Great Plains Accounting Support FAQ
GPA for DOS, Windows and Mac was very popular in earlier and even late 1990th Then if you remember the year 2000 Corporate ERP applications glitch, where crossing third century was supposed to mess up accounting applications – GPA was recommended for migration to Microsoft Great Plains 6.0, later on to Microsoft Dynamics GP 7.0 and 7.5.
There was migration path from GPA to Microsoft Small Business Financials 9.0. Well,
if you are reading this publication, chances are high that you are committed to Great Plains Accounting and have to stay on this ERP platform for a while or maybe indefinitely:
1. The GPA history. Great Plains Accounting was initial product of Great Plains Software, where mid-market Corporate ERP business logic was designed by GPS. If you look at modern Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010/11 business logic in its Dynamics.dic it is pretty similar to what it was in Great Plains Accounting 9.5 (please disregard the adding from acquisitions, POP redesign, bill of materials)
2. If you would like to upgrade GPA all the way to Dynamics GP 2010. Migration path has automatic migration tools, so you do not have to appeal to independent programmers. As we write these lines you can go directly from Great Plains Accounting for DOS or Windows 9.5 to Dynamics GP 8.0 or 9.0 and then you are ready to upgrade to Dynamics GP 2010
3. If you would like to stay on GPA platform. The question is support. It is no longer available directly from Microsoft Business Solutions, support expired around 2001. However Great Plains Accounting support is still available through Microsoft Channel Partners, such as Alba Spectrum. We support you, having Great Plains Accounting consultants and technicians in staff, plus we have access to GPA technical support database (whatever was known about Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows or Mac should be known to us)
4. Great Plains Accounting Data Repair. GPA is typically installed on older Servers, such as Novell or WindowsNT 4.0. Those servers from the hardware perspective didn’t have USB ports and were limited in HD space and RAM. We recommend you to move these GPA installations to Windows 2003 (it is important to stick to 32 bit platform, as both Great Plains Accounting and Pervasive SQL 2000 are not compatible with Windows 64 bit)
5. Great Plains Accounting Support Local versus Nationwide. Having GPA consultants in Chicago, we realized that there is not enough business in the area to keep consultants in staff. This is why we decided to go nationwide, including Canada. If you are on Great Plains Accounting internationally we should be able to support you or upgrade Great Plains Accounting to Microsoft Dynamics GP
6. Migrating GPA to non Microsoft Accounting application. If your new Accounting application provider doesn’t have migration tool, we are ready to help you with exporting data from Great Plains Accounting in the form of text reports
7. Great Plains Accounting Data Repair on your own. You can install Btrieve ODBC driver and connect to all or subset of your GPA tables via Microsoft Access. You can read the instructions in ODBC manual, available on your GPA9.5 or 9.2 CD
8. To get additional info, please call us 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918 or email us help@albaspectrum.com As there are just a few hundred Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows and Mac installations are still in production, we serve you nationwide via web sessions and phone conferences
