Technology Solutions & IT News Blog | FMT Consultants

Editor's Note: This blog was originally published in July 2017. Content was updated in July 2020.  Do you use any of the myriad of services offered by Microsoft 365? If you do, then you should know about Microsoft Secure Score. Secure Score analyzes your Microsoft 365 environment to help articulate your current security posture and provides actionable steps needed to strengthen and improve your Microsoft Cloud Security. After companies deploy Microsoft 365 services, there is commonly a lull or period of administrative inactivity. Maybe the IT team is satisfied with a job well done after a successful implementation or they might be buried in day-to-day workloads, leaving security behind.  Although Microsoft 365 offers much better overall security than most on-premise deployments of email systems or other cloud-based email providers (Gmail), for example, it does not mean that the job is done on a security front. There are still safety configurations […]

SharePoint developers have been using server side object model up until the latest release of SharePoint on premise but that approach does not work with Office 365 based SharePoint online. For C# developers Microsoft introduced .NET based API for reading and writing data to SharePoint. Developers may use Client Side Object Model to integrate SharePoint with other systems like ERP or CRM. CSOM can be used to build custom apps on top of SharePoint online. In this blog, we are just going to focus on reading various high-level objects in SharePoint Online. SharePoint Client Side Object Model (CSOM) allows developers to retrieve, update and manage data in SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online makes the CSOM available in several forms. .NET Framework redistributable assemblies Javascript library REST/OData endpoints Windows Phone assemblies Silverlight redistributable assemblies In this blog post, we will focus on .NET framework based approach of reading data from SharePoint. SharePoint […]

Are your customer documents (quotes, contracts, etc.) associated with the correct customer and easily accessible from within their account record in CRM? If it takes your sales team more than a few clicks to find accurate customer information, you can streamline your process and improve sales performance with the powerful combination of Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM) and SharePoint. In this video… Discover how you can store and manage documents in SharePoint—providing external users access to collaborate on the documents  View documents within the context of a record in Microsoft Dynamics 365  Explore rich features such as enterprise search, custom folder hierarchy, and auto site provisioning. As your local Microsoft Partner, FMT Consultants can help you combine the customer management capabilities in CRM and the information management capacity of SharePoint. You’ll gain a complete view of your customers and their business documents, without having to jump between systems.

SmartList is one of my favorite tools in Dynamics GP. It is easy to use and very powerful. Best of all, it exports to Excel beautifully with just a click of a button. SmartList is great for any Ad-Hoc reporting and data analysis. Dynamics GP already organizes the different Smartlists in each of the module folders and sub-folders. This makes it even easier to use. You can also customize a Smartlist and save it as your favorite or reminder. Today, I’m going to show you how to make three very useful Smartlists in the Financial Module to help monitor your Chart of Accounts. Balance Sheet Account with the Wrong Posting Type This SmartList will help you catch any Balance Sheet account with Profit and Loss as the posting type. Before you run your year-end close process, make sure you check this Smartlist and fix any mistakes you might find. Better […]

By increasing focus on the NetSuite® and Microsoft® practice areas, FMT positions for accelerated growth. CARLSBAD, CA-JULY 05, 2017: Today, FMT Consultants, a leading integrated business solutions provider, announced the sale of their SAP Business ByDesign (ByD) practice to VistaVu Solutions of Calgary, Alberta. For FMT, the divestiture increases focus on their rapidly growing NetSuite and Microsoft practice areas while providing existing FMT ByD clients and team members an outstanding path forward with VistaVu Solutions. FMT Consultants’ CEO Eric Casazza stated, “For FMT, this is a winning business transition that allows us to focus on continued rapid growth in our core Microsoft and NetSuite offerings.  As we have gotten to know the VistaVu Solutions team, we are confident that together with our valued team members, they will provide a great resource for our SAP ByD customers.” The sale of the SAP ByDesign practice includes professional staff, existing accounts, and SAP-specific […]

What do CPM and BI have in common? Regardless of your organization's industry or role within your team, we can all agree on one thing: Everyone should have access to meaningful data to optimize their job functions in order to make educated business decisions. If you do not have a meaningful report or accurate key performance indicators, how will you help your department stay on course? Regardless of your role (technical, finance, division manager, etc) CPM and BI tools allow everyone to improve their productivity. What connects both BI and CPM: Data Management? The amount of data traveling across the world is growing at an exponential rate and it's becoming increasingly more important to capture that data in order to make sound business decisions. Organizations are using diverse platforms spanning cloud, on-premise, and privately hosted platforms. The large amounts of data sources may range from ERP, CRM, e-Commerce sites and […]

