Blogiversary Top 20 (#5) PowerPivot to the People
Posted: April 23, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: BI, Excel, Microsoft, NAV, Office2013, PowerPivot Leave a commentWe’re celebrating our one year blogiversary by reposting the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year, as determined by you, our readers! Follow this link to see the entire list. Enjoy!
As a Controller at a small to medium-sized business, I struggle with the big BI question: do I invest in a business intelligence package or do I do it myself?
When I first became aware of PowerPivot, a free Excel add-on that became available with Microsoft Office 2010, I was excited and also a little relieved. While the emergence of PowerPivot didn’t completely solve my dilemma, it sure gave me some significant options for more data accessibility. I didn’t have to depend on my partner or an IT employee with special skills to build me a dataport from NAV, or to piece together an SQL query, or to build a cube I could apply queries to. Because I have PowerPivot, suddenly I can be Super-Controller; accessing tables directly in my NAV database, pulling ginormous amounts of data into a single spreadsheet, and manipulating the data with lightning speed into familiar Excel pivot tables, all without asking for help. 
So, when I read in a recent article from MSDynamicsWorld.com that New Office 2013 Licensing May Put PowerPivot, Power View Out of Reach for Some Microsoft Dynamics Users, I was actually pretty alarmed and then pretty upset. How dare Microsoft give us this shiny new Christmas dream and then snatch it away like some kind of horrible data-reneging Grinch!
I went looking for a few more answers about exactly what was going on, and what I found out was that Microsoft has actually taken PowerPivot out of most versions of Office 2013. This is a big deal because it was previously available in all versions of Office 2010, so Microsoft is actually removing functionality. PowerPivot is only available in Office 2013 if you get Office Pro Plus through volume licensing or through Office 365 subscriptions. Basically, this means PowerPivot is not available in any retail Office 2013 packages, so therefore, is only reachable by companies who have enough purchasing power to utilize volume licensing packages. So, a tool that was designed, in my opinion, to give BI power directly to the people by making it simple enough for financial folks to pull their own data, has now been restricted to only business class licensing. If you’re looking for some interesting theories as to why this might be, read Hey, Who Moved My (PowerPivot 2013) Cheese?
Mr. Excel himself (Bill Jelen), the uberist Excel geek of them all, has some great stuff to say about PowerPivot, including “PowerPivot is the best new feature to hit Excel in 20 years” and a few other things here including a great short video explaining why we should care. I just said in a recent NAVUG Ask the Experts Finance webinar only two weeks ago that as a financial professional who uses NAV, learning to use PowerPivot should be the most important skill finance people should learn in the next year.
Microsoft has missed a huge opportunity to finally settle a score in the BI arena for small to medium businesses by making this move. There has always been the argument that using Excel spreadsheets is a risky proposition for financial professionals. You can really create some big problems for yourself if you are not careful in how you manage your spreadsheets. Some companies even go so far as to outlaw them and attempt to go spreadsheet free. Companies who sell BI packages lean on this pretty hard, trying to remove spreadsheets from the list of available choices.
I say this risk is greatly offset by the benefit of being able to use a tool that can pull, in a safe way, massive amounts of data that can be manipulated by the typical Excel end-user quickly and efficiently. For me, the benefit PowerPivot brings to my company tips the scale on sinking money into a BI solution, and keeps me firmly in the DIY BI camp, with Excel as my primary tool. Making PowerPivot available in all new versions of Excel seals the deal and makes BI in Excel a revolution of equality, ensuring equilateral Excel adoption in the business world.
I’m glad to see so many people bringing forward a call to action to bring PowerPivot back to all versions of Office, not just Pro Plus and Office365 subscriptions. I’m adding my voice, and will continue to ask Microsoft to bring PowerPivot to the people!
