How to Prepare Microsoft Dynamics GP for a Multi-National Deployment, Part 1 - Language and Local Requirements

Microsoft Dynamics GP has been supporting business in Europe (not just European Union Member Countries) since Version 1. I know because I've worked with it in Europe since the beginning. I've yet to find an organisation that had specific European Financial or Regulatory requirements that could not be met by GP. In the very early days, we needed to develop some add-ons to handle specific European issues, (VAT Daybooks, Movement of goods tracking, VIES reports) but these have been replaced with standard software since back in the day.

Even with a strong set of standard capabilities, companies planning a multinational deployment of Dynamics GP need to be aware of the common challenges and considerations that arise.  Many of these issues revolve around the shifting regulatory requirements from one nation or region to the next, while other challenges may sound familiar to an IT team accustomed to multi-national systems.

In this two part series we're going to look at the two main areas of concern for multi-national deployments of Dynamics GP.  The first, which we'll examine here, is localisation as it relates to both language support and the added functionality that different countries and regions require for local accounting and regulatory needs.  In the follow on piece, I discuss a variety of other international considerations that can determine a GP deployment's success.

Language Translation

Localisation is generally concerned with two factors: language translation support and added functionality to meet local requirements.

Dynamics GP Supports U.S. English, International English, French, Canadian, and Latin American Spanish. For any ASCII-based language, it is not impossible (and in most cases quite straightforward) to ‘modify' the system to display alternative language texts on windows, ...