Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains Series and Modules FAQ
Each ERP system has probably similar in general functional blocks, in some cases they are referred as modules. In the case of Great Plains Dynamics GP modules are combines into so-called Series: Financials, Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Payroll, Manufacturing, Fixed Assets
In this small article,
let’s review Series-Modules structure and where Modules codes reside
- Series. Let’s take a look at Financials series. Here we see such modules as General Ledger (GL), Bank Reconciliation (BR). When you purchase GP licenses, you don’t pay for Series, you pay for Modules (with exception for new GP licensing module – GP Business Ready, which competes with “all-in-one” named license model of SAP Business One, for example). To give you another example of Series: Sales. Sales series has these modules: Receivables Management (required), Sales Order Processing, Invoicing (you can not use both SOP and Invoicing you have to select one)
- Series & Modules and Code Base. Microsoft Great Plains has historically multiple Great Plains Dexterity dictionaries: DYNAMICS.DIC is the main and default dictionary, which is installed automatically. In the past Great Plains Software was trying to port all new purchased modules code (such as Icontrol manufacturing) into Dynamics.dic. If you are implementing such modules as Fixed Assets (FA), Project Accounting (PA), you will need to install their dictionaries separately, however this process is not difficult. The understanding of code base and dictionaries lay in Dynamics.Set file, where all the dictionaries are listed for Microsoft Dexterity to do the GP workstation launching job. The language of this article seems to be overwhelmed with industry terminology, unfortunately we are in the frames of small article format restrictions
- Manufacturing Series. These Series requires (if MA is intended to be implemented in full functionality) also GP Inventory Control, Financials, Purchasing, Sales Order Processing modules
- Business Portal. BP is web extension to traditional Microsoft Dexterity based modules. At this time, November 2007, BP expands GP and has Requisition Management (former eRequisition), HR and Employee Self Service, Order Management (former eOrder), Electronic Document Delivery and several other modules
- System Manager. This is where you have GP concurrent user licenses. And probably if you deploy 10 or more SM users – this is the most expensive part of GP
- Inventory Control. IV module is required for implementing the following peripheral modules: Sales Order Processing (SOP), Purchase Order Processing (POP), Manufacturing, Bill Of Materials (please know that BOM is not part of Manufacturing, however could be considered as light manufacturing, if your MRP requirements are modest)
