but we also like their approach to displaying information. 

The Great Plains menu reflects  the way users use the accounting system - not how programmers write the system. In the past, older accounting programs grouped their menu items together based on module. With Great Plains, the grouping is based on activities. For example:  

1. On a day-to-day basis, the user would use the “Transactions ” icon to record daily transactions.
2. On a monthly basis, the user would select the “Routines" or "Reports ” icons to produce the necessary month end reports or run the appropriate month-end routines.
3. The “Cards ” icon is used on an as-needed basis to set up new customers inventory items, employees, etc.

 This design is more intuitive and therefore makes the system easier to use.

Once a user chooses the type of activity he wishes to perform, he will then select a "series" (Financial, Sales, etc) from a drop down list.  This brings him to the "palettes" displayed on the desktop above.

Okay at this point, I just have to make a comment - don't you wonder how much time and energy software developers devote to naming the stuff you see on the screen?  Who decided that these were going to "palettes" instead of "tablets" or "panels" for example? GW

The interesting thing about these "palettes" is that they can be pinned to the desktop so that the user can access activities from one place.  Add to that the fact that there is a nice little shortcut bar (visible on the left hand side of the screen) and we think you're looking at a pretty good user experience.

Macros

One of the more powerful features in any accounting software package is the macro recorder. With a macro recorder, a user can simply create a macro named “Reports” and then proceed to print all of the company’s required reports for the month with just one click of the button. Thereafter, each month the user would simply invoke the macro named “Reports” and walk away from the computer. The macro would labor for hours printing out the correct reports and the correct quantity of reports required by the company.  

Other routine operations such as month end closings reversing entries, and data exporting procedures could easily be set to run from a macro command. Further, the macro can be added to the shortcuts window making it even easier for a novice or advanced user to operate the system.

Explorer View

It must be okay to use Microsoft terminology when you're part of Microsoft. Anyone who has used Windows Explorer knows intuitively what they will get when they select the "Explorer" view in Great Plains.  They're going to see a list of folders on the left hand side with some detailed information on the right.  

That's exactly what they get. Of course you also get quick access to Excel and Word and a familiar toolbar that even includes favorites. The explorer view of the information in Great Plains provides direct access to the database via tables.

One click of the Excel icon sends the entire table to Excel.

If you didn't get everything you needed in the table, you can change the columns displayed as shown below or apply search filters to locate the information you need.

Inventory

One of the best ways to evaluate any accounting software package is simply to set up a single inventory item from start to finish. The trained eye can quickly see just how sophisticated the accounting software package is. In the case of Great Plains, there are a total of 10 screens which are used to set up just one inventory item. This may sound like a lot of screens and a lot of work - and it is. But Great Plains is more sophisticated than most accounting systems and more screens were necessary to accommodate the large number of fields and options that the system provides. To Great Plains' credit, they have done a nice job of grouping their options together using dialog buttons which are fairly easy to navigate and fairly easy to use.

Great Plains provides a Class Id field to store certain settings to simplify inventory setup. All items in a single class can share posting accounts, price groups, default pricing levels and more as shown in the screen below.  Proper grouping of like items into classes will  reduce the setup time for inventory items.

Routines

Another interesting feature is Great Plains routines. With this feature, Great Plains provides the capability to create periodic checklists of procedures to be performed say on a monthly basis. For example, one company’s procedures may involve manually entering the depreciation entries, posting the various modules to the general ledger, and printing the financial reports. These items can all be set up under the checklist and macros can be used to run these procedures. In this manner, the user would simply use the Routine icon to pull up the checklist at month end, and then click on each of the procedures to be performed. The system would automatically perform these procedures and indicate that the procedure has been completed on the checklist. The system even keeps track of who ran each procedure. The screen below shows where routines are created.

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