Mainstream Support for Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 Ends In:

Does Your Business Have a Plan?

Microsoft will end mainstream support for Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 on July 11, 2023. [UPDATED 9/30/2022: Microsoft has extended mainstream support until January 9, 2024, and announced the Discontinuation of Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 for New Customers starting September 30, 2023] There has been no announcement regarding new releases. Microsoft Dynamics SL has provided a reliable solution for managing your business – but all good things eventually come to an end. What’s more, if you are still using Microsoft Dynamics SL 2015 or even SL 2011, mainstream support for those versions has already ended. This means your business needs to make a plan.

What Does Mainstream Support Mean?

Managing your business is hard enough, but trying to manage it with unsupported software brings potential challenges and risks. As Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 is the last major release, we want you to be aware of the risks this poses to your business as Microsoft phases out support for the product.

  • On July 11, 2023 Microsoft will end mainstream support for Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 (product lifecycle) [UPDATED 9/30/2022: Microsoft has extended mainstream support until January 9, 2024, and announced the Discontinuation of Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 for New Customers starting September 30, 2023]. When mainstream support ends, Microsoft will no longer provide additional releases, updates, services packs, builds, fixes or patches for functionality problems. To obtain these these updates you must purchase a Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 support/maintenance plan.
  • Extended Support for Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 will continue through 7/11/2028. Extended support may include security vulnerabilities at the discretion of the manufacturer. These updates will be available only to customers on an active support/maintenance plan.
  • Furthermore, Microsoft will end the option to purchase support /maintenance plans on July 11, 2028. This means after July 11, 2028 Microsoft will no longer provide any option to get fixes or address security vulnerabilities for your Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 installation.
Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 End of Life Countdown

The bottom line – you rely on Microsoft Dynamics SL v2018 to manage your business, but even if you choose to continue using it your business is facing increased costs. What’s more, come July 11, 2028 Microsoft will not provide any updates to correct functional issues if your software breaks – or more concerning address security vulnerabilities that put your business data at risk.

Know your Options and Know the Timeline

Managing your business without a supported business management system introduces a lot of risk; however, while the clock is ticking you still have time to make a sound strategic decision about how to move your business forward. We have compiled some resources below to help you make an informed decision for your business.

Continue with Dynamics SL 2018

Microsoft will provide extended support for Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018 until July 11, 2028. However, your business must absorb the cost of an extended support plan to ensure business continuity and the security of your system. What’s more, this path means you are paying money to delay the inevitable – instead of using those funds to finance your future. This doesn’t even consider the opportunities and efficiencies your business can’t take advantage of using out-of-date software.

We recommend that you review these resources:

Research and Implement a New ERP

Choosing a new ERP system is a decision that will impact your business for the next 10 years so you don’t want to rush. At the same time, it typically takes 18 months from ERP selection to ERP implementation. With so much money and time riding on this decision, and so many ERP options to choose from, where do you start?

It is critical that you develop a game plan before starting your ERP search. That is why we complied these resources to help you get started with your research:

Acumatica Cloud ERP

Acumatica Cloud ERP provides an ideal business management solution for manufacturing, wholesale, eCommerce, retail, service, and other businesses. With its modern cloud architecture, anytime/anywhere availability, and access to real-time data, your business will have a solution designed to drive your business forward.

We compiled the following resources to help you learn more about Acumatica and cloud ERP.

Want to Discuss your Microsoft Dynamics SL Migration?

We understand that there is a lot to consider when replacing your ERP but the SWK Technologies team is here to help. Contact us today and a member of our team can help you better understand the Microsoft Dynamics SL timelines and your options for migrating to a new ERP system.

Contact SWK Technologies to Learn More About your ERP Options:

Sound Familiar?

I am running SL 2011/2015 on Windows Server 2008/2012. My server is 10 to 13 years old and the IT staff is telling me they cannot support it. We have custom reports, screens, and processes that we need to upgrade or move to another ERP. The cost of upgrading may be better spent on moving to a modern ERP with a longer life expectancy. We can’t find anyone under the age of 60 to help us with our Dynamics SL customizations and worry that they will not be available in the future.
We moved to Dynamics SL 2018 to stay on a supported platform (Windows, SQL and Terminal Server). We did not gain much in the form of product enhancements. Many of our employees wish to continue working remotely and Dynamics SL is just not made for the remote worker.
Our business is growing and new younger employees are frustrated with the Dynamics SL interface. They keep asking why they cannot work from their phone, tablet, or non-Windows devices.  They grew up in a web and app based world and using Dynamics SL is making it difficult to retain staff.

