Canadian Payroll 2021 Year End Update
In all the 2020 excitement, I realized I never posted about the 2020 Year End update. I think 2020 for me was all about getting through day to day things and I just forgot about this. Anyway, I’m back to blogging semi-regularly again and it’s that time of year again. This is a HEADS UP for now, primarily aimed at Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll users. I will update this post as more… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s...
ROE issue in Canadian Payroll
This post is about an issue that I found when testing the ROE (Record of Employment) functionality for a client in Dynamics GP. (Since “ROE” is a generic term, this post is specifically about a bug in the Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll module). I opened a case for it and it was quickly confirmed and written up as a quality issue (#91928 in case you need to add yourself or your customer to the… Continue Reading Jen...
Pagination in Power Query (follow up)
This post is an unintended follow up to my “mini-series” working through how I am connecting to Harvest and ClickUp APIs in Power Query. After writing up post #4 (iterating over an unknown number of pages), I decided to review the method I used there vs. the method in post #4 (List.Generate). So, today’s post is really just describing another example of how to use List.Generate, this time… Continue Reading Jen...
Clear Recent Items list in Power BI Desktop
Today’s tip I found completely by accident. In the Open Report window, I had a long list of previous Power BI reports in my “recently used” list, many of which I had long ago deleted or moved. I wanted to clear the list and could not find a way to do that in that screen. With Word or Excel, it’s easy to do in the equivalent screen so it was driving me a little nuts that I was not able to do it… Continue...
Pagination in Power Query (Part 2)
This post is the 4th in a “mini-series” where I’m documenting how I’m working with some different APIs for custom reporting. Today’s post is about ClickUp, an app I use for managing projects, but like post #2 about Harvest, it’s less about ClickUp then it is about iterating over an unknown number of pages of results. The specific nuance here is ClickUp returns a list every time, it does…...
Connecting to ClickUp in Power Query
This post is the 3rd in a “mini-series” where I’m documenting how I’m working with some different APIs for custom reporting. Today’s post is about ClickUp, an app I use for managing projects. Unlike the Harvest APIs I covered in post 1 & 2, ClickUp’s API is a little more challenging to deal with as there are no indicators about number of records or number of pages in the results so you need...
Power BI number formatting tips
Here are two tips that I use repeatedly when building reports in Power BI. “Repeatedly” is a bit of a stretch as I’m still a newbie with Power BI but this was remarkably hard to find so I’m blogging for my future self, when I forget. For Tip #1, I love being able to format numbers in Excel easily with the click of a mouse button, but in Power BI, it’s not quite as straight forward. I like… Continue...
Pagination in Power Query (Part 1)
This post is the second in a “mini-series” where I’ll document how I’m working with some different APIs for custom reporting in Power BI and Excel. Today’s post is about Harvest again, but only in general terms. The example is their time_entries endpoint but what I’m really covering today I would term more generically as “iterating over a known number of pages” when calling an… Continue Reading Jen...
Connecting to Harvest in Power Query
Today’s post is the start of a “mini-series” where I’ll document how I’m working with some different APIs for custom reporting. Today’s post is about Harvest, an app I use for time tracking and billing. This series is aimed at users who may have similar requirements to mine, which was pulling data out of different application APIs for analysis in Power BI and/or Excel. In my limited… Continue...
Power BI matrix column width sizing
I’ve been working with Power BI a lot lately on a “passion project” for myself. I’ll be starting to share more about that in the coming days but first I wanted to share a little tip (that I wish we didn’t need!) for sizing columns on Matrix visuals in Power BI. I’ve read a number of other posts and suggestions around creating a measure with all “X’s” but they have never worked for… Continue Reading Jen...
GP Upgrades – series wrap-up
Well, it’s finally the end of the series and this one is a short-ish one where I review some last minute tips. Posts in the series Series introProcess overviewKnow your environment (part 1)Know your environment (part 2)Know your environment (part 3)Know your environment (part 4)Know your environment (part 5)Know your environment (wrap-up)Testing Random tips! As I wrap up this… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s Article on...
GP Upgrades – testing
Much of the upgrade series so far has been about “knowing your environment”. As I get closer to the end of the overall series, there are a couple more topics to discuss. Today’s topic is testing and what to consider/plan for. Posts in the series Series introProcess overviewKnow your environment (part 1)Know your environment (part 2)Know your environment (part 3)Know your… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s Article on their...
GP Upgrades – know your environment wrap-up
This is the last post in the upgrade series that is specifically about “knowing your environment”. After this I will branch out into other topics but for now, I am doing a catch-all of smaller things I may not have noted in prior posts. Posts in the series Series introProcess overviewKnow your environment (part 1)Know your environment (part 2)Know your environment (part 3)Know your… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s...
GP Upgrades – know your environment part 5
My last post was about integrations and what to consider for that in terms of testing and planning. Today’s post is about reporting. The previous posts are linked below for what I’ve covered thus far in the series! Posts in the series < ol>Series introProcess overviewKnow your environment (part 1)Know your environment (part 2)Know your environment (part 3)Know your environment (part… Continue Reading Jen...
GP Upgrades – know your environment part 4
My last post was a few months ago and since then I’ve gotten a little distracted with other things (summer, nicer weather, etc.). I’m ready to try to catch up and finish this upgrade series, continuing on for now with the “know your environment” topic. So far I have covered some product terminology, product types & ISV products, and a bit about identifying external applications. In this… Continue Reading Jen...
MVP Renewal for 2021/2022
I was fortunate to be renewed today for the Microsoft MVP award, for the 5th time. When I got awarded the first time in October 2016, I never dreamed that I would be still here 5 cycles later. This year is bittersweet for me, as I’m only getting renewed due to the generosity of the Microsoft MVP Award program team. I only had a single-digit number of contributions logged, far from my normal… Continue Reading Jen...
GP Upgrades – know your environment part 3
In my last post, I continued on the “know your environment” topic. So far I have 2 parts to that with a background on the elements to be aware of with core Microsoft components of Dynamics GP plus ISV products, where they are modules/functionality within the Dynamics GP client. In this post, I will delve into external ISV products. Posts in the series Series introProcess overviewKnow… Continue Reading Jen...
Canadian Payroll Mid-Year Update 2021
A week or so ago, the mid-year update for Dynamics GP was dropped. For Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll users, there are only tax changes in 1 jurisdiction – New Brunswick. In addition to the CPY updates, there are a number of other fixes in this update. As is typical with the mid-year update, it is more than just Canadian Payroll updates, it’s a full service pack. For all of the details on the… Continue Reading Jen...
GP Upgrades – know your environment part 2
In my last post in this Dynamics GP upgrade series, I talked about getting to know your environment. The importance of understanding some of the moving parts cannot be understated, if you are “in charge” of your environment in any meaningful way. Reading this series won’t allow you to bypass utilizing a partner or consultant for some things, but hopefully it gives you more background to… Continue Reading Jen...
GP Upgrades – know your environment
This is the 3rd post in my series about GP Upgrades. Today’s topic is what I refer to as “getting to know your environment”, as part of the planning process around your upgrade. If you are planning an upgrade, it’s important to understand where the moving parts are, and at least to have what I refer to as a “conversational” knowledge of your GP system, even if you aren’t familiar with...
SmartList Export: Excel content error
Last year, I wrote a post about a relatively common SmartList Export error, the “Excel cannot open the file” error. Today, I was working on a client upgrade and cleaned up a ton of minor issues with some Canadian Payroll smartlists they use. In writing this post, I have also developed a quick hatred for SmartList Designer, as you will read later in the post. You’re welcome, eOne Solutions…. Continue Reading Jen...
GP Upgrades – process overview
Last week I posted the first in a series I am writing relating to Dynamics GP upgrades. This week’s topic is an overview of what the process looks like for many organizations, from the point of view of upgrades I’ve done or been involved with. At the end of this post I’ve included a Context section to further clarify what my background is which will heavily shape the recommendations and… Continue Reading Jen...
GP Upgrade Tips series intro
I’m finally ready to get back into a regular blogging rhythm and will be starting a series around Dynamics GP upgrades. I’ve presented on this topic a few times and what I plan on covering is how I approach and manage upgrades. What this series will not be about are the technical “how to upgrade” aspects. There are plenty of other articles out there covering the actual upgrade process and… Continue...
Remove all notes in PowerPoint
WOW, it’s been some time since I last blogged. I’m alive and well and finally getting back to the right mindset to get back into this. Stay tuned! This is a super easy tip that I learned today. I also learned I’m a super lazy PowerPoint creator. I create PowerPoint presentations by copying the last presentation I did and duplicating a bunch of slides that have the layout I like. 40 slides… Continue Reading Jen...
New Year’s Resolutions 2021
It’s that time again, a new calendar year has begun. This year “Happy New Year” has an entirely different meaning to most of us, after what can only reasonably be described as a train wreck of a year. I’m a day late in writing this post this year (even though I’m posting this as Jan 1st), I quite honestly couldn’t find my words yesterday. How was 2020? 2020 started out very well,… Continue...
Issues with Word Templates
Recently, there have been issues with Dynamics GP and Word Templates, due to some changes to the most recent Microsoft Office build releases. Specifically, documents generated in Word Templates cannot be opened in Microsoft Word, once you’re running a build from Sept 8/9th or newer. Today’s post is an attempt to clarify what the situation is, and what is and is not affected and clarify some of… Continue Reading Jen...
