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Configuring Costing and Cost Sheets in Dynamics AX 2012

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May 19, 2013
Dynamics AX
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If you are using the production module within Dynamics AX, then you are probably wanting to get a better handle on your costs.  You can easily configure Dynamics AX to calculate costs of BOM’s, and if you want to get a little more industrious then you can also create cost sheets broken out by your particular cost categories, incorporate routing costs, and even add surcharges and other indirect costs.

In this blueprint we will walk through an example that shows how to set up your costing controls within Dynamics AX.

Here are all of the topics that are included in this blueprint:

  1. Setting up Costing Versions
  2. Manually Assigning a Product Cost
  3. Creating Calculation Groups
  4. Using Costing Versions to perform a Mass Cost Calculation
  5. Performing a Basic Cost Rollup
  6. Creating Cost Groups

There is a lot more that you can do within the Costing configuration of Dynamics AX that we did not cover in this brief introduction.

Try it out and I’m sure that you will quickly surpass what we did here.

If you want to view the original post which may have additional content then click here.

Building Dynamic Products with the Product Configurator

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May 12, 2013
Dynamics AX
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If you want to personalize your products a little, or if you are more of a configure to order operation where every product that you ship out the door is tailored to your customers specifications and needs then you will probably want to take advantage of the Product Configurator that is built into Dynamics AX.  This feature allows you to create a product with a number of different attributes, and rules that will allow Dynamics AX to build a custom BOM every time the product is ordered, and also tell you if the product is even possible to make.

The topics that are described within this series are:

  1. Creating a Constraint Based Product Master
  2. Creating a Product Configuration Model
  3. Adding Configuration Attributes
  4. Grouping Related Attributes
  5. Adding Conditional Display Options
  6. Adding Constraints to your Configuration Model
  7. Configuring BOMS Based On Attributes
  8. Using Table Based Attribute Values (Book Only)
  9. Using Attributes as Variables (Book Only)

The Product Configurator that is built into Dynamics AX is a pretty useful tool, and if you spend the time creating the rules on how you should be building your products, it can possibly reduce the number of BOM’s that you define down to just a handful.

To see the original posting for this walkthrough, click here.

Improve your Personal Branding through Sharing

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May 4, 2013
Personal Branding
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I post a lot of walkthroughs and information to social media sites. I started doing this though for purely selfish reasons. Primarily they were:

  • To give customers a resource to see how I did what I showed them in demonstrations so that they didn’t get mad at me.
  • To give consultants a resource to see what I am showing customers in demonstrations so that they wouldn’t get mad at me.
  • And to show to lawyers to prove that I wasn’t just using smoke and mirrors during demonstrations, so that I don’t get deposed (again).

Along the way though I found that I was creating a small personal brand, and this has helped me a lot with everything that I do.

I have a simple system that I use that allows me to turn something that I find cool or interesting into something sharable, that also helps extend out my personal brand.

Systems don’t work for everyone, because everyone has their own personal style, but I thought I would pass this on just in case it works for someone else. Read More

Configuring a Basic Company in Dynamics AX

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May 1, 2013
Dynamics AX
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The demonstration virtual machines that you can download from the PartnerSource site have a blank company that you can use to create your own data within. The good news about it is that it’s clean, so you can create your own personal demonstration data without having to look at TV’s and stereos all of the time. The bad news is that the company is clean, so you have to configure all of the data yourself. That’s not a big problem though, the configuration is not that hard, and having your own data makes the Dynamics AX look so much better.

In this walkthrough we will show how you can start the process by configuring the US01 legal entity so that you can start using it. We will show how to:

  • Configure the US01 legal entity
  • Create a new business unit for the organization
  • Configure the business account structures
  • Configure the company ledger
  • Set the default accounts for the automatic transactions
  • Create a bank account for the organization Read More

Using Print Management To Route Dynamics AX Forms

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April 28, 2013
Dynamics AX
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The Print Management feature within Dynamics AX does a lot more than just allow you to print reports. It also allows you to e-mail reports, automatically print and distribute forms, and also have custom form versions by customer & vendor.

In this walkthrough we will show some of the different options available to you and also how to configure them within Dynamics AX. You will learn how to:

  1. Send a Form via Email
  2. Automatically Email A Form
  3. Set Email defaults by Customer
  4. Use the Batch Server to Automatically Generate Forms
  5. Creating Alternate Form Versions Read More

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013

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April 21, 2013
Book Club
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Although I live in the Dynamics AX kind of guy, I sometimes peek over the fence to see what people are doing with the other Dynamics products to see if I can pick up some new tricks and tips. So, the other day I picked up a copy of Mark Polino’s new book on reporting in GP, and I wasn’t disappointed. Mark does a great job an showing how to use Excel 2013 for Dashboarding, and the techniques that he uses also translate to the other ERP platforms as well. If you are looking to be inspired when it comes to reporting, check his book out. It’s great.

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Storing Document Attachments within SharePoint

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April 16, 2013
Dynamics AX
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With the release of Dynamics AX 2012 R2, a new document location type is available for the Document Types which allows you to archive files to SharePoint rather than to the usual network file locations. This is a much better place to store files since you can add metadata to the uploaded files, and also you can add features like version control and document security around the files.
In this example we will show how you can create a new document type that stores it’s attached files within SharePoint.

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Using RSS Feeds As PowerView Data Sources

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April 12, 2013
Business Intelligence, PowerView
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A lot of social media and search sites have the option to output the results as RSS feeds as well as the normal human readable version. PowerPivot has the option to use XML feeds as the source for its’ data sources. It just makes sense to marry the two features together and create Power View dashboards that summarizes the live feeds so that we can start analyzing the searches that we are interested in.

In this walkthrough will show you how easy that is to do.

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Creating Custom User Role Centers

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March 12, 2013
Dynamics AX
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Dynamics AX comes pre-packaged with over 40 standard role centers for a lot of the normal user types that you would expect to see within an organization – CFO, Salesperson, AP Clerk, etc. But what if you have unique roles within your organization that don’t fit the standard roles. Wouldn’t it be nice to create your own?

In the following walk through we will show you how to do just that.
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