Category: Dynamics AX 2012

Employee Cash advance management in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Hi Friends,

Tracking the money that employees spend when incurring expenses for your business is a real key of Expenses management in an organization.

In today’s post we will discuss about the employee cash advance management feature of AX 2012.

We will start with the process of employee submitting a request for cash advance, the approver reviewing and approving it, paying the employee and then we will also see a little bit of process how the employee can return his cash advances.

Employee Submits Cash advance request in Employee self-service portal :

1. Navigate to the Manage Expenses > Cash advance request area in the Enterprise portal.

2. Click New Cash advance request and key in required details for this request. Save and close after filling in the details. Then, submit the request for approval.

Two easy to use steps for employees to submit cash advance request !!

Approver reviews the Cash advance request:

1. Approver logs into enterprise portal and finds the cash advance request assigned to him/her for review.

2. Approver opens the cash advance request and then reviews and approves it.

Just two clicks !! QUICK and Easy for the reviewer/approver.

Finance team pays to the employee after the request got approved :

1. The finance teams logs in to AX and navigates to view the approved cash advance requests.

2. One click PAY !! The finance team member/user just clicks the Pay and transfer button and AX 2012 does the rest. Employee gets PAID !! System automatically creates and posts the required financial voucher entry for this transaction based on the setups which are done.

See below the automatic financial journal created and posted in the system.

The cash advance payment cycle for the employee is completed in few simple steps.

Let us now take a quick look at how the employee can return the cash back or how an employee can expense his cash advances in AX 2012.

1. Employee logs into the Enterprise portal and navigates to expense management area and create a new expense report and clicks Other > Return cash advance.

2. System automatically shows all your reconciled cash advances. Select the one you want to expense and select the expense category and submit the expense report.

DONE !!

System creates the necessary financial journals after the expense report is approved and posted.

Simply POWERFUL

Till next time !!! Keep reading

July 1, 2012
Accelerated billing/invoicing for Projects in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012–(Progress based billing)
Automated, accurate and faster billing in Projects is one aspect, which every professional service organization look as one of the winning factors, when they choose an ERP application for their organization.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 ERP is equipped with a powerful project billing engine, which helps in faster invoice processing by providing the various capabilities.
1. Transactions to be billed in a given time period are recommended automatically.
2. Automated workflow for invoice and submission and approval.
3. Automated and accurate progress based billing based on % of work complete in the project.
4. Support for complex billing scenarios such as T&M based, Milestone based, unit based billing etc.
5. Option to specify complex billing scenarios such as T&M based, Milestone based, Per unit billing etc.
In today’s post I will highlight one of the billing/invoicing features of AX 2012 which is the billing based on the progress of work in the project. This feature of AX 2012 allows professional services firms to automate the billing process without having the need of their project accounting staff spending days and weeks to determine the accurate completion stage of the project.

In Microsoft dynamics AX 2012, the project managers can set up the project in the system and define a budget for the project and then, the system can calculate the progress based periodic billable amounts automatically.

This can just be accomplished by executing the below simple steps.

1. Setup the Project and required basic details for it.

2. Setup the appropriate billing rule in the Project Contract.

3. Estimate the Project and establish a project level budget.

With the above minimal setup done, when project transactions are posted, AX 2012 system can calculate the current completion stage/percentage of the project automatically without having you the need of the project accounting staff doing to manually which will take a considerably longer time.

Based on the % complete for the project, system will automatically calculate the amount to be billed at the current state of the project.

This was just one method in the billing engine of AX 2012 and there are several others, which supports more complex billing scenarios.

Simple, Powerful !! This is it for today. Please contact me if you need further detailed and expert advise on billing capabilities of Microsoft dynamics AX 2012.

Keep DAXING

Sandeep
June 25, 2012
Intercompany Timesheets Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
Hi All,

I had been very busy with several things on my plate at work. Work keeps all of us busy.

It feels bad for not being able to spend time on my blog and finally decided to take out some time and write here.

In today’s post, we will explore and discuss about one of the important functionality in the Project Management area which is “Intercompany timesheets functionality”.

In every mid sized to a large-sized professional service industry, it is a common practice that employees/workers of the organization keep working on the projects of different legal entities where as they will be employed in only one legal entity.

The loaning and borrowing activity of employees between the legal entities is essential to make efficient utilization and putting right people if the right job possible. When working on the projects of legal entities other than their employing legal entity, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 make it simple for the employees to register their times/hours directly on the projects of the contracting company/resource borrowing company, without having the need for the employee to enter times at multiple places and multiple times.

NOTE : Intercompany Timesheets Management functionality will be available only if the AX 2012 feature pack is installed.

