Great Plains Conversion: How to Migrate Legacy Data to Dynamics Gp
If you are implementing Microsoft Dynamics GP in your organization and you would like to do some data conversion from your old accounting or ERP application, then you should consider several levels of data migration and their feasibility. As we come through numerous data massage and migration cases, we would like to share our experience to help you with your homework:
1. This method is the simplest one and you should probably consider it first. If you had Quickbooks, Peachtree, MYOB or similar small business accounting package, simply print you balance, P&L and in GP enter similar accounts for Assets, Liability, Equity, Revenue, Cost of Goods and Expenses and then enter in GP beginning balances opening transaction as GL transaction and you are up and running GP in production. If you need to see more in Great Plains prior to do your daily ERP routines, then keep reading
2. Master Records import. Customers, Vendors, GL accounts, Employees are classified as master records in GP. There are several methods of entering them there. First one is manual key in - it works if you have limited number of master records - say several hundred, if this is the case, then you can be done entering them in eight hours or so and by completing this routine you will be self trained in GP records entering. If you have thousands of customers, then consider Integration Manager. In the case of IM you prepare your customers as text file, massage data to fit specific data format requirements and then tune IM integration, test it and do final import. In some cases you would like to do advanced import, where you tweak your migrated records in GP via SQL update or insert statements
3. Open transactions import. It is natural, when you expect to continue such business processes as AR collection, AP aging in the new MRP or GP. In this case you import open RM and PM batches to keep collecting and aging them in Great Plains Dynamics. Typically you import transactions via IM and then post just imported batches in GP
4. Historical Data conversion. We would like to try to discourage you from this step, as it will cost you a lot of consulting hours to feed data to historical Great Plains Dynamics tables. The alternative to historical data migration is keeping your legacy accounting for data lookup or inquiry only during transition period
