Bill of Lading is required report for Logistics and Freight Forwarding companies. If you are looking at Freight Forwarding software, targeted to automate transportation business – Bill of Lading with multiple custom forms should be present there. However if you need the extension to standard ERP/Accounting application – you may be looking at the option to customize the system. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains might be considered as ERP platform, ready for customization. Let us give you customization highlights.

• Sales Order Processing – SOP is the module, where you create customer order, transfer it into invoice upon the completion, fulfillment or allocation. So, naturally Bill of Lading should be originated in SOP. Also nice feature in SOP is multicurrency (Dollar, Euro, Yen, Yuan, Peso) support, so Bill of Lading report could be produced for international shipment

• MBL/HBL – House Bill of Lading may include several Master Bill of Ladings, associated with the shipment to specific customer. Microsoft Great Plains naturally associate invoice with single customer, this is why House Bill of Lading should be light Great Plains Dexterity customization, where you combine several shipments into one container (HBL). Simplified solution is just to use user defined fields for HBL & MBL.

• Cargo/Shipment Inquiry – you might also need to see the profit/loss on the shipment/HBL. This window should include all AR and AP invoices associated with HBL with drill down to original documents functionality. This maybe done as Dexterity, C#/VB.Net application, publishing SOP tables (SOP30200, SOP30300), or just a report

• Technologies. Microsoft Great Plains Dexterity is programming language and development environment of Great Plains. Great Plains Software has Great Plains Dynamics/Dynamics C/S+/eEnterprise and currently Microsoft Great Plains lines of products developed in Great Plains Dexterity. ReportWriter – this tool will allow you modify existing Picking Ticket, Packing List or Invoice form to produce Bill of Lading. ReportWriter has some restrictions: in order to place fields from your custom tables or from third party modules on ReportWriter report you need light Dexterity customization (rw_* functions). VBA/Modifier will allow you to modify Great Plains forms and attach VBA scripts to buttons. Crystal Reports – with Crystal Reports Designer you could produce the report of maximal complexity, including the report pulling info from heterogeneous databases (as if portion of your Bill of Lading info resides in Oracle, DB2 custom database).

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job – give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in
California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia

Sometimes things work exactly the way you want them to, but often things don’t. Even it is a kick in the shin or a slug in the gut that takes the wind out of us, many times most anything is inspirational if we choose to look at it with the right attitude. That is, without anger, blame and with faith we can learn a lot from the unexpected. Take, for example, the following story.

Bernard Castro immigrated to New York City from Sicily while in his teens. One night it was snowing with the kind of cold that chilled to the bone. He was signed up for a night class at DeWitt Clinton High School to learn English. From his cheap room on the East side he watched the snow come down until it was a foot deep and traffic was stopped. The wind was howling and he did not want to go all the way over to the West Side to the class because he didn’t have any money and he would be walking the entire way.

He was exhausted from working all day as an upholsterer and knew his coat would be no match for the cold wind and his shoes too thin to keep the freezing wet snow from turning his feet to ice. As he stood looking at the weather outside his window, he remembered something he had read in the newspaper a few days before. A columnist had said that the difference between success and failure was often the simple willingness to make the extra effort, go the extra mile and endure the extra hardship. Either you had this quality or you didn’t.

Slowly he pulled on his thin coat and put a scarf around his neck and made his way into the night. Block after block, hands and feet growing numb, until finally he came to the high school entrance. It was locked. A custodian looked out at him, “Are you crazy? No one is going to come out on a night like this! The school is closed!” Then he shut the door.

How many of us would have made the trip in the first place? Very, very, few for sure. But, even if we had, how many of us would have cursed the closed door, the custodian, the snow, the wind, the day, the circumstance? How many would have used this scene to reinforce that things never work out for us, that “you can’t win for losing”?

Now he had to turn around and retrace his steps. As the wind whipped around him and the snow continued to fall he came to a realization. Out of two thousand students, he was the only one to make his way through the night and these awful conditions to show up for class. He was the only one that did what it took to go the extra mile, to show the extra effort, to reach deep inside when every fiber of his being wanted to quit, and to keep going when all others didn’t.

At that precise moment he knew he had what it takes to succeed. >From that moment, which he chose to view with extraordinary perspective, he knew the will that had pushed him across New York City on that cold and miserable night would sustain him. He never forgot that moment or that night.

This happened many, many years ago and Bernard Castro worked his way through the Great Depression and opened his own business, which was quite an achievement in itself. What is remarkable about him is that his ability to see the hidden value and potential around him resulted in a discovery made many years later that changed his life forever.

His upholstery business grew into an interior design business and then into making furniture. One day he watched as a bunk on a friend’s cabin cruiser was folded up and converted into a seat. He had an idea. He designed the Castro convertible sofa bed which was slimmer and more attractive than the design of the day. It made him famous and wealthy.

However, he became a success a long time before. It happened one night on the icy cold streets of New York City.