Former Great Plains Small Business Manager, recent version s 9.0, Small Business Financials is in essence GP Dexterity application with similar code base as regular Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics GP, but with scaled down functionality.  SBF is available exclusively on Microsoft SQL Server platform and this fact opens great opportunities for SQL programmers and consultants to fix SBF data and program integrations.  In this small publication we would like to give your reports design highlights

1.       Report Writer Reporting.  Small Business Financials allows you only to change the position of the fields, if you need to really change report design - place new fields, add calculated fields, then you need to do it in GP ReportWriter module, and then transfer it back to SBF in the form of Export (or package).  This is pretty much a standard practice in supporting and upgrading Small Business Financial customers - they need to be backed by Great Plains Dynamics GP customization partner

2.       Advanced Financial Analysis reporting.  Yes, SBF has AFA as default and preferred reports for Balance Sheet, P&L, Cash Flow Statement.  AFA is another Dex module which builds its reports on GP account categories

3.       Crystal Reports for SBF.  Here you have the opportunity and the challenge as CR is just a tool and it doesn't give your GP report wizard.  We recommend you to familiarize yourself, if you are software developer or programmer with SBF tables structure, this is very similar to GP.  If you have MSDN subscription, please download Dynamics GP 9.0 demo CD and install it for testing with demo company

4.       SRS or Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services.  Similar to Crystal Reports, SRS should be based on SQL Stored Procedures, however it gives you more freedom in deploying ecommerce or web interface for report users

5.       eConnect.  This SDK is not available in standard package for Small Business Financials.  You would need to upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Ready to deploy eConnect integration and reporting functionality

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