Microsoft Dynamics SL Reviews & Insights

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Microsoft Dynamics SL Reviews

3 Reviews

Small Businesses (1-50 employees)

Dynamics SL

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

July 5, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are resellers and consultants for Dynamics SL. We support clients in the Professional Services, Bio-Pharma, Insurance, Distribution, Financial Services and Manufacturing industries. Dynamics SL provides Middle Market companies a scalable ERP system that is easy to customize. It's flexibility allows companies numerous options to configure to system to their needs and reporting requirements.

Pros

General ledger allows users great flexibility to define the subaccounts. This allows information to be tracked & reported in a variety of ways depending on the needs of the organization. the subaccounts could be used to track departments, regions, locations, etc.
Dynamics Sl has a strong and flexible Project Accounting system that integrates with the Financial Accounting system
Dynamics SL is easy to customize allowing for integrations with other systems
Dynamics SL uses industry standard SSRS and Crystal Reports for reports
Dynamics SL accepts transactions entered in foreign currencies. The system automatically convents these transactions into the reporting currency. Currency gains & losses are automatically calculated by the system.
Dynamics SL supports multi-company environments. The system will automatically calculate the due-to - due-from entries and post to the appropriate entity

Cons

The Cash manager account reconciliation process is very cumbersome.
General Ledger transaction drill down should expand to all modules. Currently it is available to only AP and AR.
Purchase order Receipt batch numbers must be consistent between General Ledger in Inventory. Assigning two different batch numbers to the same transaction is ridiculous. Microsoft took the easy way out of this issue creating a tracking nightmare for purchase receipts

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for general accounting. It is well suited for clients that need flexibility. It is well suited for growth.

Verified User

Consultant in Professional Services (Computer Software company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

17 years of experience

Dynamics SL Partner Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 27, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Dynamics SL is used by our firm to do all accounting, payables, receivables, billing, project accounting and financials. We use many add on products since we resell this product and support over 200 customer users. It gives us experience on what works well to solve our problems and our customer needs.

Pros

SL Dynamics has a deep background in project costing. For over 15 years, the product has focused on this type of business and added deep functionality. We have many government contractor and other professional services firms that run their business a project at a time and SL is a great fit.
SL also has strong multi company accounting capability. One of our customers has 52 entities. Due to and Due From accounting is automatically managed. Cost allocations to entities is quite strong. Users can work in more than one company at a time.
SL also has deep functionality for distributors. Inventory, Sales order and purchasing are quite strong. For firms that have inventory and also are project oriented, it is one of the few products that manage both functions in a single system.
Core financial accounting is also strong and there are many add on products that enhance the capability of the product.

Cons

Because the product has been used in Windows since the mid-90s, there is a lot of feature depth. This sometimes gets in the way of customers with simple needs. Training can usually address this concern.
The application is client server at this time, so it can be hosted in the cloud using Terminal Services. Web enabled functions are starting to be released in the last year and more are to come, so in a few years, the product will be browser based.
The payroll module (used by less than 10% of our customers) could be easier to use and needs some new features, but it is a 3.5 out of 5.
Microsoft doesn't have a good budget solution, but there are good products from Solver (BI360) that do a great job of addressing complex budgeting needs.
The main reports in SL are Crystal and SSRS. Third party tools for simple reporting are available to help get data out. The new Smart Reports address this need also.

Likelihood to Recommend

We see this as a great fit for the right company. I would say easily a 9 out of 10 and I don't have another 10 product in mind. It really depends on customer needs. Many times, it is an excellent solution for many companies.
There are other distribution solutions that are easier to use, so it might not be the first choice for that type of firm.
Payroll and HR are not the strongest in this product so a company that needed the best in that area, might look at Dynamics GP.
For Professional Services firms, it is an excellent choice!! One of the best.

Bill Aiton

President in Corporate at SSI Consulting (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

28 years of experience

Dynamics SL-The Right Choice for the Project-Based Organization

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 25, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a professional services firm mostly with client billings of time making up 70-80% of our revenues. Creating billing transactions from timecards based on many different rules that are sometimes client based, task based, project based or even fixed price-make for the need for some capable software.

We are much happier with the web apps having moved off of the business portal time entry tool which was extremely slow and time consuming.

We use Dynamics SL across the whole organization and everyone enters a timecard. We use the software for expense reporting and evaluating which were good projects and bad, which tasks were good and which were bad. We use the software to help us make better estimates on future similar projects.

We've used Dynamics SL the entire 20 years we've been in business and really love it.

Pros

Facilitates Time Entry from any device.
Facilitates billing with "Allocator" which is really a transaction creator-creating billing records from time cards using unique rules
Simplifies the review of draft invoices-making transactions not ready to be billed yet default to the next billing period so revenue does not "leak".

Cons

When we have a lot of invoices rather than just a few large invoices, we can be frustrated by how long it takes Flexible Billings to generate a lot of invoices
It would be nice if Dynamics SL had an easy integration to some of the nicer salestax tools such as Avalara and CCH.
It would be nice if the fixed assets module and electronic banking were not third party.

Likelihood to Recommend

Organizations that have challenging project accounting needs should definitely review this product. Very few products come close to Dynamics SL in handling these broader project accounting needs as well as Dynamics SL. We have had clients insist on buying Dynamics GP because someone in their firm already knows it-only to learn that they should have gone with SL as we suggested. Organizations that need extremely robust Order Management features should also look at Dynamics SL closely. Not only are the features very strong-they are also project-centric so if you need 5 different lines on a sales order to update 5 different projects-no problem. You can even enter a project on the fly while entering a sales order-assuming you have permissions.

Dynamics SL, like Dynamics NAV has a tremendous toolset for customizing. If you allow the customizing to occur-make sure that you have the staff or budget to support lots of customizations as the mods do make support and upgrading a bit more challenging.

Jack Boyer

President in Corporate at Boyer & Associates (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

20 years of experience

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Dynamics SL Partner Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 27, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

SL Dynamics has a deep background in project costing. For over 15 years, the product has focused on this type of business and added deep functionality. We have many government contractor and other professional services firms that run their business a project at a time and SL is a great fit.
SL also has strong multi company accounting capability. One of our customers has 52 entities. Due to and Due From accounting is automatically managed. Cost allocations to entities is quite strong. Users can work in more than one company at a time.
SL also has deep functionality for distributors. Inventory, Sales order and purchasing are quite strong. For firms that have inventory and also are project oriented, it is one of the few products that manage both functions in a single system.
Core financial accounting is also strong and there are many add on products that enhance the capability of the product.

Cons

Because the product has been used in Windows since the mid-90s, there is a lot of feature depth. This sometimes gets in the way of customers with simple needs. Training can usually address this concern.
The application is client server at this time, so it can be hosted in the cloud using Terminal Services. Web enabled functions are starting to be released in the last year and more are to come, so in a few years, the product will be browser based.
The payroll module (used by less than 10% of our customers) could be easier to use and needs some new features, but it is a 3.5 out of 5.
Microsoft doesn't have a good budget solution, but there are good products from Solver (BI360) that do a great job of addressing complex budgeting needs.
The main reports in SL are Crystal and SSRS. Third party tools for simple reporting are available to help get data out. The new Smart Reports address this need also.

Likelihood to Recommend

Bill Aiton

President in Corporate at SSI Consulting (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

28 years of experience