The end of the year is coming, and if you're staring at a long list of letters to prepare/send to vendors and customers, I have a solution that can help you get it all done: The Letter Writing Assistant in Microsoft Dynamics GP. With Letter Writing Assistant, you can shave time off this dreaded task and focus on other important tasks—such as the Financial Audit lurking around the corner! Here's how:
What is the Letter Writing Assistant? It is a tool that helps you produce individual and/or mass mailings to your vendors, customers and employees by using the mail-merge capability in Microsoft Word.
Why would I use it? Maybe you need to request W-9 forms from your vendors, send past due notices to your customers, update employees on benefit changes or send out change-of-address letters to all vendors/customers due to a recent office move. I have experienced all of the above—and I am sure you can think of additional reasons to utilize this tool right now!
What are the benefits? With the Letter Writing Assistant, you'll only have one database to manage and save time—a wizard walks you through the all the steps. You'll also be able to integrate with Word to utilize flexible, existing templates, modify existing templates or create new templates from scratch.
How do I access it? There are multiple ways to access this tool. You can navigate to in within Dynamics GP by going to Reports > Letter Writing Assistant. You can also access this tool from the vendor and customer maintenance windows in Dynamics GP and prepare an individual letter for a specific vendor and/or customer. Another place to access is Smartlist—create or select a list and prepare letters from that window.
Are you excited now? I am! As a former Controller, Word is not my go-to-software, if you know what I mean, excel is. This tool allows me to quickly work in Word and send out mass mailings in seconds. For me, that is IMPRESSIVE!
Let's get started! Navigate to reports > Letter Writing Assistant
Prepare the letter using an existing letter
Choose a Letter Category - For this blog I am choosing "Collections"
Determine your criteria – range of active customers with balances from 31-60 days old.
Select the template – First notice to customer
Customer to receive a Letter based on the criteria that you selected
Your signature added at the bottom of the letter
Once you click Finish above this box will appear preparing letters it working on the mail merge capabilities. It will disappear when finished and you will navigate to Word to review your documents.
This is the Word document created.
If you need assistance please don't hesitate to reach out with your questions in the comments section. I would be happy to help you create your mass mailings for the first time and/or walk you through the process. Happy mailing!