What happened to #TipTuesday?
Hey, everyone reading this… no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. I’m hoping to get back into regular blogging this Fall. Ahem, I mean Autumn. (that’s for David Musgrave ). I’ve been fortunate to stay safe & healthy as well as maintain most of my business during COVID-19, that’s the good news. There have been a few unrelated things that have kept me away from my normal blogging…...
Excel – where did my workbook go?
Today’s #TipTuesday is an odd one. A few months ago, a client had an issue with a specific Excel workbook they couldn’t “open”. Of course, the usual questions around “is there an error message?” etc. didn’t pan out. Typically it might be a corrupt file issue or something, but once I saw the issue on their computer, I realized what the problem was. It turns out someone accidentally...
Canadian Payroll 2020 Mid-Year Tax Update
This is a bit belated, but I wanted to share the info about this year’s tax update for those in affected jurisdictions. Last year, there were no changes in any jurisdiction. This year, there are only changes in 2 jurisdictions – British Columbia and Yukon. There are fixes for a couple of issues with Quebec around the RL-1 XML file and QPIP. Eligible versions There are updates for GP… Continue Reading Jen...
MVP Renewal for 2020/2021
Today was a good day. It is Canada Day, which is a national holiday, and already a great day for us Canucks, but July 1st is also MVP renewal day for close to 3,000 Microsoft MVPs worldwide. I’m pleased to share that I was awarded for the 4th time today, within the Business Applications category (where Dynamics GP resides). Dynamics GP MVP count stays intact While the program… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s Article on...
SmartList Export: Excel cannot open error
Today’s #TipTuesday is one a client ran into a little while ago, and is worth sharing how you may find out what is causing the issue. The TL;DR version is a strange character somehow was input into an invoice comment and it caused an issue when that record (with that field) was exported to Excel from a Dynamics GP SmartList. Exporting to Word instead of Excel showed where the character was to… Continue Reading Jen...
Thunderbolt dock problem? Try this.
This post is purely to save someone else (or my future self) the frustration of troubleshooting their Thunderbolt dock if they reinstall Windows and then can’t get the dock working. Background The context around my situation was this: I’m using a Lenovo P43s and Lenovo “ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Workstation Doc”, part 40ANY230US.I ran a system update for the P43s which ended up… Continue Reading Jen...
Testing email functionality
Today’s #TipTuesday is around email functionality in Microsoft Dynamics GP and some tips around how to test it. As you may have read in my post last week, I made some mistakes in testing that have led to this post. Long story short: I neglected to edit all the tables that had live email addresses when I did some testing. There are some other things I could have also done to prevent compounding… Continue Reading Jen...
Owning up to your mistakes
It’s been a while since I wrote a non-technical post, so I thought I would share a situation that happened to me earlier this week and how I dealt with it. At the risk of coming across as a complete moron to whomever reads this, when many would simply never mention it again, I am a believer that sharing things helps others. The gist of this post is not about the mistake itself but how to own… Continue Reading Jen...
Fixed Assets GL Posting Flow Part 8
Today’s #TipTuesday is the finale of my series on Fixed Asset transactions in Dynamics GP and what G/L accounts get used where. Today is where I will walk through the rest of the catch-all set of scenarios around what kinds of asset changes impact the G/L. The previous posts so far are: Additions with & without YTD/LTD amortizationDepreciation/AmortizationRetirements in the 1st year of… Continue Reading Jen...
Fixed Assets GL Posting Flow Part 7
Today’s #TipTuesday is a continuation of my series on Fixed Asset transactions in Dynamics GP and what G/L accounts get used where. Today is the second-last of the series, where I will walk through a catch-all set of scenarios around what kinds of asset changes impact the G/L. Half of the scenarios are here, and the rest I’ll cover next week. The previous posts so far are: Additions with… Continue Reading Jen...
Fixed Assets GL Posting Flow Part 6
Today’s #TipTuesday is a continuation of what happens during Retirement transactions in Dynamics GP. Today is the last of the “retirement” scenarios I plan on covering and it is: proceeds (cash, non-cash), sale expenses and their impact on the resulting retirement journal entry. The previous posts so far are: Additions with & without YTD/LTD amortizationDepreciation/Amortization
Fixed Assets GL Posting Flow Part 5
Today’s #TipTuesday is a continuation of what happens during Retirement transactions in Dynamics GP. Today: different retirement types and the impact on which Gain/Loss account is chosen. The previous posts so far are: Additions with & without YTD/LTD amortizationDepreciation/AmortizationRetirements in the 1st year of ownershipRetirements after the 1st year of ownership Setting… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s...