Blogiversary Top 20 (#11) Complete row setup options for NAV account schedules
Posted: April 15, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, balance at date, Classic Client, column layout, dimensions, Excel, export to excel, financial statement, general ledger, NAV, net change, posting accounts, row setup, RTC, set base for percent, setup options, show opposite sign, totaling type, trial balance Leave a commentWe’re celebrating our one year blogiversary by reposting the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year, as determined by you, our readers! Follow this link to see the entire list. Enjoy!
About a month ago, I published a post called Basic row setup options for NAV account schedules. This is a great place to look if you’re just getting started. However, if you’re looking for what else you can do with Microsoft Dynamics NAV account schedules, then this is where you want to be. This post will go through each and every field available on the account schedule row setup and talk about the available options. The functionality of these fields are exactly the same between the Classic and Role Tailored Clients. The only difference is in how they look on the screen and how you navigate between screens. Take a look at the pictures below to find the look you’re familiar with, but then keep reading for the explanations of what these fields will do in your financial reporting.
Role Tailored Client
This is a view of what I recommend you start with for basic row setup options.
This is a view of all available row setup options.
Classic Client
This is a view of what I recommend you start with for basic row setup options.
This is a view of all available row setup options.
Row setup options – apply to both clients
Row No. is completely optional, but highly recommended. This simple element of the row setup will eventually be one of the key features of your account schedule, allowing you to calculate and organize with ease.
Description is the one place you have to communicate, in words, what you’re showing on each line of your report.
Totaling Type: 6 options to choose from
- Posting Accounts pull data from your accounts designated as posting accounts on the G/L Account Card Account Type field.
- Total Accounts pull data from your accounts designated as a total or as an end-total on the G/L Account Card Account Type field.
- Formula allows you to calculate a basic formula on this row.
- Underline places a single underline .
- Double Underline places a double underline.
- NOTE: This nifty addition showed up with NAV 2009 R2. If you are NAV 2009 SP1 or earlier, this won’t be available to you.
- Both of the underline functions are there to give folks who print account schedules directly out of NAV some formatting options. If you’re exporting to Excel you’ve got some better format options to work with than these.
- Set Base for Percent allows you to designate which row from your row setup will be used as the beginning point for a section to be included in a percent of total calculation. This feature showed up in version 5.0 and must be used together with a formula on another row to designate the end point of the section as well as some setup in the column layout. It’s a little fussy in the setup and inelegant in execution, but is still effective to get those vital comparative percentages onto your account schedules.
Totaling will be which general ledger accounts you want to pull or what formula you want to calculate, depending on what you selected in totaling type.
Row Type: 3 options to choose from
- Net Change should be used, generally, if you’re reporting on income statement accounts (revenue/expense).
- Balance at Date should be used, generally, if you’re reporting on balance sheet accounts (assets/liabilities).
- Beginning Balance will be sparingly used, but you’ll want this for your statement of cash flows at some point.
Amount Type gives you three options: Net Amount, Debit Amount and Credit Amount. You’re going to use Net Amount almost all the time, but I suppose if you were getting very granular in your account schedules and perhaps using them for detailed reconciling reports, this might be useful. If I’m getting down to this level of transactional detail, I’m usually going to the chart of accounts instead of account schedules.
Formatting Fields: Bold, Italic, and Underline These basic formatting fields are there to allow you to emphasize some of the rows of your account schedules. When you select these options on any row, the whole row is effected. You are not able to effect a single “cell” for formatting. What’s the difference between underline here and underline found in the Totaling Type options? You can get a more snug fit on your underline using this option since it appears in the same row of your data instead of in a row if its own.
New Page inserts a page break. This is commonly used when separating the pages of the balance sheet showing assets on the first page and liabilities and equity on the second page. I have also seen it used when folks build multi page account schedules.
Show Opposite Sign is the option you can select to change revenue credit balances or expense debit balances to the opposite sign for the purposes of presenting this data in a more non-finance friendly manner. No salesperson wants to see sales presented with a negative sign; use this to change that credit to a positive number on your reporting.
Show allows you to designate if a row will show (the default) or be hidden on the printed account schedule only. You can click this box as much as you want, but your rows will still show on-screen or when you export to Excel. If you print directly out of account schedules, this feature will work very well for you.
