Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is marketed for mid-size companies as well as Navision (which has very good positions in Europe and emerging markets where it can be easily localized). Great Plains Inventory control is pretty robust and here we would like to give you highlights on standard functionality as well as what could be added to its standard features.

Historically Great Plains Dynamics / eEnterprise was designed with modules structure with very clear ERP workflow - Inventory control had a link to General Ledger and was interacting with Sales Order Processing, Invoicing, later on with Purchase Order Processing (it was some development and unsuccessful marriage with Intellisol Purchase Order Processing third party module), Project Accounting and Manufacturing set. Inventory control has addition in the form of Bill of Materials module (we see the whole spectrum of downsizing manufacturing companies, who are switching from full-featured manufacturing to Great Plains Inventory control with Bill of Materials). Features:

? Inventory Allocation - from SOP Sales Order, Invoice you can automatically of manually allocate Inventory items

? Sales Item, Service, Misc Charge, Flat Fee, etc - these are types of the Inventory items.

? Serial and Lot Number tracking - serial number is unique, while Lot Number might be assigned to the lot of items

? LIFO, FIFO, Average with Periodic or Perpetual - these terms should be familiar to accountant

? Inventory Class - you can group items into the class and have reporting in ReportWriter or just Crystal Reports to summarize by inventory class

? Kit - item might be a set of items - or a kit

? Substitute items - you can have two (GP version 7.5 and 8.0)

? ABC Codes - is you are familiar with replenishment or manufacturing

? Accounts distribution - Great Plains first look if you specify accounts on the item level, then if these are empty - it look at the class level and then to Setup->Posting->Posting Accounts

? Inventory Count - this nice feature was added several years ago with version 5.0

Add-Ons:

? Barcoding - you have to check with your Microsoft Great Plains Partner which third party solution fits to your needs.

? Manufacturing - Great Plains Software bought Icontrol Manufacturing and integrated it into Great Plains about 8 years ago and now it is seamlessly integrated with Inventory Control module

? Web front - there are eConnect (SDK for eCommerce developer), eOrder, and other eXXX series products that you could deploy. There is a good chance that you will have to develop custom web-interface to your Great Plains back end

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns - we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com