• Old system will be for inquiry only. Yes, you do not want to delete the old ERP, keep it, but all new transactions and master records will come to new ERP – Microsoft Dynamics GP in our described case

• Beginning Balances Approach. Naturally you as IT professional, DBA or business owner seek the cheapest and at the same time reliable way to switch to new MRP application. After extensive homework you will probably come to the following conclusion – I don’t want expensive data conversion: historical transactions, customers and vendors history files, payroll checks and transactions history. I will only do entering beginning balances for the period where I switch from my old ERP to Microsoft Great Plains

• Master records migration. Even if you are entering beginning balances only – you will still want to convert and be able to use your customers, vendors, employees, GL accounts – these are referred as master records in Microsoft Great Plains. In this case you can try two strategies – first is Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Manager and the second one (if you are short of funds) is SQL scripting. If you bring master records via SQL scripting – you will need to run check links routine in GP

• Historical Data Conversion. We recommend you to resist and try to avoid this option as much and as long as possible. The reasons are simple – you will be in the small rank of customers who decided to do full data migration and you should expect that not every VAR knows and has experience to do this plus even if somebody did this historical full conversion – not necessarily that it went smooth and customer didn’t have problems with the following system use.. If you think that there is no way, but history conversion – try to deploy Integration Manager and post transactions into history instead of direct SQL scripting to bring data over to GP.

• Extracting data from your old ERP. Typically entry level accounting packages have proprietary database platform or utilize inexpensive DB, such as Ctree or Pervasive SQL. Try first data export through reporting – this should be definitely possible if you are sticking to beginning balances entry approach

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving Microsoft Dynamics GP USA and Canada nationwide: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Windsor, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Pittsburg, Toledo, Indianapolis, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, Austin. Local service is available in Chicago and Houston metros: Rosenberg, Katy, Richmond, Dallas, Galveston, Sugar Land, Naperville, Wheaton, Plainfield, Aurora, Wheaton, Downers Grove, Lisle, Oakbrook, Morris, Marseilles, Joliet, Montgomery, Oswego, DeKalb. With reasonable travel we serve Springfield, Bloomington, Normal, Peoria, LaSalle, Ottawa, Dixon