Dimension Totaling is the last option available and you might have noticed that I didn’t show them on pictures above. This is because they are unique for just about every user, and depending on your analysis view setup, may even be different from schedule to schedule. You can use just one, or you can use all four of the available dimension totaling fields, in whatever combination you like. These fields act very much like the Totaling field because this is where you will tell NAV what Dimensions you want shown and totaled from your general ledger accounts.
Blogiversary Top 20 (#14) Video Demo: How to export NAV account schedules to Microsoft Excel
Posted: April 10, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, dimensions, Excel, export to excel, financial statement, learning, NAV, NAVUG, NAVUG Academy, training Leave a commentWe’re celebrating our one year blogiversary by reposting the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year, as determined by you, our readers! Follow this link to see the entire list. Enjoy!
There are some quick and easy ways to publish NAV Account Schedules to Microsoft Excel but some of them end up with some pretty ugly formatting unless you know a few secrets on how to make them look better. This short demo video shows you how to create a nicely formatted NAV Account Schedule in Microsoft Excel that only requires formatting the first time you set it up. Each time you replicate the report after that, you can simply update the report with new numbers and the formatting will remain the same every time.
While this demo shows how to create a financial report with three monthly tabs, you can easily extend this technique in a couple of different ways. I use this same technique to produce my monthly financial statement package. I have eighteen pages in the package I produce each month, and each page is a different account schedule. When I start a new month, I copy the Excel workbook and rename it with the new month, then use exactly this same technique to produce the new month’s reports. By using this technique, the new copied workbook acts as a “shell” to receive my new numbers. From month to month, I am able to maintain consistent formatting in my reporting while producing my financial reports in the most efficient way possible. I can apply the same principles to my monthly team budget reports. In this case, I can produce the same actual versus budget report over and over with a new dimension filter applied for each team, one per each Excel worksheet in the workbook.
If you’d like to learn more about account schedules, please visit my 2013 Classes page. This short video demo comes from my Account Schedules Basics class which I teach through NAVUG Academy. This class offering is just one of many classes that are being offered by NAVUG Academy in 2013 to help you get more out of your use of NAV at your company.
Blogiversary Top 20 (#15) Why NAV users should be using dual monitors
Posted: April 9, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dual monitors, Excel, NAV, paperless, productivity, ROI Leave a comment
We’re celebrating our one year blogiversary by reposting the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year, as determined by you, our readers! Follow this link to see the entire list. Enjoy!
My company began using dual monitors a few years ago for power users, and have been putting them into place for all users this year. Does this change make a real difference in user productivity?
Some real world examples of what my team uses dual monitors for:
- More than one NAV session at a time. As long as you have the licenses for it, you can have more than one NAV session open at a time. This is great for when you need to run a report that ties up your session for a while like the AR aging or AP aging or inventory valuations. Use one session to run these reporting hogs in, and another session to look up information for something else you’re working on.
- Answering email questions. Open up that email on one screen, and reference the information you need on another.
- Spreadsheet stretch. Sometimes when you have a ton of data to deal with, it sure helps to see it all in one place.
- Remote access. If you’re in more than one computer at a time, perhaps your laptop and also a computer back at the office via remote access, being able to see one on each screen is a big help instead of hitting Alt-Tab all day.
- Using the help menu or other documentation. Are you trying to figure out how to use something new? Put up the application on one screen and the help menu (or user guide) up on the other screen.
- Comparison. Whether you’re looking up more than one option on the internet or comparing what you have in your production versus development databases, using dual monitors is a great way to see what you options you have without having to switch between screens to remember what you saw.
- Connecting with your customer. When on the phone with a customer, our customer care team has NAV on one screen and a view of what our customer is looking at on our website on the other. This allows them to better answer the customer’s question about the product, and also make suggestions later as to how we can improve on the customer experience.
