eConnect mystery: Imported PM Manual Payments suddenly have no distributions

By Steve Endow

I have a Dynamics GP customer that uses my AP Payment and Apply Import.  It has been working fine for over two months, but suddenly this week when the customer noticed a problem.

The PM Manual Payment transactions would import without error, but the transactions didn't have any distributions.  When they viewed the transaction distributions in GP, the distribution scrolling window was completely blank.

Hmmm.

The manual payments are not receiving distributions as part of the eConnect import--the import is letting the cash and payables values default, so it isn't a bug in the import.

The GP partner said that the only event they can think of was that the company database was restored recently.  That alone shouldn't cause any issues, so I couldn't of think how that might relate to the issue, but it's a potential clue.

We reviewed the default GL accounts for the vendor, checkbook, and company, and default accounts were present in GP.  The partner also checked the eConnect event log, but there were not errors or clues related to the missing distributions.

As a test, the partner entered a manual payment into Dynamics GP to mimic the imported transaction for the same vendor and checkbook, and that transaction was fine.  The distributions defaulted properly.

They then tested the import on another company.  The imported payments were fine--they had distributions.

We then turned off the eConnect service and ran the import.  This forces an error to occur and has the import display the resulting error message, which includes the full XML document that was sent to eConnect.

The XML looked just fine, and was identical to the values I got when I tested successfully on my TWO / Fabrikam environment.

So at this point, we believe that the issue is specific to one company and believe that the issue is not related to the import application.  It seems to be an eConnect issue in the company database, but we haven't yet tracked down the cause.

My next recommendation is to query the PM10100 table to see if any distribution records are being created by eConnect.  I'm wondering if eConnect is importing invalid distributions, which are not displaying in GP even though they are present.

Another step they can take is to recreate the eConnect stored procedures, which Mariano discussed on his blog.  But I don't know if that will replace a modified procedure or resolve whatever issue might exist with eConnect.

My last option is to review the taPMManualCheck and taPMDistribution stored procedures to figure out how default distributions are generated.  We can then query the same default account values in GP to see if there is some bad value in the company database.

In the 8 or 9 years that I've worked with eConnect, I haven't seen anything like this, so I'm puzzled and intrigued.

I'm sure there is an explanation, but it looks like we're going to have to work for the answer to this one.  My guess is that there is some issue with the default account values, but I just can't imagine what scenario would cause this problem.

I'll post an update if I learn more or if we figure out the cause.

Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP for Dynamics GP and a Dynamics GP Certified IT Professional in Los Angeles.  He is the owner of Precipio Services, which provides Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.

You can also find him on Google+ and Twitter

http://www.precipioservices.com