Management Reporter and Analytical Accounting

Some clients are "lucky" enough to be the ones to uncover Quality Reports for Microsoft.  And it seems like some clients do a better job of it than others, or at least it seems that way :)  Recently, I have been working with a client who has encountered several bugs within Management Reporter.  Now, the good news is that they are all resolved in MR 2012....

But I thought it would be good to document the latest, as my coworkers and others expressed a lot of skepticism when I explained the scenario.  They insisted that there must be a logical reason for it.  But, alas, there is not any explanation other than it being a Quality Report (confirmed by Microsoft).

Here is the scenario, it assumes that all companies are using the same report set in Management Reporter:

1. Create a company in Management Reporter, do not include Analytical Accounting in the company configuration.
2. Create a number of reports in the company.  All of the reports generate successfully.
3. Create a company in Management Reporter (using the same GP database as the company in Step 1), only this time include Analytical Accounting in the company configuration.
4. Set the new "AA" company as the default.
5. Take an existing report definition (created in the "non-AA" company) and change the company to the new "AA" company.
6. Generate report.
7. Expected results- report should generate, as the account format is the same (since both companies point to the same GP database) and although analytical accounting is enabled for the current company...you are not required to use any of those segments in the row, column, or tree.
8. Actual results- report yields no data

So, I did some testing and I found that if you use ANY building block (e.g., Report Definition, Column, Row, or Tree) that was created in the "non-AA" company, the report will not return results in the "AA" company.  Take the following scenario...

1. Open a report definition created in the "non-AA" company
2. Do a Save As, and change the company on the report definition to the "AA" company
3. Change the building blocks to be building blocks (rows, column, tree) created in the "AA" company
4. Generate the report, still no data!
5. Only if all building blocks, including the report definition, are created in the "AA" company will the report pull data.

This is true no matter what building block comes from the "non-AA" company.  So, for example, you create all building blocks in the "AA" company but use a column from the "non-AA" company-- no report data.

Confirmed with Microsoft that this is resolved in MR 2012, but wanted to share the info...as this definitely had me baffled :)

Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a supervising consultant with BKD Technologies, providing training, support, and project management services to new and existing Microsoft Dynamics customers. This blog represents her views only, not those of her employer.