- Entry to NAV on one screen, information on another screen. If your work is transactional, and you need to enter invoices on one screen, but reference a document on another screen, this is a great way to use dual monitors. Don’t print out that document, just put it up on your second monitor.
- Paperless processing. Ultimately, dual monitors make paperless processing possible for my company. We’re working on a paperless initiative in our accounts payable area right now which couldn’t have happened without dual monitors. Getting users to reference documents on-screen has been an easy, natural transition and while we’re saving a tree or two, the better argument has been the time saved in not printing, organizing, and filing those documents.
Return on investment of dual monitors
If you’re not convinced yet, take a look at the ROI of dual monitors. Let’s say a second monitor costs $200. Estimates of productivity gains range anywhere from 10% – 50%. If you have an employee who generates $200,000 of revenue annually, at a conservative estimate of 10% productivity gain, this could equate to a $20,000 increase in revenue; a one hundred-fold payout on your initial investment.
Blogiversary Top 20 (#16) Tips and tricks for a flawless budget load in NAV
Posted: April 8, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: budgets, Excel, export to excel, NAV, tips and tricks Leave a commentWe’re celebrating our one year blogiversary by reposting the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year, as determined by you, our readers! Follow this link to see the entire list. Enjoy!
Hopefully, you’ve completed your budget work for 2013 and all you need to do to finish is to load all that information to NAV so you can begin to report against your actual financial numbers. If you’ve done this before, you might already know that NAV’s budget tool can be a bit fussy and also a bit cryptic about why it won’t accept your carefully prepared data. Here are four quick tips to help you with getting that data into NAV quickly, correctly, and in one try.
1. Export first, then import. This is the single most important detail about getting budget data loaded into NAV. You can choose to export an existing budget or even choose to export a blank new budget. Exporting a budget as your first step establishes a working template you can populate your data into, including dimensions. As long as you start with this template, you are already most of the way there to a successful NAV budget load.
2. If you’re using dimensions, validate your data against the provided drop downs. Make sure all budget lines that use dimensions are only using valid dimension names. Any deviation from the allowable values that already exist in NAV can cause your budget load to error out or load without balancing.
3. Clear the formats from your numbers. Once you’ve copied and pasted or typed your numbers into your Excel template, use the Excel “Clear Formats” function on all cells that contain a numeric value to make sure they are all returned to a formatted status of general. NAV does not accept any other format than the one in the template, and use of other formats, including use of commas in the numbers, will cause the budget tool to give an error and keep you from loading your budget successfully.
4. Use the “Add Entries” option for a brand new budget load and the “Replace Entries” option for a subsequent version. The add entries option should only be used for a brand new budget load, otherwise the entries will be added on top of the already existing entries, doubling or tripling them. If you need to load a second or third version or some type of correction, always use the replace entries option instead of the add entries option. If you really get stuck with a bunch of errors, the best thing you can do is delete your budget and reload from scratch.
Take one last look through your data to make sure it’s accurate and exactly what you expected. You can use the budget tool to do this, or even better, put together a quick account schedule that shows your entries using “G/L Budget Entries” instead of “G/L Entries”. Make sure to look at your total balances, balances by fiscal period, and balances with dimension filters applied. Once you’re satisfied that all your budgeted data has loaded correctly and completely, you’re ready to produce financial reporting showing actual versus budgeted numbers!
DynamicsNAVFinancials blog celebrates one year with top 20 postings
Posted: April 1, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, budgets, Classic Client, Convergence, dimensions, Dynamics, Excel, export to excel, financial reporting, financial statement, general ledger, NAV, NAV 2013, NAVUG, payment terms, PowerPivot, tips and tricks, user group 2 Comments
It’s our blogiversary! I started this blog in April 0f 2012, inspired by the number of NAV end users I had met over the last year who had the same questions that just weren’t getting answered. What better way to get that information out to folks than a blog where I could write up the topic in an easy to understand way?
You’ve shown your support! Over that last year, we’ve had over 15,000 views, almost 100 followers via email, have people following us on our new Facebook page, and know that many of you follow postings through the RSS feed. People from more than 120 countries are reading DynamicsNAVFinancials! The blog has gotten enough attention to be picked up for syndication through Microsoft Dynamics Community and I was even asked to participate as one of the eleven official bloggers at Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013 last month.
Special thanks has got to go to the NAVUG. The user group has been especially supportive of me and of the blog, finding opportunities for me to speak to NAV users in person, in webinars, online classes, and through this blog. Without the support of the user group this would have been a much longer road and I am so grateful for the constant work they have done to get me in front of as many readers as possible.
Publishing over an entry a week in the last year, there’s a lot to choose from, but in the month of April, I’ll be re-running the top 20 postings determined by the most viewed entries. Enjoy, and thank you so much for reading! There would be no reason to do this without you!
19 The NAV accountant’s little helper: the reconciliation account check box
18 Learning about Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013: on demand learning from NAVUG is a fantastic resource!
17 Tis the (Budget) Season! Three handy NAV account schedule tips to get you through
16 Tips and tricks for a flawless budget load in NAV
15 Why NAV users should be using dual monitors
14 Video Demo: How to export NAV account schedules to Microsoft Excel
13 Basic row setup options for NAV Account Schedules
12 Aging methods in NAV – which buckets are you looking for?
11 Complete row setup options for NAV account schedules
10 Learning about Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013
9 Where can I learn more about NAV analysis reports and analysis by dimensions?
8 10 easy tips for payment terms success in Microsoft Dynamics NAV
6 Getting started with a new account schedule
4 Maximize your Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Classic screen space with user level configuration options
3 Basic column layout options for NAV Account Schedules
2 NAV keyboard shortcuts – Classic to RTC
1 The Account Schedules Formulas Page
PowerPivot to the People
Posted: March 5, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: BI, Excel, Microsoft, NAV, Office2013, PowerPivot Leave a commentAs a Controller at a small to medium-sized business, I struggle with the big BI question: do I invest in a business intelligence package or do I do it myself?
When I first became aware of PowerPivot, a free Excel add-on that became available with Microsoft Office 2010, I was excited and also a little relieved. While the emergence of PowerPivot didn’t completely solve my dilemma, it sure gave me some significant options for more data accessibility. I didn’t have to depend on my partner or an IT employee with special skills to build me a dataport from NAV, or to piece together an SQL query, or to build a cube I could apply queries to. Because I have PowerPivot, suddenly I can be Super-Controller; accessing tables directly in my NAV database, pulling ginormous amounts of data into a single spreadsheet, and manipulating the data with lightning speed into familiar Excel pivot tables, all without asking for help. 
So, when I read in a recent article from MSDynamicsWorld.com that New Office 2013 Licensing May Put PowerPivot, Power View Out of Reach for Some Microsoft Dynamics Users, I was actually pretty alarmed and then pretty upset. How dare Microsoft give us this shiny new Christmas dream and then snatch it away like some kind of horrible data-reneging Grinch!
I went looking for a few more answers about exactly what was going on, and what I found out was that Microsoft has actually taken PowerPivot out of most versions of Office 2013. This is a big deal because it was previously available in all versions of Office 2010, so Microsoft is actually removing functionality. PowerPivot is only available in Office 2013 if you get Office Pro Plus through volume licensing or through Office 365 subscriptions. Basically, this means PowerPivot is not available in any retail Office 2013 packages, so therefore, is only reachable by companies who have enough purchasing power to utilize volume licensing packages. So, a tool that was designed, in my opinion, to give BI power directly to the people by making it simple enough for financial folks to pull their own data, has now been restricted to only business class licensing. If you’re looking for some interesting theories as to why this might be, read Hey, Who Moved My (PowerPivot 2013) Cheese?
Mr. Excel himself (Bill Jelen), the uberist Excel geek of them all, has some great stuff to say about PowerPivot, including “PowerPivot is the best new feature to hit Excel in 20 years” and a few other things here including a great short video explaining why we should care. I just said in a recent NAVUG Ask the Experts Finance webinar only two weeks ago that as a financial professional who uses NAV, learning to use PowerPivot should be the most important skill finance people should learn in the next year.
Microsoft has missed a huge opportunity to finally settle a score in the BI arena for small to medium businesses by making this move. There has always been the argument that using Excel spreadsheets is a risky proposition for financial professionals. You can really create some big problems for yourself if you are not careful in how you manage your spreadsheets. Some companies even go so far as to outlaw them and attempt to go spreadsheet free. Companies who sell BI packages lean on this pretty hard, trying to remove spreadsheets from the list of available choices.
I say this risk is greatly offset by the benefit of being able to use a tool that can pull, in a safe way, massive amounts of data that can be manipulated by the typical Excel end-user quickly and efficiently. For me, the benefit PowerPivot brings to my company tips the scale on sinking money into a BI solution, and keeps me firmly in the DIY BI camp, with Excel as my primary tool. Making PowerPivot available in all new versions of Excel seals the deal and makes BI in Excel a revolution of equality, ensuring equilateral Excel adoption in the business world.
I’m glad to see so many people bringing forward a call to action to bring PowerPivot back to all versions of Office, not just Pro Plus and Office365 subscriptions. I’m adding my voice, and will continue to ask Microsoft to bring PowerPivot to the people!
This posting is one of the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year! Follow this link to see the entire list.
Video Demo: How to export NAV account schedules to Microsoft Excel
Posted: February 5, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, dimensions, Excel, export to excel, financial statement, learning, NAVUG, NAVUG Academy, training Leave a commentThere are some quick and easy ways to publish NAV Account Schedules to Microsoft Excel but some of them end up with some pretty ugly formatting unless you know a few secrets on how to make them look better. This short demo video shows you how to create a nicely formatted NAV Account Schedule in Microsoft Excel that only requires formatting the first time you set it up. Each time you replicate the report after that, you can simply update the report with new numbers and the formatting will remain the same every time.
While this demo shows how to create a financial report with three monthly tabs, you can easily extend this technique in a couple of different ways. I use this same technique to produce my monthly financial statement package. I have eighteen pages in the package I produce each month, and each page is a different account schedule. When I start a new month, I copy the Excel workbook and rename it with the new month, then use exactly this same technique to produce the new month’s reports. By using this technique, the new copied workbook acts as a “shell” to receive my new numbers. From month to month, I am able to maintain consistent formatting in my reporting while producing my financial reports in the most efficient way possible. I can apply the same principles to my monthly team budget reports. In this case, I can produce the same actual versus budget report over and over with a new dimension filter applied for each team, one per each Excel worksheet in the workbook.
If you’d like to learn more about account schedules, please visit my 2013 Classes page. This short video demo comes from my Account Schedules Basics class which I teach through NAVUG Academy. This class offering is just one of many classes that are being offered by NAVUG Academy in 2013 to help you get more out of your use of NAV at your company.
This posting is one of the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year! Follow this link to see the entire list.
Tips and tricks for a flawless budget load in NAV
Posted: January 21, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: budgets, Excel, export to excel, NAV, tips and tricks 1 CommentHopefully, you’ve completed your budget work for 2013 and all you need to do to finish is to load all that information to NAV so you can begin to report against your actual financial numbers. If you’ve done this before, you might already know that NAV’s budget tool can be a bit fussy and also a bit cryptic about why it won’t accept your carefully prepared data. Here are four quick tips to help you with getting that data into NAV quickly, correctly, and in one try.
1. Export first, then import. This is the single most important detail about getting budget data loaded into NAV. You can choose to export an existing budget or even choose to export a blank new budget. Exporting a budget as your first step establishes a working template you can populate your data into, including dimensions. As long as you start with this template, you are already most of the way there to a successful NAV budget load.
