Access Handisoft vs. AccountMate vs. Microsoft Dynamics GP

The software is great and does what we need for our day-to-day accounting, but when it comes to our in-house IT, we seem to have issues with our internal server complementing our ability to work outside of the office on the software. Data has been lost, work time wasted twice.

Incentivized

AccountMate is a great product for wholesale and distributors. It manages the inventory cycles comprehensively, from purchasing to stocking, to sales and delivery. There are a great many tools available to manage inventory, properties, and financials. The availability to have third-party add-ons offers even greater opportunities to meet the needs of the end-user. The system is not really suited for certain types of service industries: legal, medical, and those businesses that invoice on time.

Incentivized

Microsoft Dynamics GP is well-suited for our environment, as we pay a diverse group of employees, including on-the-road drivers, shop employees (some in other locations), and office employees. It easily tracks time off, taxes, pay, etc. The reporting allows us to verify with our drivers how they are paid each week, whether it be through mileage or stop-offs.

Incentivized

• Productivity
• Dashboard/reporting
• Ease of use

Incentivized

• Ease of use
• Ability to easily adapt the solution to fit the needs of the end user
• Integration of data across different platforms

Incentivized

• Great Plains started as back office/accounting, and that is still it's strong suit.
• SQL and the GP programming language, Dexterity, provide a robust, scalable, and stable platform with well documented maintenance and repair procedures. Relatively easy to manage, tune, and support.
• Microsoft support for GP verges on "particularly well". Doesn't quite get there but good enough once you know what you're doing
• Strong partner network, including the GP User Group (GPUG)

Incentivized

• Inventory building
• Reboot necessity
• Internet Lag

Incentivized

• Custom reports: The current system uses Crystal Reports, which is a bit cumbersome.
• True cloud-based solution is missing

Incentivized

• With respect to the allocations, once the expense is entered into the allocation account, you lose the ability to run any detail on just the total of the expense. It would be nice if you could run a trial balance on the allocation accounts the same way you can with regular accounts.
• I've always thought security set up could be a bit simpler. It actually has gotten better through the years. Specifically, with eight separate entities, it would be nice to have a "master" setup where you could call up one group entity, assign the users rights, and then be finished. Currently, whenever I have a new user, I have to call up each individual entity and select all of the features I want the user to have. That means I have to do eight steps for each user.

Incentivized

Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.

Incentivized

Though it is a basic accounting package, I believe some users do not find the old style menus and navigation options intuitive. There is also a great lack of training resources in the market, so users have to learn the product without guidance a lot, resulting in inefficient workflows and misuse or misunderstanding of many features.

Incentivized

The rating is directed to the thrid party serive provider that we use. I do not now how good the Microsoft direct support is.

Incentivized

Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.

Incentivized

Because we work with a CPA as our Finance Manager, it is best to have the ability to track our workflow and progress, as well as our own Due Date Tracking in order to remind him. They use QuickBooks to document their business, but using Access allows us to easily manage our number to send to them for general use.

Incentivized

We use AccountMate for a number of reasons, particularly its ease of use and the ability to customize any part of the system (with source code residing on the end-user system--a HUGE advantage).

Incentivized

I come from a strong background of using SAP. SAP doesn't have the flexibility of GP, an example would be SAP doesn't allow core mods, if they catch you, you lose support. Microsoft doesn't really care about mods, but they will be quick to have the vendor you used support your issue if it is caused by those mods. With SAP your company adapts to the software, where with GP you adapt the software to you.

Incentivized

The functionality that GP and related ISV solutions offer and the ease of integration of GP to other systems makes it an extremely scalable solution

Incentivized

• Allows us to quickly gain insight into the current and past performance of the company

Incentivized

• Microsoft Dynamics GP allows my clients to move from a paper or spreadsheet based company to an integrated, electronic, streamlined business. I love being able to help clients gain efficiencies through the use of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
• Microsoft Dynamics GP allows for better customer service because everything is at our fingertips. If someone calls questioning an invoice, we can easily look it up. If someone calls stating they paid an invoice with a certain check number, we can quickly run a query to find that particular check number to see where it was applied.
• Having everything on a single platform provides ease of use for upgrades, backups and end user training. There is only one software to learn!

Incentivized