In the subsequent steps and paragraphs of this post, we will explore the various setups and the overall intercompany timesheets operation in AX2012.

Let us refer the two legal entities which exchange the employees as the Loaning entity/Resourcing and the Borrowing/Contracting entity.

The following setups needs to be completed in AX 2012 in the Loaning legal entity.

1. Enable the intercompany timesheets management in the project parameters screen.

2. Setup pricing details for the employees who are to be loaned. This includes setting up the cost price and the transfer price. The cost price however is ideally setup for all employees weather they will be loaned or not. The transfer price represents the price which the loaning legal entity charges to the borrowing legal entity.

Transfer price setup:

Cost price setup:

3. Setup the ledger accounts for the inter company cost and revenue.

4. Make sure that the debit and credit accounts for the intercompany transactions are setup.

This completes the setup required in the loaning/resourcing company.

Now, let us complete the setup needed to be done in AX 2012 in the borrowing legal entity.

1. Setup sales prices for the borrowed resources which the the actual selling price in the project.

2. Setup the debit and the credit accounts for the legal entity the worker will be borrowed from.

3. Further additional setups can be done, like assigning projects and categories to the borrowed worker if the validation functionality is implemented.

Now that we are done with the minimum setups required for the intercompany timesheet functionality to be operational, let us take a look at the steps/process by which the borrowed employee can submit this timesheets in the borrowing/contracting company.
- Employee logs into AX 2012 enterprise portal and navigates to the new timesheets screen.
- Notice the new Legal entity field in the timesheet line which gets enabled when we enable the intercompany timesheets in AX2012.
- Also notice that the loaning and the borrowing/contracting companies are displayed in the look up of the legal entity field. The worker will select CEE as the legal entity and enter their times in.
So the employee will be able to submit his/her times in the project of the other legal entity without having to be an employee of that legal entity.

The back end accounting is then done automatically based on the setups done.

For any queries regarding the inter company timesheets functionality, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Till next time !!!
June 7, 2012
The Power of Customer Self-service portal in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
Hi Readers,

I could not spend time on my blog since last few weeks due to my extended vacation. I know i owe answers/responses to a few of you. I will start doing it from today again. Sorry about this.

In today’s post we will take a look at all the important capabilities of the customer self-service portal.

The customer self-service portal, which is an out of box feature of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 adds to the list of several other simple yet powerful list of features.

This enables your customers to work with you in more efficient way without having the need to several manual interventions. Rather than having customers calling you and asking questions about their orders, placing new orders, asking about invoices, inquiring about products, you can just give then a log in for the customer self-service website and can do all of the above stuffs on their own.

For customers to get started with using the portal for them, all you need to do is follow few simple steps to setup the customer contact and other required details and then they are ready to go. The various capabilities of CSS(Customer self-service portal) are explained in the points below.

1. Configure Product Catalog and make it available on the web for customers to browse through your products:
- Configure Product groups:
- Prepare presentations:
- Sync and publish images to the Web/SharePoint portal:
2. You can prepare campaign items and few easy steps and make it available on the web for customers to browse through them and add to their carts.

This makes it easy for the organizations and their customers to interact easily, without having to make several calls and exchange emails to find required information about your products.

3. Customer can place Orders on the web in few simple steps:
- Add items to shopping cart
- Checkout items and initiate order
- Confirm order
And You have successfully placed your order.

4. Have customers inquire about all their orders at one place on the web without reaching out to you frequently for the status and other related information about their orders.

5. Have customers inquire about all their invoices and related information on the web.

View invoices

6. Customers can create , Manage and inquire about their item/order returns.

7. If your organization provided services on it’s products for customer and manage repairs for them, then you can have your customers/technicians create service orders on the web.

So, with these offerings on the web for making your customers work easily with you on several things on daily basis, AX 2012 can help you and customers interact everything efficiently at one place, getting most updated information about their orders and stuff etc.

This post is aimed for customers who are looking for a customer self-service portal built inside and coupled strongly with their ERP application.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 – POWERFULLY SIMPLE !!! YET AGAIN !

Till next time… Keep DAXING
May 10, 2012
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 News : Kent Watersports selects Dynamics AX 2012 as the ERP for their organization

Friends

Here is a quick news on AX 2012.

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Microsoft-Dynamics-AX/Kent-Watersports/Watersports-Companies-Bet-Their-Future-on-ERP-System-and-Powerful-Technology-Provider/315000000081

Way to go !

Thanks

Sandeep

April 20, 2012

Ledger Postings Management of Fixed Price projects in Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2012 – Scenario I

Friends,

Hope all is well your way. I Did not get chance to spend time on my blog this month.

We keep hearing a lot of questions on the ledger posting scenarios, revenue recognition etc in case of fixed price projects in Microsoft dynamics AX. Well,I thought, I will explain the various ledger posting scenarios in the life cycle a fixed price project in few of my subsequent posts.

The ledger postings in case of a fixed price project is controlled through the setup done in the Project groups. Based on the these setups, the ledger posting in a FP project can happen in 8 different ways.

We will analyze each one of the setup options one by one and verify the ledger postings. I will name these 8 ways of ledger posting as Scenario 1 to 8. We will analyze the scenario 1 in today’s post.

The 3 parameters in the project groups form which controls these ledger posting are as follows.

On-account invoicing.
Revenue recognition accounting rule.
Matching principle.

Scenario 1 :

On-account invoicing	Balance
Revenue recognition rule	Completed percentage
Matching principle	Sales value

Refer to screenshot below for the new project group which I have created.

I have created a new cost template and a fixed price project and attached this to the a new project group with above setup.

Take an example where a company owns a fixed bid contract of $500000 and agreed upon with the customer for a milestone based invoicing plan as depicted below screenshot.

Costs are incurred in the project during its progress as indicated in the table below. We will post Estimates for the project at the end of every month and eliminate it in the month of SEP.

Month	Cost in project
APR	$20,000
MAY	$25,000
JUN	$40,000
JUL	$30,000
AUG	$55,000
Total Cost	$170,000

Take a look at the tables below which shows the P&L and WIP statistics in the Project at each month before and after the estimates are posted.

I am not able to provide the AX screenshots here as I have some issues in my AX environment.

Project Profit & Loss Statement before posting estimates:

Account	Dr/Cr	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	TOTAL
Accrued revenue – sales value	Credit	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Revenue		0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Cost	Debit	$20,000	$25,000	$40,000	$30,000	$55,000	0	$170,000
Gross Margin		-20,000	-25,000	-40,000	-30,000	-55,000	0	-170000

Project WIP Statement before posting estimates:

Account	Dr/Cr	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	TOTAL
WIP– sales value	Debit	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Gross WIP		0	0	0	0	0	0	0
WIP invoiced on account	Credit	$250,000	0	$200,000		$50,000	0	$500,000
Net WIP		-250000		-200000		-50000	0	-500000

Note : The project on account invoices appear in the WIP-invoiced On account ledger.

Project Profit & Loss Statement after posting estimates:

Account	Dr/Cr	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	TOTAL
Accrued revenue – sales value	Credit	$58,800	$73,500	$117647	$88,236	$161765	0	~500000
Revenue		$58,800	$73,500	$117647	$88,236	$161765	0	~500000
Cost	Debit	$20,000	$25,000	$40,000	$30,000	$55,000	0	$170,000
Gross Margin		$38,800	$48,500	$77,647	$58,236	$106765		$1,70,052

The values for the accrued revenue are calculated based on the % complete/ Degree of completion in the project as the setup is done to be “Completed Percentage” rule.

You may notice rounding issues in the values above as I have taken random examples.

Project WIP Statement after posting estimates:

Account	Dr/Cr	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	TOTAL
WIP – sales value	Debit	$58,800	$73,500	$117647	$88,236	$161765	-500000	0
Gross WIP		$58,800	$73,500	$117647	$88,236	$161765	0	~500000
WIP invoiced on account	Credit	$250,000	0	$200,000		$50,000	-500000
Net WIP		-191200	-73,500	-82,353	-88,236	-111765	0	0

I hope my explanation of this scenario of posting in the fixed price project was clear. Please post your queries if any pertaining to this.

Till next time !!!!

Thanks

Keep DAXING Smile

March 27, 2012

Customer payment retention functionality in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
Customers always want to make sure that they get the best work/service done from their vendors successfully, in time with 100% quality ensured. In the professional services industries, most customers wants to retain/hold back certain amount/percentage of the payments, when they pay their vendors for a project work until the project completes.

Vendors can then discuss and validate with the customer about the quality and completion of the project work and request all the retained amounts upon agreement.

This functionality being fully automated in a simplified manner within the Project Management and Accounting module, empowers the list of several other capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for services industries.

Let us now understand, how this functionality works in dynamics AX 2012. The following are the setups required for the retention functionality to be working.

Setups required:
1. Define a new Main account in the “Chart of accounts” for the Customer payment retainage receivables. Ensure that the posting type for this account is “Customer Payment Retention Receivables”.
2. Setup the Customer Payment Retention Receivables account in the “Accounts for automatic transactions” form under GL module.
3. Ensure that a number sequence is setup for the Customer payment retention term in Projects parameters form.
4. Create and setup the new Fee project category for posting the customer payment retention amounts. Ensure that the Customer payment retention checkbox ins marked for this category.

Let us define the customer payment retention terms under the project management and accounting module. The payment retention term specifies the schedule for the payment retention. The customer may want the payment to be retained in one of the following ways.

– A certain percentage/amount on every invoice until the project completes.

– A certain percentage/amount on the invoices until a certain percentage of the project work is completed.

– Once you setup the retention terms, assign them to the Project Contracts, projects or the Billing rules(If you have implemented)

Now, when you process the invoicing for a project/project contract with payment retention term attached to it, you will notice the retention details, i.e the % of retention and amount in the invoice proposal screen and validate before you submit for approval.

The following shows the accounting entry when you post this invoice (Say $1000 with 10 % retention.

Customer payment retention receivable $1000 (Debit)

Project Invoiced revenue $10000 (Credit)

Customer Balance $9000 (Debit)

When you request the retained amount after agreement with the customer, system will reverse the Customer payment retention receivable entry and debit the customer balance automatically.

Customer payment retention receivable $1000 (Credit)

Customer Balance $1000 ( Debit)

Dynamics Ax 2012 also provides you options to perform several inquiries on the customer payment retention detail,s under the “Inquiries” and “Reports” sections as shown in few screen-shots below. These will help users in analyzing the customer payment retention data in projects being in a central location/screen.

Feel free to contact me if you need more information in terms of setup and processing the customer payment retention.

Thanks

Keep DAXING
March 12, 2012
An insight to the new and improved Timesheets Management Functionality in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
Hi Friends,

I thought of writing about one of the most talked about enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 which is the employee timesheets functionality in Project Management and Accounting module.

Recording the employee’s times(hours) and expenses is one of the key processes in any services industry today, especially the IT consulting and Management services firms. These firms always look for a timesheet management system in the ERP system which they evaluate for their organization which can make it efficient and easy for their employees to enter their timesheets and expenses.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 empowers the professional services industries with a powerfully simple employee services portal refered to as the Enterprise portal which is based on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 foundation server, one of the most successful products that MS has released ever.

Now let us discuss about the various capabilities and improvements of the Timesheet system in AX 2012.

Few of the pre requisites for the timesheet functionality to be working are as below.
- Setup timesheet periods. ( Ax 2012 supports Daily, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Semi-monthly and Monthly etc. periods for registering hours/times).
- Setup the project management setup for the workers. ( Employees and Contractors).
- Create required user relations.
- The project management and accounting module setup. (Projects, activities, categories, line properties etc.).
Assuming that all of the above required setups are done, employees of the organization can log into the employee services portal and start entering timesheets.

The Home page of the employee services portal displays role tailored information depending on the user profile/role which is assigned to the employee.

When an employee/contractor who has system administrator role logs into the enterprise portal, the screen looks as shown below. This shows all the various capabilities and functionalities present on the enterprise portal of AX 2012.

However, assuming the case of a typical service industry/IT consulting services industry, where employees (both salaried and hourly based) deal mostly with timesheets, expenses and their approvals, I have customized a role to prepare the employee services portal to look as below. Ax 2012 provides the flexibility of customizing the enterprise portal content the way you want it.

Timesheet Management functionality Highlights in AX 2012:
1. Provides flexibility for defining different timesheet periods depending on need.
2. Timesheets overview screen displaying details of exiting timesheets.

3. Option to set timesheet favorites/favorite lines and functionality to load timesheet lines

these from favorites.

4. Option to create new timesheet by copying an existing timesheet (Previous).

5. Setup delegates for timesheet submission, who can enter timesheets on your behalf in

your absence and manage your timesheet delegates and timesheet favorites right on the

web enterprise portal.

6. Record time on each individual task/activity or the project by entering suitable internal

and external comments for the description of the work. Week summary to date fact box

which displays the total number of hours entered in the week.

7. Employees will have to spend less time in entering comments for each line with the consolidated comments entry screen.

8. Automatic workflow can be setup for timesheet approval/review. When timesheets are

submitted, they get automatically assigned to the respective reporting manager’s queue

for review.

9. Print your timesheets right from the enterprise portal.

Apart from the timesheets management functionality, the enterprise portal in AX 2012 provided several other powerful business process capabilities and this will definitely help every organization in a very great deal.