2. If you’re using dimensions, validate your data against the provided drop downs. Make sure all budget lines that use dimensions are only using valid dimension names. Any deviation from the allowable values that already exist in NAV can cause your budget load to error out or load without balancing.
3. Clear the formats from your numbers. Once you’ve copied and pasted or typed your numbers into your Excel template, use the Excel “Clear Formats” function on all cells that contain a numeric value to make sure they are all returned to a formatted status of general. NAV does not accept any other format than the one in the template, and use of other formats, including use of commas in the numbers, will cause the budget tool to give an error and keep you from loading your budget successfully.
4. Use the “Add Entries” option for a brand new budget load and the “Replace Entries” option for a subsequent version. The add entries option should only be used for a brand new budget load, otherwise the entries will be added on top of the already existing entries, doubling or tripling them. If you need to load a second or third version or some type of correction, always use the replace entries option instead of the add entries option. If you really get stuck with a bunch of errors, the best thing you can do is delete your budget and reload from scratch.
Take one last look through your data to make sure it’s accurate and exactly what you expected. You can use the budget tool to do this, or even better, put together a quick account schedule that shows your entries using “G/L Budget Entries” instead of “G/L Entries”. Make sure to look at your total balances, balances by fiscal period, and balances with dimension filters applied. Once you’re satisfied that all your budgeted data has loaded correctly and completely, you’re ready to produce financial reporting showing actual versus budgeted numbers!
This posting is one of the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year! Follow this link to see the entire list.
Why NAV users should be using dual monitors
Posted: August 8, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dual monitors, Excel, NAV, paperless, productivity, ROI 1 Comment
My company began using dual monitors a few years ago for power users, and have been putting them into place for all users this year. Does this change make a real difference in user productivity?
Some real world examples of what my team uses dual monitors for:
- More than one NAV session at a time. As long as you have the licenses for it, you can have more than one NAV session open at a time. This is great for when you need to run a report that ties up your session for a while like the AR aging or AP aging or inventory valuations. Use one session to run these reporting hogs in, and another session to look up information for something else you’re working on.
- Answering email questions. Open up that email on one screen, and reference the information you need on another.
- Spreadsheet stretch. Sometimes when you have a ton of data to deal with, it sure helps to see it all in one place.
- Remote access. If you’re in more than one computer at a time, perhaps your laptop and also a computer back at the office via remote access, being able to see one on each screen is a big help instead of hitting Alt-Tab all day.
- Using the help menu or other documentation. Are you trying to figure out how to use something new? Put up the application on one screen and the help menu (or user guide) up on the other screen.
- Comparison. Whether you’re looking up more than one option on the internet or comparing what you have in your production versus development databases, using dual monitors is a great way to see what you options you have without having to switch between screens to remember what you saw.
- Connecting with your customer. When on the phone with a customer, our customer care team has NAV on one screen and a view of what our customer is looking at on our website on the other. This allows them to better answer the customer’s question about the product, and also make suggestions later as to how we can improve on the customer experience.
- Entry to NAV on one screen, information on another screen. If your work is transactional, and you need to enter invoices on one screen, but reference a document on another screen, this is a great way to use dual monitors. Don’t print out that document, just put it up on your second monitor.
- Paperless processing. Ultimately, dual monitors make paperless processing possible for my company. We’re working on a paperless initiative in our accounts payable area right now which couldn’t have happened without dual monitors. Getting users to reference documents on-screen has been an easy, natural transition and while we’re saving a tree or two, the better argument has been the time saved in not printing, organizing, and filing those documents.
Return on investment of dual monitors
If you’re not convinced yet, take a look at the ROI of dual monitors. Let’s say a second monitor costs $200. Estimates of productivity gains range anywhere from 10% – 50%. If you have an employee who generates $200,000 of revenue annually, at a conservative estimate of 10% productivity gain, this could equate to a $20,000 increase in revenue; a one hundred-fold payout on your initial investment.
This posting is one of the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year! Follow this link to see the entire list.
Dynamics NAV Financials 