Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions Offices

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1 Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions Offices Africa Asia Pacific Canada Europe Latin America Middle East United States PO Box 414 Findlay, Ohio USA Phone: USA & Canada: 800-4SOLOMON International: Fax: Sales Information Great Plains Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Solomon Software, Great Plains and the Great Plains logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Great Plains Software Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. Great Plains Software Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All features/functions mentioned within are subject to change.this document is for information purposes only. Great Plains Software, Inc. makes no warranties, express or implied, in this document. LSBR-0000-O (4/01)

2 SOLOMON FLEXIBLE BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTING APPLICATIONS Financials: Integrated Solutions for Growing Companies

3 Financial Series: Integrated Solutions for Growing Companies Seamless Integration Don t waste another minute manually entering data from your financial system into other systems, or worrying about whether the information will be accurate and up-to-date when you need to use it. With Solomon IV, find the key financial information you need to make critical business decisions where you need it, when you need it-no matter what system you re working in. That s because Solomon IV Financial Series are not only fully linked with each other, they re seamlessly integrated with other Solomon IV product suites-such as Project Management, Supply Chain Management, and Field Service Management. So, for example, if you re evaluating the status of a project budget, and you need to know labor costs to date, simply pull them up in Project Controller-where they ve been automatically updated with information from Advanced Payroll. That s just one of hundreds of examples of how integrated financial information can help any business operate more efficiently. Automated Processes Replace time-consuming, error-prone manual approaches to financial processes with the far more efficient, accurate, automated capabilities of Solomon IV. Use the Solomon IV Financial Series to automate virtually every aspect of your financial operations-posting, closing, reporting, reconciliation, check writing, cash management, payroll, invoices, data entry and lookup, and much more. You ll significantly speed up financial processes, reduce the risk of human error, and free your staff to focus on strategic priorities instead of routine tasks. That way, when a customer calls with a question about an invoice, for example, a staff member can spend less time looking up the information, and more time resolving the issue-and satisfying the customer. When we found the Solomon business management system, we knew we had the right solution. We thought the Solomon interface was friendly and intuitive and we felt our staff would be more productive using the system. Second, we liked Solomon s powerful customization capabilities. And because Solomon is built on Microsoft technologies, we can rely on the fact that it s based on industry-standard technology. Gary Lerman, Controller, Heyman Corporation

4 Sewing Rewards e-business Enabled Securely extend financial information to employees, partners and customers, no matter where they are or when they need it, with native support for e-business in the Solomon IV Financial Series. Using a simple web browser, they can connect with your financial systems to handle a variety of everyday transactions and tasks remotely-such as entering payroll time, submitting vouchers, managing vendor accounts or viewing customer and vendor history. Additionally, vendors and customers can be set up as users and granted secure access to their account information so common inquiries like Where s my check? can be answered by the vendors themselves 24 hours a day - vendor service was never this easy! Built-in secure control allows you to define different levels of access for different users, to keep critical information secure. Whether you operate remote offices worldwide, routinely send employees on the road, or have customers in a variety of global locations, you can increase efficiency, communicate more effectively, and deliver better service than ever-with the comprehensive e-business capabilities of the Solomon IV Financial Series. Heyman Corporation, based in Vernon Hills, Illinois, began business in 1914 as a wholesale distributor of hosiery and undergarments. The company manufactures socks, headwear, baby apparel and playwear, with annual revenues of $50 million. With licensing agreements with the Walt Disney Company to market Mickey Mouse and Winnie-the-Pooh products, the company s growth was on the fast track, but the company s disparate accounting systems were not keeping up with Heyman s diversification. Our general ledger and accounts payable were run on a relatively inflexible and slow MS-DOS(r)-based program, says Heyman Controller, Gary Lerman. We also used a minicomputer that was more than a decade old for accounts receivable. It took too much time to transfer data between these programs, forcing us into relatively inefficient operating practices. Since implementing the Solomon application, Heyman has achieved huge increases in productivity, easily accommodating the retirement of an employee without having to replace him, and slashing 20 minute processes to seconds. Also Solomon s easy customization has saved Heyman $75,000 per year in programmers fees. The result is a tightly-integrated solution that not only takes advantage of our Microsoft platform, but adjusts to nearly every aspect of our unique operating practices, says Lerman.