Till next time !! Keep exploring. :)
February 16, 2012
Project Quotations Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012: Highlights of it’s Capabilities, Benefits and Usage

Bidding for attractive projects and winning them is a critical process for professional services firms today. As an initial phase of every project, project managers of the organizations use project quotations to approach customers for bidding projects easily and accurately. A typical project quotation will contain all possible details of item and services that are quoted for a project.

With MS Dynamics AX 2012, you can create quotations, create activities in quotations, schedule the activities, soft/hard commit resources, submit and approve quotations and finally convert the quotation to project. You can do all this all few setups and clicks without having the need to doing much of manual works.

In today’s post we will discuss the various capabilities of project quotations and the benefits that project managers can obtain using the project quotations functionality in dynamics AX. These are as described below.

1. You can create project quotations for exiting customers and potential prospects also. Also you can make use of quotation templates to spend less time when creating multiple new similar quotations which you have worked in the past.

2. Create and setup the work break down structure of the project activities right at the project quotation stage. You can make use of the Copy functionality of WBS to make it easier to create and define the WBS or you can also define a all new WBS for the current quotation.

3. You can generate the project quotation lines automatically from the work breakdown structure without having the need to create each line separately for the quotation. With AX 2012, you can also copy the lines of quotation from an existing quotation.

4. Setup all the various required information on/about the quotation staying in one single screen.

5. Review the estimated profitability of the quotation by just clicking one button.

6. Match and schedule/soft or hard commit resources for activity requirements of the project.

7. Submit detailed quotation for approval to the workflow and confirm quote after approval.

8. Transfer the Confirmed project quotation into an actual project(New or existing) and then run a wizard to create project WBS, forecasts, project budgets etc. automatically right from the quotation.

Above were few of the highlights of the various capabilities of project quotations in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Please feel free to reach me if you need more information regarding quotations in dynamics AX.

Thanks

Keep DAXING

February 9, 2012
The Work breakdown Structure(WBS) functionality for Projects in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012:
Dear Readers,

In today’s post, let us explore the new work breakdown structure functionality for Projects in Microsoft dynamics AX 2012.

Every professional services organization in today’s competitive world of business, wants to be more accurate in terms of managing each descending level of activities/tasks in the projects they carry out, to manage the costs and revenue efficiently and become more profitable. Breaking down the individual tasks and activities on projects and tracking costs, revenues, managing resources at each task level etc. helps in this.

The work breakdown structure of dynamics AX 2012 is a hierarchical representation of the activities and child activities in a project and helps the project managers to do the following.
- Define the overall work scope of the projects.
- Each descending level of the hierarchy represents increasingly detailed information about the project work.
- It helps identifying and creating milestones in the project.
- It also helps managers to soft/hard commit resources to the activities/tasks.
- Project managers can create WBS templates and use them any time they want to plan a new project. They can also create the WBS directly on a project.
Let us first learn how we can view and create the work breakdown structure template for our organization. The following steps will depict the steps to create new WBS template.
1. Navigate to Project Management and Accounting > Common > Activities > Work breakdown structure template.
2. Click New > New work breakdown structure template.
3. On the Work breakdown structure details screen, click “New” button to create the hierarchy of activities/tasks in the project.

4. Create Planning as the new activity and click New button again by keeping the focus on this activity. Provide activity name, it’s priority and a brief description about it in the designated fields.

5. On the right hand side, expand the various fast tabs to fill in information about this activity. Expand the Schedule tab and key in the Duration in days, effort in hours, a default category etc. as shown as an example in the screen above.

6. Expand the Activity requirements tab and setup the resource requirements for this activity in terms of Education, skills, certification, experience etc. This information can be used if you want to make use of the resource scheduling functionality of AX 2012.

7. Setup the estimated costs and revenues for this activity by creating new records under this tab.

8. Similarly, complete the end to end hierarchy for this WBS template and setup the above explained parameters for each of the activities/tasks.

9. Now that we have created and setup a template for a software development project, let us create a new project and try to use this template in the project to define the task hierarchy for this.

10. For this, create the new project and click Plan tab > Work breakdown structure. Click Copy from button. System will show all the available templates in the system. Select the template and click Ok button.

11. System will then load the activity hierarchy structure for the project which you can modify as the current project needs. For example you may wish to assign different resources to the activities and the cost and revenue estimates may be different for this project.

The project manager can also carry out the resource assignment task from the WBS screen and by clicking the Assign resources button.

The project managers can also make use of the WBS right from the project quotations level which will help them in automating most of the project planning tasks such as WBS management, budgeting, resource assignments etc.

Please feel free to ask any queries you have regarding the WBS management for projects in AX 2012 and I will be happy to answer.

Thanks

Keep DAXING
February 8, 2012