Professional Advantage (PA) is proud of the investment dedicated to the support and development of Collections Management for Microsoft Dynamics® GP. It’s been almost 3 years since Microsoft transitioned Collections Management back to Professional Advantage after a 12-year licensing agreement and nearly 18 years since the product’s inception.
Many of the new items published in recent years were customer driven. It’s been great to receive so much customer input and then be able to turnaround and deliver new features into our products (in a timely manner). PA is always looking for new ways to improve our solutions to better serve our customers. In honor of being the go-to collecting solution in Microsoft Dynamics GP, here is a recap of the latest (major) features of Collections Management (in order of release):
Collection Plans
(Original Release Date: June 2013)
Collection Plans have allowed users to spend less time searching for customers, creating emails, attaching invoices manually. Plans are a configurable workflow of actions suggested automatically based on due date of a customer’s invoice. Users have access to pre-defined plans or can define plans from scratch, tailored for different customer types. Actions that are suggested by plans can be processed in similar groups, dates, one by one, or all at once.
Improved Emailing (Original Release Date: June 2013)
Collections Management makes it easy to select a message template plus groups of invoices or all of the customer’s open invoices to attach to emails right from within Dynamics GP. Invoices are efficiently generated through report writer, the default Microsoft Dynamics® GP engine.
Sending Invoices from Any Integrated System (Original Release Date: June 2013)
If you’re generating invoices from a system other than Dynamics GP, Collections Management can email invoices from any system that can produce a PDF. This also makes invoices available outside of Dynamics GP. You can now have an aging report with a hyperlink to the invoice allowing your staff access to key information without having to ask accounting or to log into Dynamics GP themselves.
Out-of-the-Box Set Up
(Original Release Date: June 2013)
Using the Collection Sample Data option under the Sales > Setup area, users have the ability to install out-of-the-box Collection Actions, Collections Letters (Text and Word Letters), and Collection Plans.
Microsoft Word Invoices
(Original Release Date: September 2013)
Collections Management has the ability to attach and send Word document invoices and Receivables statements. This saves on costs associated with expensive PDF Writer licenses for each user.
Collection SmartList
(Original Release Date: September 2013)
If you like SmartLists, Collections Management data can be filtered with a SmartList. There’s a Collection Note SmartList which can filter notes on key words, Collector ID’s, etc. relieving the need to click through individual records in the Collections Main window. In Addition, there is added Collection notes information to the standard Receivables Transactions SmartList, so if a RM document has a note attached, it can be seen along with the details.
Collections SSRS Reports
(Original Release Date: September 2013)
Collections Management comes with two SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS) reports:
Aging Details and Aging Details Collections. The Aging Details provides a clean and streamlined way to see Current Customer Aging. The Aging Details Collections report provides a powerful visual queue for identifying where to focus your collection efforts allowing you to first see where all your aging buckets by value for a customer, and more importantly, if they have notes attached to them.
Company Data Archive Express
(Original Release Date: March 2014)
Company Data Archive (CDA) Express is a free add-on to Collections Management available exclusively to customers with a current Collections Management Annual Enhancement Plan. This powerful tool provides a simple way to move historical information from your Microsoft Dynamics® GP ‘live’ company to an ‘archive’ company. With an easy-to-use interface, CDA Express allows you to select a cut-off date as well as the modules you would like to archive including your General Ledger and Payables Management module.
Collector Performance Window
(Original Release Date: September 2014)
The Collections Management Collector Performance window is used to view the efficiency and rate of processing collection notes by each Collector. Collector Performance may be essential with a team of collectors to evaluate.
Advanced Queries
(Original Release Date: April 2015)
Advanced queries were designed for users who want to find customers with complex requirements. Example: Find only customers who have a specific value in a SOP user defined field, or invoices that have a specific item or type of item. With the Standard Collection Query, criteria are bound together by “And” logic (i.e. for a customer to be included, they must pass all the criteria). However, with SQL script and the Advanced Query function, the options are almost endless of how this can be used.
Light User Support
(Original Release Date: April 2015)
Collections Management provides full read/write access to Microsoft Dynamics GP Light Users.
Collections +PayLink
(Original Release Date: January 2016)
The Nodus® PayLink integration allows Collections Management users to include electronic payment links inside their collection emails and letters. Collection letters can then be distributed using the existing Collections Management communication channels (plans, query letters, or one-off emails). With PayLink, customers can view electronic statements and make one easy payment totaling for one or several invoices, without registering for an account or logging into a website or payment portal. In addition, collections users can generate on-the-fly emails that include PayLinks from the Collections Management Transaction Inquiry window.
Collections Software Development Kit (CM-SDK)
(Original Release Date: January 2016)
The Collections Management SDK includes the Collections Management Technical Reference, Collections Management Dexterity API, and Collections Management Notes Transaction Flow documents. The Software Development Kit provides details on how to connect Collections Management with other business applications a customer may have, like Microsoft Dynamics® CRM or applications end-users have developed themselves. The SDK provides details on how to retrieve, create and update Collections data, mainly Collection Notes using Dexterity, or transactional SQL. The SDK also provides information for Dexterity developers who want to develop their own Collection Letter functions. Some technical knowledge of GP, Dexterity, or T-SQL will be needed. These guides are available after install in the GP folder ([install root folder]\Documentation\CM-SDK).
Multilingual Versions
(Original Release Date: Various)
Collections Management is written and supported in English by default, however, there are certain builds available in French and Spanish.
We are always looking for feedback from our customers, partners and potential clients. Current users can always suggest features to our developers from the Extras option on CM Main:
