Track, trace, sign, and deliver: Expedite audit trails and electronic signatures
Whether your business is publicly traded or privately owned, engages in healthcare, financial, or professional services, or is in manufacturing—rigorous regulatory legislation and quality standards imposed by your industry or organization control the way you work. You want to comply with all applicable rules in the most reliable and cost-effective manner. Microsoft offers two extensions for Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Microsoft Great Plains) that are designed to simplify your life. Extensions do this by capturing and documenting changes to information and processes, and by recording and maintaining electronic signatures.
| • | Audit Trails for Microsoft Dynamics GP enables you to track changes to your data and recreate the transaction history in reports. |
| • | Electronic Signatures for Microsoft Dynamics GP enables you to create signature controls that help to ensure only authorized employees implement changes and are accountable for them. |
Since your people are already familiar with Microsoft Dynamics GP, it won't take long for them to learn to use these capabilities. You can increase your compliance and business productivity, and feel confident in the integrity of your data. Having integrity and control over business information and processes helps you ensure that your business records perform well in a review by auditors, inspectors, and regulatory agencies.
Capture information changes to ease compliance
Many regulations and quality standards require you to implement audit trails to document any changes to information and processes. You can decide how Audit Trails should be applied within your business processes to track business information and changes made to it. Audit Trails enables you to:
| • | Track, trace, and report any designated processes in the system This can be especially important when dealing with financial information that must be reported to board members or industry regulators. |
| • | Gain productivity in your processes By using Audit Trails to automatically track information for you, you can streamline your processes to save time, and costs. |
| • | Improve customer responsiveness and loyalty through better organization of business processes Your customers can benefit from consistency and accountability in your business processes. You can access customer information in less time and with more ease to provide exceptional customer service. |
Using Audit Trails is simple: You decide what information is important to capture. Then, select a table in Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Audit Trails will provide a screenshot with that table information. Audit Trails also captures all of the changed information such as time, date, and user information, and any associated before- and after-change values. The information is tracked at both the Microsoft Dynamics GP application level and the Microsoft SQL Server database level. This is important, because some regulations require that change history is kept for many years—and that the information can be retrieved quickly and easily should the need arise. To see the Audit Trails record, you open the information in familiar Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software or customized SmartView reports. Each Audit Trails record has a time and date stamp for original entries.
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Screen illustration: Audit trail maintenance in Microsoft Dynamics GP lets you track, trace, and report transactions efficiently, to help improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.
For example, a sales manager wants to change the credit limit of a certain customer, a local hospital. She opens the customer account in Microsoft Dynamics GP and makes the change from $25,000 US to $50,000 US. She saves the change, and the customer master record is automatically updated. Audit Trails already captures this change and generates a report, so the sales manager can see a verification of the update. The sales manager opens Microsoft Excel 2003 or SmartView to review the audit trail information. She can even highlight this change and compare the audit trail information to its previous state (to compare data before and after the change). Audit Trails lists the time and date of the information adjustment together with the sales manager's name, making it easier to trace the change event.
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Screen illustration: Audit Trail SmartView in Microsoft Dynamics GP puts the information salespeople need to be more effective at their fingertips.
Apply electronic signatures to reduce risk and errors
Just as it's important to have controls that track your changes, you need a way to meet the requirement of authorized signatures when certain changes and transactions happen. Electronic Signatures for Microsoft Dynamics GP makes this process easy with automatic controls that help you meet regulatory and standards-driven requirements. The electronic signatures applied by this capability are authorizations based on characteristics that make them unlikely to be discovered, such as alpha and numeric values and repeat-frequency controls. Electronic Signatures helps you:
| • | Reduce risk and potential errors By using Electronic Signatures, you help to ensure that the person who made a change is authorized and accountable for it. |
| • | Reduce paperwork by electronically storing document changes This means you're reducing the time employees spend doing manual paperwork, and you're helping to decrease the potential risk of manual errors. |
| • | Comply with regulations when used together with Audit Trails Audit Trails and Electronic Signatures are designed to work together, so you can capture, track, and report changes, and comply with preventive controls that require authorized signatures. |
| • | Attach Electronic Signatures to any of your documents
Many companies and processes require two or more signatures on electronic documents. |
With Electronic Signatures, you decide where you need to apply the pop-up window that requires people to enter a signature, password, reason code, and note related to the change being made.
For example, a research manager at a pharmaceutical company needs to make a change in the composition of one of its arthritis medications. Audit Trails and Electronic Signatures have been set up for this company. In this way, the company can easily comply with Food and Drug Administration rules that require tracking of critical information that can result in harm if not performed correctly. The research manager opens Microsoft Dynamics GP to make this change. A pop-up window appears with a space for his password, reason code for the change, and automatic signature. The research manager is now accountable for the change. And the required signature is documented in the company's business management system.
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Screen illustration: Electronic Signatures pop-up window in Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Next steps
Now you are familiar with how Audit Trails and Electronic Signatures for Microsoft Dynamics GP can help you comply with regulations and reduce risk and errors. Contact your Microsoft Dynamics partner for assistance. Or, take a moment to do one of the following:
