It’s been almost a year since Microsoft announced the end of investment in Management Reporter and the decision to develop and release Jet Express for Excel for Dynamics GP. This message came with scattered information about the Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) reporting road map, which resulted in some uncertainty from users concerning what Jet Express for Microsoft Excel could, and could not, do.
First and foremost, it’s important to understand why Microsoft chose to partner with Jet Reports. Quite simply, the Jet Reports solutions are both repeatedly proven and future forward. Microsoft knew the Dynamics GP community wanted and needed financial reporting that is more integrated into Excel, and continuously evolving for MS Dynamics cloud platforms like the Azure Cloud. Their selection of Jet Express for Excel directly reflects that. With Jet Express for Excel, Dynamics GP users have expanded flexibility in their financial reporting, without losing data confidence. Users now have compatibility with both on premise and cloud deployments, for better Excel integration.
What Can It Do and How Does it Compare to Management Reporter?
While attending GPUG Summit 2016 we took on these questions and more. Collaborating with the best and brightest from the community, GPUG MVP’s and All Star’s, we took on the task of transferring Management Reporter reports directly into Jet Reports, all within Excel. This provided eye opening experiences for Dynamics GP users in attendance. Belinda Allen, a Business Intelligence Program Manager at Njevity, referred to this as a “scotoma” (otherwise known as a ‘blind spot’) in her webinar on Jet Express, eluding to the simple but true statement, “you don’t know, what you don’t know.”
Previously with Management Reporter, you were limited by one budget per year report, or by changes made when updating your account structure. Jet Express for Excel does not require you to make changes on a report by report basis – it automatically picks up report changes and account additions from your real-time, live Dynamics GP database because a data mart does not need to be used. You can report dynamically without being restricted by single year budgets, as long as your data lives within the Microsoft Great Plains environment, you can report on as many budgets as you would like.
You may be wondering what else you can report from… Sub-ledger data? Custom views? What about analytical accounting fields? Jet Express for Excel reads and reports from all of these. If it’s native to Microsoft Dynamics GP, you can get the data and create the report around it. You have access to every single table field and view.
Did we mention that it is inside of Microsoft Excel? That’s right. There is absolutely no more exporting, copying or pasting into workbooks with Jet Express.
The Future of Your Dynamics GP Reporting
Jet Express for Excel has another advantage, a seamless advanced analytics road map. You should be empowered to expand from simple financial and business reporting, to advanced analytics, dashboards and operational analysis within the same solution quickly, and easily. As your organization grows, your business insight needs expand exponentially as well, and you can’t be stuck to the confines of a single solution. But you shouldn’t have to keep migrating to a new solution either.
With advanced solution offerings from Jet Reports, like Jet Professional and Jet Enterprise, you can combine reporting with other data sources to create complete corporate performance visibility. Enable every team with rich visualizations for planning and analysis and gain superior decision-making abilities, all on the same platform.
Your next reporting solution should not only be viewed as a replacement of something else, like Management Reporter. The end goal should aim to help you solve your pain points and have you considering how it will grow with your business.
Read more about how Jet Express for Excel helped Rossmore Management Group improve their reporting efficiency by 70% and see how Jet Reports compares to Management Reporter in our How to Upgrade and Compare Solutions brochure.
This post Microsoft Dynamics GP Management Reporter vs. Jet Reports – making the switch originally appeared on JetReports on March 17, 2017
360 Visibility
