AuditBoard vs. Microsoft Dynamics GP

Auditboard is especially useful for SOX control testing. It is very convenient having all our information on a single platform. It is easy to communicate PBC requests to clients, store control testing working papers for review, communicate deficiencies and build dashboards to provide visual statistics. Situations where it might not be useful are for organizations that are smaller in size where the templates don't fit well with their internal audit/controls program. There is a significant amount of testing required before using the platform, and adapting working papers to fit in well with AuditBoard

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

• AuditBoard allows real-time collaboration between control and business owners and auditors.
• AuditBoard has a lot of fantastic training sessions and office hours to help users make the most of the product.
• AuditBoard has great customer service personnel to answer questions and troubleshoot any issues.

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

• We used to perform our Risk Control Analysis (RCA) for each audit's planning in an Excel spreadsheet. Once we purchased the Risk Oversight module, AuditBoard helped us convert the RCA to a system function rather than a spreadsheet. At first, we lost some of the functionality the spreadsheet provided, but AuditBoard did continue to help us build and work towards a solution more similar to what we previously had. Though happy with it, it's still not perfect. As one example, I'd like to be able to link actual Ops Audit work steps that cover the risk and controls being outlined in the RCA, rather than just adding a comment to state which steps cover them. More of a preference, I suppose.
• I also had demoed their beta Resources and Scheduling module, but it didn't have enough functionality at the time to work for how we put the quarterly Internal Audit schedule together (using Excel). One thing I recall was that you couldn't pull in SOX controls or non-chargeable work (such as education or administration) to auditor's schedules; it was meant to schedule the Ops Audits only. It is possible they have already fixed or improved this; I just haven't seen the updated version.

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

I remember there were a lot of sync issues when I used the internally developed software, but that's probably because a few people were working on the same project at the same time. I have not come across this issue in AuditBoard

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

• Hard to quantify. It was cheaper than the tool we had and we were able to get rid of standalone tool for surveys. overall, just better user experience for all.

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