Are summer days, setting your room ablaze? Maybe winter chill is making your health go downhill? Well, there's no need to suffer through that anymore! The new SmartRoom device has a notification system and a temperature reader that helps to keep you regulated any time of year. FMT has adopted this technology for their conference room. Here's how it works: If at any time, guests in our meeting room are feeling too warm or chilly, they can open up our mobile application, choose a comfortable temperature and send a request to one of our admins to adjust the thermostat to their likings. The notification system also has a setting for you to pre-set what the temperature range in your room should be between at all times. If at any time the room gets too cold or too hot, a message will be sent out automatically to adjust the thermostat to bring the […]

On behalf of Mekorma: Mekorma has found that the latest Microsoft Windows .Net 4.7 Framework Update is causing an issue with the Mekorma MICR Software functionality. Even if you are not currently experiencing these issues, it is highly recommended that you upgrade your software now to avoid the issue before it occurs. The two common behaviors you may encounter exhibiting this problem include: Security warning stating users are not authorized to print out of checkbooks. Warning: Unhandled object exception: The parameter is incorrect. Note: Not all Windows programs lists that have these KB's installed name the .Net 4.7 Framework. Regardless, if any of the following KB's are installed, the guidelines below for upgrading due to .Net 4.7 incompatibility would still apply: KB3186497 KB3186505 KB3186539 KB3186568 The current builds on Mekorma’s website resolve these issues and support Windows 10 and .NET Framework 4.7. Please go to the download page and install the build of Mekorma that […]

If you are looking at new ways to analyze your business, it most likely means your current reporting tools are not getting the job done. With so many options to choose from, let us narrow it down to BI and CPM to determine which is right for your organization. What is the difference between CPM and BI? Both pull data from various data sources to analyze information so you can prioritize market opportunities, company strengths, and weaknesses. BI platforms gather and analyze data relevant to the organizations business in order to improve business decision making. CPM tracks and manages your company’s KPI’s such as operational costs, revenues, budgets, overhead, and additional financial metrics. Both definitions overlap but there are differences. CPM tools typically focus on budgeting & planning, forecasting with visual and graphical dashboards to track the KPI’s relative to company objectives and goals. BI focuses more on visual data […]

State auditors are on the move. While most businesses expect (i.e., dread) to be audited by their home department of revenue, it often comes as a surprise to learn that state tax authorities routinely send auditors to, or hire auditors from, other states to capture unreported sales and use tax revenue. Some states go so far as to have remote offices. For example, the Texas Comptroller has audit offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. California has field audit offices in Chicago, New York, and Houston. There are Missouri Department of Revenue offices near Chicago, Dallas, and New York, while the Florida Department of Revenue has offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Pittsburg. The Utah State Tax Commission doesn’t specify where all it has sales and use tax auditors but notes that they “spend a majority of their time at taxpayers’ offices […]

(Purchasing | Reports |Analysis |Received/Not Invoiced) The Received/Not Invoiced Report (RNI) was created to allow Microsoft Dynamics GP users to reconcile their sub-ledger receipts to the Purchase Accrual Account. It provides a detailed list of all the open receipts pending to be invoiced. Reconciling the Purchase Accrual Account is always challenging.  Normally, users do not even realize that Dynamics GP has a report to help reconcile the account.    There are a few reasons for this report to have discrepancies.  First, remember that the Purchase Accrual Account is a control account. These types of accounts are tied to a sub-ledger and should not have journal entries entered directly to them. Normally, an off balance sub-ledger is the result of creating journal entries directly to a control account. The second issue with this report are receipts that have not been matched to an invoice and the invoice has been paid directly […]

Why can’t I match my receipt to the invoice in Purchasing? When I get asked this question, the first place I tell the user to check is the Edit Purchase Orders window under Purchasing | Transactions | Edit Purchase Orders.  What does the Purchase Order Status field say?  99% of the time it will have a ‘Closed’ status.  You cannot match an invoice to a closed Purchase Order in GP.  You’ll need to check with your team to determine why the PO was closed in the first place. Can the Purchase Order be Reopened?    Now, is there a way to fix it or simply reopen the Purchase Order?  There are a few ways to handle this situation, but the simple answer is no.  The Purchase Order cannot be reopened within GP from an end-user standpoint.   Here are three options to choose from to resolve this issue: Enter the […]