Fixed Assets GL Posting Flow Part 4
Today’s #TipTuesday is a continuation of what happens during Retirement transactions in Dynamics GP. Today: retirements after the first year of ownership (in a year subsequent to the acquisition year). The previous posts so far are: Additions with & without YTD/LTD amortizationDepreciation/AmortizationRetirements in the 1st year of ownership Setting the stage In this post, once… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s...
Canadian Payroll 2019 T4 issue
The 2019 Canadian Payroll tax updates for Dynamics GP seem like the gift that keeps on giving! Hopefully anyone reading this has already installed the “Round 2” tax update issued in mid-January. If you have not yet installed that and are running Canadian Payroll in GP 2015, 2016 or 2018/18.2, read on! Brief recap The “round 2” update fixed a few issues, that the Dec 2019 update… Continue Reading Jen...
Fixed Assets GL Posting Flow Part 3
Today’s #TipTuesday is a continuation of my Fixed Assets series around G/L posting flow. This post will be the start of what happens during Retirement transactions in Dynamics GP. There are a lot of options around retirements, although in the end most selections don’t impact the results much as you will see. I will be breaking this into different posts to keep the length manageable. Today:… Continue Reading Jen...
Fixed Assets GL Posting Flow Part 2
Back in September, I started a series and honestly figured I would not have taken this long to get to “part 2”! What I’m going to do is make this part of my #TipTuesday series and try to get through it a little bit faster! Today’s post is what happens during the Depreciation routine in Fixed Assets, from a GL posting flow perspective. The previous post in this series was GL posting flow… Continue Reading...
Back-dating Fixed Asset Retirements
Today’s #TipTuesday is about a message you may receive if you back-date a Fixed Asset retirement in Dynamics GP. I completed a project recently where the client was catching up on some IFRS asset derecognition that, in some cases, had occurred in prior years by the time we got around to doing the retirement in Dynamics GP. While this isn’t an everyday occurrence, if you have to do this… Continue Reading Jen...
Checklinks “the keys record has been removed”
Today’s #TipTuesday is about Checklinks, and specifically about a message you may get if you run file maintenance against Sales > Receivables Open Transaction Files. Some general parts of this blog may apply to other errors in checklinks but I’ll focus on this one message for now to keep it simple. File Maintenance Error Message The exact error message looks like this and the text… Continue Reading Jen...
Cdn Payroll Basic Personal Amount calculator
If you are reading this and a user of Microsoft Dynamics GP and Canadian Payroll, you’ll likely have already read my previous post where I’ve indicated that the Canadian Payroll module will not automatically calculate the Basic Personal Amount (Federal) for you. If you are reading this and are not a user of Dynamics GP: don’t worry. The information in this post is generic and should be able… Continue Reading...
Canadian Payroll 2019 YE Update Round 2
Yesterday, Microsoft released a “Round 2” update for Canadian Payroll for Dynamics GP. What is a round 2 update? It’s a change that wasn’t in the first update in December! Typically we don’t see this in Canadian Payroll but the CRA made a relatively last minute change to the federal basic personal exemption that necessitated an update. There are a few minor fixes to be corrected in this round…...
Excel Background Refresh & Pivot Tables
Welcome to my first 2020 #TipTuesday post. Today’s topic is Excel and how a background refresh setting can impact refreshing pivot tables. The background to this post is related to a report I was creating for a client to validate timesheets prior to approval. The report has a couple of queries in them (from SQL) and a pivot table to summarize the data. In order to make the refreshing… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s...
New Year’s Resolutions 2020
It’s time to look back on the year 2019 and the last 10 years. I won’t say “the last decade” lest the mansplainers get their shorts in a knot about it technically not being the end of the decade. 10 years ago, I was 4 months into my own consulting business. In 2019, I started the year in an employment role but went back to full time independent consulting in June. Long story short: I think… Continue...
Top 10 Blog Posts from 2019
This is a look back at what posts had the most views during 2019. I believe it’s the 3rd year I’ve done this and it is always interesting what old posts continue to be relevant (or at least “hit” via search). The first year I did this, only 4 posts from that year made the top 10, and last year 7 of my 2018 posts hit the top 10. This year 6 posts from 2019 made the top 10… and once again, a… Continue...
Canadian Payroll 2019 Year End Update
This post is extremely late, but I wanted to get it out there anyway for those that have just concluded their last 2019 payrolls for the year. The Canadian Payroll 2019 year end tax updates for Dynamics GP were released on December 18th. Here are some links to get you what you need for this year end. Two reminders for you, depending on what version you are operating: If you are… Continue Reading Jen Kuntz’s Article on...