The bullfrog got the worst of it once he moved in. I created a lily pond in my yard. The next morning, I found every plant strewn across my yard.
The second morning, the problem was worse. The leaves were shredded over the driveway.
On the third morning, the pond was intact. I thought the raccoons would leave me alone now that they ultimately discovered there would be no food for them in the pond.
Not so. On the fourth morning, the plants had been ripped from their tubs with the root ball torn apart and parts of it dumped in the street.
I returned to the pond store for a “Fido Fence” and several new plants, tripling my investment in my pond. I woke up to a squeal at 11:00 PM to watch several very irate raccoons walking down the road. A raccoon-to-English translator wasn’t necessary.
However it was several months later when my gardener confronted me. I picked enough out of his angry Spanish to determine he had finally figured out what was stinging him when he pulled weeds near the pond. I showed him where to unplug the fence and gave him a nice Christmas bonus—equivalent to unforeseen internal soft costs and more hard investment dollars.
Eventually things settled down and a very large bullfrog adopted the pond as his home. However, I thought his life had ended abruptly when I found him stretched out over the wire, frozen in time except for the slight twitch in his legs every six seconds. I used a stick to flip him off the wire.
When I had changed into my jeans and returned for his funeral, I found him happily sitting in his favorite spot. Unfortunately frogs don’t learn well and this happened a number of times over the years even though he survived each episode.
Security controls in Microsoft Dynamics GP are like my Fido Fence.
- If they aren’t installed early, costs can increase. History gets accidentally deleted. Setup options are changed that wreak havoc with functionality. Transactions get deleted. One of our clients passed out their override password for overrides in a third-party module. Sales Orders with cash deposits were deleted.
- Unintentional problems occur if security is too tight. General ledger batches hang without adequate user posting access. Product is shipped to an incorrect address because customer service can’t update the address. Module year-end closing isn’t initiated on time because someone didn’t even know the Dynamics GP routine existed. One of our clients unmarked Maintain History in General Ledger Setup then closed their fiscal year. The historical year detailed transactions simply disappear! Fortunately, we had retained a backup of the data two months earlier after an upgrade so we were able to restore the data.
- Like the Fido Fence getting unplugged, security may need to be relaxed during updates or year-end closing. For our Dynamics administrators, we create two logins for them: one with Poweruser access and the other for daily routine use.
- Fastpath has a number of products to assist with security setup and auditing.
- We use a simple tool created with Microsoft Excel with SQL joins to analyze and report user access to functionality. Our clients’ auditors have found it easy to use and highly functional.
- We choose to never change a Microsoft Dynamics GP Security Role. We clone it and make changes to the clone in order to preserve the change after an upgrade.
- Your users aren’t like my bullfrog. They will learn to operate inside your security controls, but may continue to challenge them, so annual reviews are important even if you aren’t audited.
- If you’re utilizing SmartList Excel report deployment, users must have the appropriate SQL Server access rights.
- Activate Activity Tracking in Microsoft Dynamics GP System Setup.
- Download and utilize the Security Debugging Tool at
As a business owner, Gloria has experience across the full spectrum of business operations and management. This facilitates her relationship with her clients and increases her understanding of small business challenges. Despite the lure of new software and systems to companies, Gloria insures that an implementation is economically reasonable and the software is a good fit with little customization. “Many of my clients started with Great Plains on DOS or Macintosh in the early 1990’s; they are still Computeration clients today, using the new generation product, Microsoft Dynamics GP.” Gloria has 23 years of consultative sales and implementation experience involving financial systems.
You can find more tips, tricks and Gloria's vivid stories about accounting software implementation and Microsoft Dynamics GP on our blog at . Click to read our newly updated Guide to Selecting Accounting Software
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