5 Solutions The Solomon IV Financial Series features applications to handle every aspect of an organization s financial operations. From executing payables and receivables more flexibly, to managing cash and currency more efficiently, count on Financial Series to improve financial processes in your business. General Ledger Use Solomon IV General Ledger to create a core chart of accounts that s based on the way your business works with accounts and subaccounts configured according to your operating structure, data entry and lookup tailored to your preferred processes, and posting criteria determined by how you want to control the flow of financial data. Then expect smooth posting, processing, summarizing, and reporting month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year. Powerful data entry and inquiry capabilities, efficient and automated processes, and built-in FRx Desktop reporting come together to deliver the most comprehensive, flexible ledger possible. Stay one step ahead of growth, with the flexibility to accommodate the changes that come with acquiring or merging with other companies. General Ledger operations are easily integrated with Solomon IV Multi-Company, enabling you to create inter-company transactions, control cash centrally, and make multi-company allocations. If your company needs to track multiple budget revisions and statistical information, simply set up multiple ledgers that will maintain more than one set of books in a convenient single database. Regardless of how many ledgers you require, General Ledger will keep a complete record of all your financial data. Organize and review posted transactions according to your preferences. Accounts Payable Make the most of your cash resources by using Solomon IV Accounts Payable to track accounts due, calculate discounts, predict cash requirements, and make payments. By automating payables, this module helps eliminate problems that can cost your company money, such as paying sooner than necessary or inadvertently paying more than once. Automate to increase efficiency, too, by using the module to handle routine tasks so your staff can focus on more productive activities. No matter what unique requirements you have for how bills are paid, Accounts Payable accommodates them all. Select bills for payment based on any criteria by company, vendor, pay date or more than a dozen other categories on which to base your choices. Meet different vendor requirements easily, such as generating one check per invoice. Even print checks on the fly for unexpected expenses such as COD shipments.

6 Set up Accounts Payable to match the way you run your business, with a variety of set-up options for taxes, aging, and fiscal period information. Organize and view vendor information the way you like to see it, and drill down to as many documents and as much detail as you need for any vendor. Post documents to different accounts based on how you need to distribute expenses at any given time. And put Accounts Payable data to work on improving business performance, with a wealth of standard reports and extended reporting options to present information in an unlimited number of ways. Instantly access essential information in Accounts Receivable, including customer credit limits and account histories. Keep track of credit limits automatically, and even receive a warning when a customer exceeds them or when an account is past due beyond a certain number of days. If customers call with questions, quickly drill down to detailed account histories and other data from any screen within the system to get the information you need to assist them. Easily print original invoices and copies of existing invoices to provide customers with information they need, and even print invoices and memos on the fly. View vendor data in as much or as little detail as you need to. Accounts Receivable Manage customer accounts more actively and productively with Solomon IV Accounts Receivable. Maintain up-to-date account information, keep your customers informed about their account status, and even identify and deal with problems before they occur all by using the detailed data and reporting provided by the flexibility of Accounts Receivable. With Accounts Receivable, keeping track of a lot of receivables data doesn t require a lot of effort. Use its automated capabilities to spend less time entering customer information, regularly generate recurring invoices, and apply payments with virtually no manual effort. Easily view detailed customer activity in the Customer Maintenance screen.

