Project In One Company, Not All Companies

So, back in the day, Project Accounting had its own purchase order window.  And we all moaned and complained about this.  And we rejoiced when it was combined in to the standard purchase order window.  But little did we appreciate the complexities that this would bring. 

These complexities are illuminated when you try to use Project Accounting in one company but not all companies in your installation. This post focuses on the issues you will encounter in non-project accounting companies. Once Project Accounting is registered, you will begin receiving messages when accessing the Purchase Order Entry window, like 'Purchase Order Processing Setup Information is Missing or Damaged'.  Ugh.  And then, once you resolve that, every vendor you select when entering a purchase order will be greeted with 'Project Accounting information for this vendor does not exist. Do you want to add the vendor's project information?'.  Double ugh.  And keep in mind, these errors are encountered in companies where users DO NOT have access to the alternate project accounting windows.

On a side note, I am not exploring the Dynamics.Set file hack (having a separate non-Project Set file) in this post, as I generally am not a fan of separate Set files due to the potential for confusion and issues.  But to each their own :)

So, what can you do...

For the first message related to Purchase Order Processing Setup, you will need to (at least temporarily) grant access to the alternate Purchase Order Processing Setup window for Project Accounting (Setup-System-Alternate/Modified Forms and Reports ID).  Once you have access, go to Setup-Purchasing-Purchase Order Processing.  Click the Project button, click OK, and close the Purchase Order Processing Setup window.  At this point, even if you remove access to the alternate setup window, the first error messsage regarding setup information will be resolved.

But the vendor message will persist.  And yes, as I mention above, you can have users simply say NO and continue on with the entry.  But the pop up is indeed annoying.  So you have a few options...

First, you have to address all existing vendors at the time of registration of project accounting.  To do this, you can check out the script here that will do it automatically:

http://kbase.dyntools.com/home/project-accounting/project-accounting-information-for-this-vendor-does-not-exist)

Then, you need to decide how you want to handle new vendors added to GP.  This is where the options come in to play.

Option A- Grant access to the alternate Vendor Maintenance window for Project Accounting.  This would be the ONLY alternate project accounting window that the users will need to access.  This way, when they save a new vendor, it will automatically save the project info as well (which will prevent the prompt to add project info when entering a purchase order for the vendor).

Option B- If Option A is not possible (for example, if you have another product that has an alternate Vendor Maintenance window as well that users need to access), then you can either schedule the script to create the project info to run every evening or look at some VBA code to populate the project info even when the alternate window is not used.

Please feel free to other options/workarounds you have found as well to avoid these headaches!

Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a director 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.