• Timesheet import. Placement industry is underserved and placement application market is very weak, this results in a high demand in standard ERP customizations. Usually placement agency has CRM application with sophisticated or simple time and expenses logging functionality. This time logs should be integrated with project accounting timesheet header and line tables. Timesheet import should come in parallel with the import of new customers, new contracts and projects. Tables: PA10000 – Timesheet header and PA10001 – Timesheet line, PA01901 – PA Key Master, PA01301 – PA Budget Master, PA01101 – Contract Master and PA01201 – Project Master.

• Employee Expenses. Your temps usually file you expense reports, especially if they are traveling to remote locations/hospitals/clinics

• Billing Process. In the billing itself you usually need fixes to Project, Contract and Timesheet records – if you deploy simple custom logic and user defined fields plus notes. Prior to billing you typically run SQL scripts and stored procedures. The necessity of this custom logic should be attributed to legacy design – please note that GP was designed as database and graphical platform independent application/MRP back in the earlier 1990th. Its IDE and programming language is kind of a shell written in C – Great Plains Dexterity, current name is Microsoft Dexterity.

• Invoice Formats/Forms. Great Plains Project Accounting is former MatchData Dexterity third party module. The initial design was done in Philippines at the end of 20th century. Since then Great Plains Software tried to integrate PA into DYNAMICS.DIC (as well as its new acquisitions – Great Plains Manufacturing), later on the decision was made to keep third party (now purchased and integrated modules) in their own dictionaries. Further complication – Project Green was intended to merge all the applications into one: Microsoft Navision, Axapta, Solomon, Great Plains – currently the idea is to have web portal type of integration. As you can expect – the invoice form is very flexible and is probably too generic for the standard functionality of GP Project Accounting. You might need Dexterity custom touches to activate required features

• For C#/VB.Net developers. With the version 9.0 Microsoft Dynamics GP will be exposing you Microsoft Great Plains objects and forms. This is not a Dexterity, however you should be familiar with Dexterity design and architecture.

• Dexterity Legacy. You should still see it out there: DYNAMICS.SET, DEX.INI, DEX.EXE. In some cases we see ancient legacy applications, coming back to 1980th – Great Plains Accounting for DOS and MS Windows: 9.2, 9.5. The only recommendation to the customers who are without GP/MS support – upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics GP Standard 9.0

• Future Directions. Microsoft Dynamics GP has a long history of success. However in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Continental Europe Microsoft Business Solutions is now promoting new MRP/ERP application, originally developed and designed by Navision Software – Microsoft Dynamics AX/Microsoft Axapta/Navision Axapta

As per the definition accounting and bookkeeping is the simple art of record keeping. Every good record keeping system including classification transaction and event as well as their summarization for ready reference. Essentially the transaction and event are to be measured in the terms of money. Measurement in the terms of money means measuring at the ruling currency of county like rupees in India, Dollar in U.S.A

The transaction and events must have at least in part financial characteristics. The inauguration of new branches of a bank is an event without having financial character, while the business disposed of by the branch is an event having financial character. Accounting and Bookkeeping also interprets the recorded classified and summarized transaction and events.

However the above mention definition does not reflect the present day accounting function. The dimension of accounting and bookkeeping is much broader then that described in the above definition. A widely accepted definition is accounting is given by the American Accounting Association in 1966 which treated accounting as “The process of identifying, measuring and communicating economic information to permit informed judgments and decision by users as accounts.”

An examination of the various elements of the definition shows the role of accounting although many of its implements may become clear as the course advances.

1) There are curtains users of accounts. Earlier it was viewed that accounting is for the owner of the business but change social relationship diluted the earlier thanking. It is now believed that users of accounts includes, employee, ledgers, suppliers and other trade creditors, customers, government and other agencies and the public at large.

2) The users need data for judgment and decisions.

3) Accounting is a process of identifying users information requirement as also generating, recording and communicating such information to users. It also a common measurement unit e.g.: money. Accounting provides the art of presenting information systematically to the users of accounts.

Information is useless and meaningless unless it is relevant and material to a user’s decision. The information should be free of any biases. The users should understand mot only the financial results depicted by accounting figures but also should be able to access its reliability and compare it which information about attractive opportunity and the past experience. Accounting data is more useful if it stresses economic substance rather than technical form.

The best way to figure out how to streamline your marketing plan is to evaluate your current efforts. You can do this by conducting an audit of your own company.

Step One: Determine Who Your Customers Are

Obviously, you should have done this before you even started your business. But it’s never a bad idea to go back and look at this all important question again. Who exactly are you targeting in your marketing campaigns? Who needs the product or service that you provide? How can you best persuade those customers to come to you? What types of media do they use most often?

These are the first questions you need to ask yourself as you evaluate your marketing strategy. You may be surprised at some of the answers you find.

Step Two: What Are Your Customers Buying?

Are you getting your target customers into your store with your current efforts? Are they buying the things you expected them to buy? Are you selling as much as you expected to sell? Are products that you didn’t put much faith in outselling other, more promising products? Are you getting a different kind of customer than you thought you would?

Asking yourself these questions can reveal one of two things: either your business is not what you thought it was, or your marketing is reaching the wrong people.

Step Three: How Happy Are Your Customers?

In order to find out how pleased your past customers are with your business, you need to ask them. Design a postcard printing project where you include what amounts to a survey for the customers to fill out. Send these cards to any past customers for whom you have address information (which should be all of them). Hopefully, you will get a healthy response. Also, include surveys right in your store for customers to fill out.

It is important to know how well your company is fulfilling its promises when you evaluate your marketing efforts.

Step Four: Take a Look Backwards

Look at the marketing strategies you employed in the past. Which ones worked the best? Which ones fell flat? This can tell you a lot about the techniques you should use as you go forward. If a strategy worked before, there is no reason not to try it again – especially if your current ads are not performing up to your expectations.

Carefully go through these four steps to determine how effective your current marketing strategy is. Most importantly, you must be willing to make changes if they are needed. Do not stick with a plan just because you are afraid to take a chance. If something is not working, change it.

It is best that you apply for a job that matches your interests and expertise. There are careers that have been proven by most accounting graduates to bring them to the top of the success ladder and you may want to consider entering these fields.

If you are an accounting graduate who excel in public accounting, the entry-level positions that best fit this skill are Tax Staff, Consulting/ Management Services and Staff Auditor. With these positions you will do your duties reporting to a senior. Once you have acquired three to six years of experience in any of these positions, you may then want to consider applying for the higher levels like Tax Senior, Senior Auditor, and Consulting Senior where the position entails reporting directly to a Manager. After six years of excelling with these potions, then you may consider the positions Partner level and Senior Partner.

Having an edge with corporate accounting, one to three years of experience will qualify you to become a staff member in Internal Audit, Tax Accounting, Management, and Financial Accounting. Moving up the higher lever after three to six years, you will be eligible for the Senior Level for Internal Audit, Tax Accounting and Management Accounting. Six years thereafter, you may want to consider aiming for the positions like the Tax Manager, Internal Audit Manager and Financial Accounting Manager.

Expertise in Financial Management, Staff for Financial Planning, Cash Management, and Credit Analysis are options for entry-level positions. Once you have gained the enough experience, you may aim for the Treasury Operations, Credit Analysis and Senior Financial Planning. Higher positions will include Treasurer, Manager for Credit Analysis and Financial Planning.

These career options are traditional paths that were found to fit best for accounting graduates. However, it does not mean that they are the only way to climb up the success ladder. You should go beyond not just limit your skills to accounting. It is still recommended that you gain enough work experience, acquire knowledge in different aspects of education, and continue to improve your character to be a step ahead with other job seekers.

Since most of businesses deal in cash in some form or the other, the foremost accounting function is Cash Book maintenance, which ensures that all cash transactions are monitored for a certain period of time.

Next, comes the Bank Book, wherein all the records related to bank transactions are kept and can be easily sorted out for any specific time period.

Then, there is the Journal Book, which is what one needs to refer to for all such transactions that are neither related to cash, nor have anything to do with the bank.

Besides, there is Purchase Book and Sales Book. While the Purchase Book keeps track of all the purchases made and all such transactions that have anything to do with purchasing, Sales Book, as the name suggests, records the sales.

These books come in handy to prepare Trial Balance, which demonstrates the accounting accuracy of the involved transactions. The Trial Balance has a Debit and a Credit side. To find out if the transactions have been recorded properly or not one has to tally the sum total on Debit side with that on the Credit side. If they tally accurately, it indicates that the transactions have been accurately recorded. However, the tallying is effective only when the transactions are recorded using the double entry concept. The Double entry concept works on the principle that for every Debit, there has to be a Credit.

Now, if you are about to choose an accounting software, make sure that it performs these basic functions efficiently and accurately. Another thing that you must bear in mind is the user friendliness of the software because getting a technologically complicated software may make accounting complicated, which, surely, is not what you are getting the software for. So, settle for a software that is easy to operate and gives accurate accounting results.