7 Payroll/Direct Deposit Transform payroll and benefits administration from a frustrating administrative burden to a smooth and predictable process: Implement Solomon IV Payroll/Direct Deposit to simplify every aspect of the challenge of paying wages efficiently. Set up Payroll flexibly to accommodate individual employees by defining pay groups, earnings types, deductions, work locations, benefits and other information categories based on whatever criteria you prefer. Then set up checks for printing automatically or for direct deposit into employees accounts. You can even distribute earnings to multiple accounts for any individual employee without significant additional effort. And handle other special requirements such as bonuses or advances, payroll refunds and 401K loan repayments just as easily. Integration with other Solomon IV Financial Series products makes relatively complex payroll requirements manageable. If you re required to make third-party payments (such as child support or student loan payments) from employees earnings, for example, use Payroll with Accounts Payable to process them automatically. Or if you need to pay employees of subsidiary companies, simply combine Payroll with Multi-Company to charge expenses, wages, and earnings to the appropriate company. To ensure that you can report payroll information to the government accurately and on time, Payroll stores all payroll earnings and expenses information by calendar month, quarter, and year. Use this information to populate a variety of standard reports that are included with Payroll/Direct Deposit such as quarterly federal tax returns and end-of-year W-2 forms. See earnings or deductions detail for any employee at the click of a button.

8 Advanced Payroll Manage the most complex payroll challenges with Solomon IV Advanced Payroll. Designed for companies whose payroll requirements are far more complex than those which use Solomon IV Payroll/Direct Deposit, Advanced Payroll makes short work of highly specialized payroll tasks. Determine pay rates based on types of skills, tasks, and shifts (or any combination thereof), calculate an unlimited number of fringe benefits, and incorporate multiple union/memberships codes for deductions. No matter how many special requirements are involved in paying your employee, the job is easy with Advanced Payroll. In addition to increasing efficiency in payroll operations, Advanced Payroll can contribute to broader business benefits as well. Use it with Solomon IV Project Management to automatically share information on labor costs, such as hours worked, with Project Controller of the Solomon IV Project Management Series. If you track time based on projects, you ll also eliminate time wasted on reconciling payroll and project systems and correcting data entry errors. Finally, Advanced Payroll can help you meet the advanced reporting requirements that often accompany advanced payroll demands. A Certified Payroll Report, for example, comes standard with Advanced Payroll, so you can automatically pay employees on certified projects by marking their time as certified. Cash Manager Get instant access to up-to-date cash balance information by implementing Solomon IV Cash Manager and using it with other Solomon IV products that impact cash such as General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Payroll. Because all the products within the Solomon IV Financial Series are integrated, these cash-impacting products automatically update Cash Manager when batches are released, keeping your cash information up to date. Reconcile cash accounts automatically with Cash Manager, too, even if you have multiple accounts that require detailed reconciliation. Cash Manager integrates the most sophisticated transactions, enabling you to balance cash accounts between the bank statement, your daily cash balance, and your General Ledger balance. Reconcile accounts as often as you need to, even on a daily basis. If you operate multiple or global offices, combine Cash Manager with Multi-Company to reconcile all your company s cash accounts in one place, so you can maintain your current cash position from a single location. Or combine Cash Manager with Currency Manager to manage cash accounts in a variety of countries and currencies with ease. Automatically clear checks and deposits by importing files that your bank provides. Specify shift premiums, incrementally or by percentage, for an unlimited number of shift codes.

9 Multi-Company No matter how many different companies or divisions make up your organization, you only need one resource to handle financial analysis and reporting on all of them: Solomon IV Multi-Company. Streamline financial management for as many companies or divisions as you need to, by using Multi-Company to set them up in accounts and subaccounts that you define based on your organization s needs. Multi-Company then takes over time-consuming and error-prone tasks associated with operating multiple companies, such as consolidation and inter-company transaction processing. Tailor databases to your organization s requirements, by setting up multiple companies in one or more databases. If you have one database, share vendor and customer lists, fiscal periods, and charts of accounts among the companies seamlessly. By sharing vendor information across your corporation you can easily identify your true buying power so you can negotiate higher discounts with your vendors. If you have multiple databases, use the Inter-Company Export/Import feature to easily transfer inter-company transactions for processing. If you purchase another company and maintain it in a separate database, don t worry about the chart of accounts being different from yours; multiple companies can have different charts, as long as you define the same account structure for all of them. The true power of Multi-Company is only realized in a single database configuration. Simplify results reporting, with the ability to obtain information and generate reports by company or across companies. You can start at a summary-level consolidation, and quickly make detailed inquiries on accounts and subaccounts by ledger and company. Define inter-company accounts by screen number, and use them when posting to multiple companies.

