Dynamics GP customizations are like tattoos

Customizations in Microsoft Dynamics GP are like tattoos. A few, strategically applied are fine, but they are hard to remove when you change your mind. Plus, you'd better know what you have and where it is.

My wife has a tattoo to commemorate the loss of her sister to ovarian cancer. That's a tough tattoo to argue with.  Likewise, for most companies that customize Dynamics GP, the first few usually make pretty good sense.  An item gets identified in the implementation stage as a gap and a customization is the best solution. Congratulations on your first tattoo!

Like tattoo junkies, some companies become customization junkies and pile on the changes. Throw in a VAR change or two and suddenly companies have no idea what's a customization, what's driven by a third party and what's in the core. There are a number of firms out there that have decided that they simply cannot upgrade Dynamics GP because of the depth and breadth of their customizations. 

The lesson is to know what you have, why you have it, and what it does. I ran into a firm recently with an interesting customization. When they selected one of a few warehouse Id's, GP automatically changed the warehouse and locked the field so the user couldn't change it. I'm sure there was a good business reason for this. Nobody knows what it was and now they want the customization ripped out.  There are number of customizations on that window and it's going to take some work to rip it out.  Most VAR's I know create a document describing the customization, the rationale, what it's going to do, etc. Once delivered, those documents usually ...