Bill of Lading – Custom Reports for Microsoft Great Plains – Consultant Overview

The bill of lading is a mandatory report for logistics and freight forwarding companies. If you are looking for a freight forwarding software, aimed at automating the transportation business, Bill of Lading with multiple custom forms should be there. However, if you need the extension to the standard ERP/Accounting application, you may be considering customizing the system. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains could be thought of as an ERP platform, ready for customization. Let us bring you customization highlights.

o Sales Order Processing – SOP is the module where you create the customer order and transfer it to the invoice once completed, fulfilled or assigned. So naturally, the Bill of Lading must originate from SOP. Another nice feature in SOP is multi-currency support (dollar, euro, yen, yuan, peso), so bill of lading report could be generated for international shipments.

o MBL/HBL – The House Bill of Lading may include multiple Master Bills of Lading, associated with the shipment to a specific customer. Microsoft Great Plains naturally associates the bill with a single customer, which is why House Bill of Lading should be a light customization of Great Plains Dexterity, where you combine multiple shipments into one container (HBL). The simplified solution is to simply use user defined fields for HBL and MBL.

o Freight/Shipment Inquiry – You may also need to see the gain/loss on the shipment/HBL. This window should include all AR and AP invoices associated with HBL with the drilldown function of the original documents. This can be done as Dexterity, C#/VB.Net Application, SOP Table Post (SOP30200, SOP30300) or just a report

or Technology. Microsoft Great Plains Dexterity is a Great Plains programming language and development environment. Great Plains Software has Great Plains Dynamics/Dynamics C/S+/eEnterprise and currently Microsoft Great Plains product lines developed at Great Plains Dexterity. ReportWriter – This tool will allow you to modify your existing Pick Ticket, Packing List, or Invoice Form to generate a Bill of Lading. ReportWriter has some restrictions: To put fields from your custom tables or third-party modules into the ReportWriter report, you need a slight customization skill (rw_* functions). VBA/Modifier will allow you to modify Great Plains forms and attach VBA scripts to buttons. Crystal Reports: With Crystal Reports Designer, you can produce the most complex report, including the report that pulls information from heterogeneous databases (as if some of your Bill of Lading information resided in Oracle, DB2 custom database).

Good luck with implementation, customization, and integration, and if you have any issues or concerns, we’re here to help! If you want us to do the work, give us a call at 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! [email protected]