10 Currency Manager Do business around the world in multiple currencies, with Solomon IV Currency Manager. Integrate transaction processing throughout other Financial Series products including General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Cash Manager for seamless financial operations worldwide. Then track exchange rate fluctuations, calculate potential gains and losses related to using another currency, and maximize business profits based on accurate, up-to-the-minute information. Track as many currencies as you need to, and as many different rates as necessary for each currency and use this information to maintain historical rates, average rates, and spot rates that you can use for reporting and planning purposes. Handle any transaction in any number of currencies, and display outstanding documents such as purchase orders and sales orders in any currency. No matter what currency you use to process transactions, Currency Manager automatically calculates the domestic currency equivalent amount for your convenience. Financial Statement Translation Combine Solomon IV Financial Statement Translation with Currency Manager to easily report financials in more than one currency. These products work together to automate the currency translations and gain/loss re-measurements that must be done to accurately reflect your business operations in another currency. Automate routine tasks, such as month-end calculations of gains and losses, exchange rates, and multi-tiered translations/multi-level consolidations, to increase operational efficiency and accuracy. Produce accurate statements that comply with FASB 52 and IAS 125 standards. And translate books to other currencies for corporate reporting, through unlimited translations and re-measurements. Perform in-depth translation and worksheet inquiries to see how currency translations are affecting your business. Even create a complete audit trail of the translation process, by generating a proof to revalidate any re-measurement gain or loss. If revaluing currencies at the end of every month is too time-consuming, let Currency Manager calculate them. It computes gains and losses automatically and adjusts general ledger entries accordingly. Set up a translation definition once, and then use it every time the translation takes place. Easily set up multiple currency types, rates, and effective dates.

11 evoucher Anyone can enter Accounts Payable vouchers from anywhere, anytime, using Solomon IV evoucher and a web browser. It s ideal for companies with remote offices or a widely distributed employee base. Built on the Solomon Desktop personalized portal and seamlessly integrated with Solomon IV Accounts Payable, evoucher provides an efficient and cost-effective solution for processing fundamental Accounts Payable transactions. Instead of physically sending invoices from offices in other locations to your corporate office for payment, simply connect these offices to evoucher via Web browser. Employees can then enter AP vouchers remotely and submit them for review and release. It s more efficient and less expensive than using overnight couriers to send in invoices-and it requires no costly specialized server application, just a web browser. Quickly enter vouchers from any location on this easy-to-use, browser-based screen. In addition to submitting vouchers, use evoucher to create, update, and delete vendor accounts remotely, rather than staffing up centrally to maintain vendor accounts. With each office managing its own vendor accounts, you can substantially reduce corporate-level overhead this way.

12 FRx Count on FRx (Financial Report Extender) to deliver powerful financial reporting, report distribution, and drill-down capabilities for the Solomon IV Financial Series. This easy-to-use financial reporting interface is tightly integrated with Solomon IV General Ledger. Choose from two versions of FRx for the one best suited to your company s needs: FRx Desktop is ideal for growing companies that operate multiple departments and cost centers and that frequently restructure or reorganize them. Use FRx Desktop in this type of company to include data from spreadsheets in financial reports, get multiple financial views of the organization, and reduce the amount of paper produced by taking advantage of report distribution. Flexible report output options allow you to easily distribute financial reports via , in a spreadsheet or to an Intranet site. FRx Professional is more appropriate for companies that produce large numbers of reports and would like to centralize reporting on high-performance computers, free up workstations for other jobs, and process reports at off-peak times. Use FRx in this environment to generate reports more efficiently and to enable large numbers of users to view them on the web. In either version, find the latest features such as XML support, distribution and security by reportingtree unit, and exporting of reports to HTML via Excel In addition, get comprehensive web viewing and administration capabilities in FRx Professional.