Several month’s ago, my friend Shawn Dorward posted this GP LifeHack on using Multidimensional Analysis instead of Analytical Accounting to track Chart Code Dimensions in Dynamics GP. Great blog. If you are considering Analytical Accounting, you should definitely check out MDA first.
Personally, I LOVE MDA. It is super easy to setup and use, the data entry screens actually make sense, and it has a very simple table structure (which makes reporting super simple). If you have ever seen the highly complex, hard to make sense of, table structure used by Analytical Accounting, you KNOW what I mean!
The biggest thing that Analytical Accounting has always had that recommended it over MDA, in my opinion, is the ability to budget at the dimension level. This is a super handy feature, especially if you want to budget and track your marketing spend across different marketing campaigns and events and you don’t want to create GL accounts for every campaign. Or perhaps, as in Shawn’s example, you want to budget and track expenses for Vehicle Maintenance without creating Chart Codes for each vehicle.
In the past, a requirement like this would force you into the complex world of Analytical Accounting. But not any more! Not if you run your Microsoft Dynamics GP in the PowerGP Online cloud, that is!
We have just released a new feature called MDA Budgets, and it is FREE to all current and future PowerGP Online Customers that use MDA. With MDA Budgets, you can enter budgets at the Dimension Code level, track expenses at the Dimension and then see your variances by period. It is an awesome feature of PowerGP Online that really gives MDA wings.
If you want to know more (or you just want it!), give us a call and we will work with your partner to get you migrated to the PowerGP Online Cloud. And if you love MDA as much as I do, you should know that we have plans to add even more features to MDA Budgets in coming releases. So stay tuned!
