I'm behind on my blogging this week! Usually, my weekends are my writing time, but instead of writing blogs, I was doing my own month-end and billings for January.
One of the clients I sent an invoice to emailed me today via the new GP2010 EFT Remittance email functionality with my remittance advice for their January invoice.
This client has been using GP's EFT for Payables for years but only with a handful of vendors each month, the majority of their payments were still via cheque. They had been paying me via EFT but without any remittances or notifications so far. They started asking me about EFT remittance/email functionality as they wanted to expand this to more vendors but needed to have a plan for the remittance advice.
Last year, I gathered information for them on a few of the leading third-party add-ons out there. However, once the beta of GP2010 was released and the new functionality was announced, I went back to the client and introduced the upcoming functionality to them. I could have easily sold them some third-party software add-on that would allow emailing of EFT remittances, they would have proceeded and been off to the races. However, being on GP9, with Canadian Payroll and a product lifecycle end in sight, I recommended they wait until they upgrade and evaluate the "free" functionality they would get before committing to a software purchase they may not ultimately require anymore.
So, last summer the "test" upgrade began and once the usual upgrade formalities were out of the way and the core project deliverables were met, I worked with them on testing the EFT functionality. It turns out they were happy with the functionality it provided. They did their testing and documented the configuration they found worked best, to use in the live upgrade. We discussed how this would change the existing A/P process, to re-design their existing process to incorporate this change.
Late last year, I completed their upgrade from GP9 to GP2010. After the year-end tax updates were done and out of the way, based on the testing work we did during the sample upgrade, the client took their configuration notes and set up the new functionality.
Being a little bit patient allowed them to take advantage of a new GP2010 feature - without purchasing additional software, and with relatively minimal additional consulting cost.
How cool is that?!
