Dynamics GP Barcoding Notes or How it Might be Implemented

We will try to describe both approaches from the technology perspective and where you may need to pay attention, while seeing demos and selecting the right solution for your organization.  If you think that existing Barcode enabling products do not do the job, or your Barcoding needs are so simple – you may decide to do custom programming in Microsoft Dexterity or even in Microsoft Visual Studio SDK for GP, or even feed Barcode scanned data into Dynamics GP with such integration oriented Software Development Kit as eConnect.  Let’s review the options:

1. Dynamics GP Barcoding add-ons.  Let’s assume that you need to turn your Dynamics GP user workstation into Point of Sale Cash Register and from all of your retail outlets you have reliable internet connection (or they are on the same LAN).  There are add-ons, enabling Sales Transaction Entry for Barcoding and other POS devices, such as Cherry Keyboard, Credit Card processing machine, Customer POS monitor.  Plus Retail business logic often requires you to have such features as items on sale (from date one to date two), manufacturer coupons.  If this is your situation, we recommend you to review Dynamics GP ISV POS add-ons, one of them would be probably Compass POS.  These third party modules are typically coded in Great Plains Dexterity and pretty simple in installation and day-to-day support in-house or by your local Great Plains consultant.  In our example we are talking about Retail store POS  automation, but if you need something in different area of Dynamics GP business logic, for example scanning in your manufacturing facility or in the warehouses – there should be similar Dynamics GP ISV barcode scanning extensions as well, opening Distribution or Manufacturing Bill of Materials, Inventory Control, Purchase Order Processing and other modules for Barcoding

2. Outsourcing Barcoding to external stand alone and integrated POS, Manufacturing, Warehouse Management Systems.  Here you are probably looking at the universal solution for your needs, such as for example POS, WMS, where you handle all or most of our barcode scanning needs.  And then on the scheduled base or on demand you do integration to Dynamics GP.  For Retail automation we recommend you to look at such systems, as Microsoft Retail Management System.  If you are using historically such system, as Counterpoint POS, you can integrate daily sales as General Ledger transaction or Store purchases to GP Accounts Payable.  MS RMS gives you more options in integrations, for example you may move your RMS POS transactions into Dynamics GP SOP Invoices with customer deposits (credit/debit card, check or cash payments), merchandise moves synchronization, inventory replenishment integration directly in Great Plains Purchase Order Processing module

3. Barcoding custom programming.  This option should be considered in our opinion in two situations.  First one would be if existing Dynamics GP ISV add-ons or external applications do not have required functionality; and the second one is when you need something really simple in Barcode scanning integration and it is cheaper to take custom programming route.  Theoretically you may install Dynamics GP workstation in the Warehouse and have warehouse worker to be trained in Great Plains User Interface.  For example user can open Inventory Transfer transaction screen, fill in all required fields and finally tab to inventory item filed in the scrolling window and then just scan the item barcode label (this would speed up worker performance, comparing to the case, when barcode label should be keyed in manually via computer keyboard – by the way in this scenario you may use really budget oriented USB barcode scanner).  Unfortunately in most of the cases at least in our experience customers wanted to upload the whole batch of documents or at least the whole document (without clicking tab or mouse buttons all the way through getting to the required fields)

4. Barcoding programming in GP Dexterity, eConnect, Microsoft Visual Studio libraries for GP.  If you are large organization with very strong IT department, you may have in-house expertise to do Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB.Net programming.  eConnect SDK has libraries, that could be included into MS Visual Studio project and the functionality is reasonably open to learn for C# or VB programmer (these two languages have majority of the code samples, this is why we recommend these programming languages).  If you need active interaction with Barcoding in your Dynamics GP user interface, then the recommended tool is Great Plains Dexterity.  Microsoft Visual Studio libraries for GP are also a good tool, however some Dexterity modification and programming might be needs (especially when you customization needs new tables creation).  Now about Dexterity – it is not open tool, and we do not recommend to train your IT programmers in Dexterity.  It requires years of experience, following initial Great Plains Dexterity programing training.  We recommend you to locate Dynamics GP Technology Partner with profound Dex programming expertise (and with proven references in implementing Dexterity custom programming in POS, WMS or your specific industry)

5. Barcode Scanner Selection recommendations.  Please, do not rush into purchasing something by cheap price.  For example USB barcode scanner might be priced below hundred dollars.  However, if you need barcoding solution to be enabled on the warehouse floor, USB is typically not enough, as you need wireless/RFID compliant scanners. There might be some trade offs in considering Barcode scanner with text mode support only versus the one with full graphical interface (MS Windows Mobile)

6. Integration Manager as budget oriented alternative in Barcode scanning integration.  Let’s assume that you are saving your barcode scanned transactions to text file or to ODBC compliant database (MS Access, Excel, Lotus, Oracle, IBM DBII, Linux/MySQL).  And the second condition that Barcoding transactions could wait and do not require real time integration.  If these conditions are met, you can consider Dynamics GP Integration Manager as the tool of choice

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