One of the strengths of Dynamics GP is its flexibility in accommodating differing GL account formats. To support this you must declare on installing GP the size of the account framework that is needed to contain that account format. Back in the old days (anyone remember Btrieve?) you made the framework only as large as you needed it to be because if you made it too large you paid a performance penalty.
Now that we are in SQL Server the framework does not bear that much of a burden so we are free to pick and choose as large a framework as we need. There are limits to what GP allows when you define the framework but we've generally settled on 66 characters in 8 segments. This choice defaults to 8 characters per segment and that works for all of our clients.
The reason the framework is so important is because it is tied to the underlying table formats. You must declare your framework as almost the first thing you do after the installation. Here are the typical high-level installation steps:
1. Install Dynamics GP software.
2. Run GP Utilities and create your companies.
3. Run GP and configure your companies.
Again that is high-level, there's plenty of detailed steps involved in each of these. But step 2 involves the declaration of your account framework and I'd argue it's more important than anything else you do. Here's why.
The account framework sets the boundaries of the general ledger account number you can configure in GP. Before you even select GP as a solution you should be firm in what you require for your account number format. Such knowledge stems from an in-depth understanding of your business and financial reporting needs. A wrong decision here could be expensive - it may help to engage a GP consultant that has expertise in account design.
Regardless of the account number format you choose, unless it put you over the framework I mention above (and I'd love to hear from you if you do) you could use the framework I suggest above. You should have no problem defining your account format inside of that.
Here comes the interesting part of this. If you are moving from one framework to another things get really sticky. The reason is that GP extends its schema to match the framework you choose.
This is the real reason why this decision is so important. If you are trying to move a company database from one framework from a different one you simply cannot do so unless you change the schemas to match.
The Account Master table, GL00100, is a great showcase for this. If you look in this table you will see a number of columns right up-front named ActNumbr_1, ActNumbr_2, etc. The length of these columns is defined by the account framework. For reasons I've forgotten GP rounds up to the next odd number. The number of these columns is also declared in this framework.
If you declare a maximum account length of 15 characters in 4 segments of length 3, 6, 4 and 2 then you will get ActNumber lengths of 3, 7, 5 and 3.
My suggested universal framework of 66 characters in 8 segments of 8 characters each results in 8 ActNumbr columns of 9 characters each. This would easily contain the 4 segment account framework defined in the previous paragraph plus allow much larger account number formats in other companies that might be required.
When you install the GP client you run Utilities the first time before you use it. What this does is connect to the Dynamics database and read the account framework so it knows what column lengths it needs to accommodate. When you introduce a database with a different column length that that defined by your framework the GP client will protest with a bunch of different errors and will basically not work with that company.
If you run into this situation there is only one solution: Re-Formatter from Corporate Renaissance Group. It will allow changing your account framework from one to another. Worth every penny if you need to do this and highly recommended.
So choose your account framework carefully. And if all else fails go to www.crgoup.com.
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