Analytical Report Manager (ARM) Reporting Tool
I loved working with FRx in Microsoft Dynamics GP. All those rows, columns, and trees. There were unlimited options to create financial reports.
FRx wasn’t always part of the core Great Plains system, Dynamics GP bought the product long ago and included it. Other ERP solutions used FRx too, with the rows, columns, and tree structure to design your reports.
A few years ago Microsoft said, “all right, we’re going to create Management Reporter and it will replace FRX and be even better.” That sounded good. The trouble is, they got rid of FRx but they never completed all the functionality in Management Reporter.
Even though Management Reporter is a newer user interface, and has a lot of buttons, and looks like a great tool it is still only a 32-bit application and literally has not been updated since 2012. Management Reporter was never better than FRx, in fact, it was never even “just as good”. Microsoft suggested alternatives such as Jet Reports, but I dare say that that product isn’t as good as FRx either.
So imagine how surprised I was when I started working with Acumatica and I realized they took the all the FRx concepts, the rows, the columns, and the trees, and created their own financial reporting tool inside Acumatica that is rows, columns, and unit sets. Unit sets are basically trees. So that means I have my FRx functionality back again!
Acumatica built this functionality into their actual core application, not outside. It is called Analytical Report Manager (ARM) Reporting Tool. A user in Acumatica can go into the system at a moment’s notice and with one click be able to look at financial data and drill into that information quickly. The modern responsive design of Acumatica makes the screen fit your device, so even viewing the information is easier now.
I have used Acumatica for almost three years since we switched our internal systems from Dynamics GP to Acumatica and I can honestly say I have fallen in love with financial reporting again. It is so similar to my first love, FRx, but even better.
If you are interested in talking about financial reporting and taking a look at Acumatica, let’s start the conversation. Contact me at 860-485-0910×4 or sales@calszone.com
By George Mackiewicz, CAL Business Solutions, www.calszone.com
