Go Home Early on Friday After Giving your Boss a Microsoft Dynamics GP Flash Report

Accountants have never done their job without a spreadsheet.  And most accountants have never had a job where there wasn't a Flash/Quick/Summary/Friday/Monday Report - pick one, whatever you call it.  In SMB's (Small and Medium-size Businesses) the owners and managers always wanted you to bypass the familiar debits and credits and give them a report that quickly told them the status of the business. 

Forget accuracy.  You and I know that report was a major headache. It never balanced to the real statements.  Sometimes it never balanced, period.  And adjustments crept into the real financial statements because they were valid debit and credit memos for payables and receivables.  Plus there would be inventory adjustments which affected cost of goods sold or, heaven forbid, a cash adjustment-personally, I always seemed to overlook an interest charge or deposit error on the Friday Report, but my real system balanced to the penny, but I had the extra work of explaining why the Flash Reports differed from the financial statements.

The answer to this headache for my  clients has been to develop what we call a "Flash Summary Report" with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).  It is deployed on an Intranet (secure, internal web site and available 24 hours a day to business owners.  It always balances and it always equals the real financial statements because it always gets its data from the real financial accounting system.

In our sample, we detail out the major changes to Cash for the week, the month, and year-to-date.  This can be as simple as reporting a single cash account or you can report multiple checkbooks in ...