Learn More About Microsoft Dynamics SL Business Accounting Software

For more than 25 years, Microsoft Dynamics® SL has delivered the functionality, performance, and ease of use that powers diverse businesses around the world. From financials and distribution to service and projects, Microsoft Dynamics SL brings people and systems together to help you run your business more efficiently.

Microsoft Dynamics SL

Whether you are an existing customer evaluating options to expand your solution with additional modules, or are considering Microsoft Dynamics SL as your company’s new financial management solution, this guide provides an overview of the product modules available within Microsoft Dynamics SL grouped by the functional area they address across your business.

The BUSINESS ESSENTIALS EDITION is for customers who need core financial management and trade functionality.

The ADVANCED MANAGEMENT EDITION is the preferred solution for growing, midmarket, or high-functional-needs customers who are looking for an adaptive solution with a broad set of functionality, including all functionality included in the Business Essentials edition.

Additional A LA CARTE components are available to Business Essentials and Advanced Management customers. Each offering, Business Essentials or Advanced Management, gives access to a specific set of a la carte granules that provide a richer set of features and functionality to serve unique business needs.

Financial Management

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE

Keep accurate information at your fingertips about money owed, due dates, and available discounts with a focused and flexible way to carefully track and take advantage of terms and discounts, predict cash requirements, and monitor payments so that they are made only once.

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

Actively manage your customer accounts and identify problems before they occur. Flexible, integrated functions provide you with detailed information and reporting to monitor receivables and do what you need to enhance your cash flow and bottom line.

APPLICATION SERVER

Off-load and schedule the execution of CPU-intensive tasks—such as the printing of reports and execution of processes—to other machines on your network. Microsoft Dynamics SL Application Server helps you control where processes execute, whether centralized on the database server, on separate application servers distributed throughout the network, over a wide area network (WAN), or over the Internet.

BANK RECONCILIATION

Automate and simplify your bank reconciliation process to reduce paperwork, eliminate tedious administrative tasks, and help ensure accuracy.

CASH MANAGER

Take the guesswork out of cash accounting, gain instant access to your current cash balance, and automate bank reconciliation. Powerful and integrated, Microsoft Dynamics SL Cash Manager is automatically updated when batches are released by other Microsoft Dynamics SL modules.

CURRENCY MANAGER

Conduct global business easily, whether your company uses a single currency with plans to expand or already operates with multiple currencies. Integrate transaction processing across Microsoft Dynamics SL to track exchange rate fluctuations, determine possible gains and losses when making payments in another currency, and maximize multinational business profits.

FINANCIAL STATEMENT TRANSLATION

Isolate, evaluate, and eliminate the impact of currency fluctuations on your business operations with Microsoft Dynamics SL Financial Statement Translation. This flexible and integrated module helps you dramatically improve month-end close processes by performing necessary currency translations and automatically calculating gains/losses due to rate fluctuations.

GENERAL LEDGER

Capture and analyze the financial information you need to make better business decisions with flexible, integrated capabilities that let you harness your accounting processes to meet the way you do business.

MULTI-COMPANY

Monitor, analyze, and report on multiple companies or functional divisions within your organization. Focused and flexible capabilities help you set up multiple companies in one or more databases, run processes, close books, and report results by company or in a consolidated company.

Business Intelligence and Reporting

BIO ADVANCED

Enable far-reaching insight and analysis for project operations and inventory sales, including the ability to extend information across your organization—from front line managers to executives.

BIO FOUNDATION

Preconfigured, built-in views of Microsoft Dynamics SL financial data empower executives and power users with operational, financial, and strategic analysis capabilities that break through the constraints of static, accounting-oriented reporting.

BIO VUE USERS

Business Analytics provides information at all levels of a company. Purchasing additional BIO Vue Users allows for more users to take advantage of the information unlocked with business information optimization.

CRYSTAL REPORTS

Modify any existing report or create an unlimited number of custom reports to suit your needs with Crystal Reports Professional 8.5, the industry-leading report writer included with Microsoft Dynamics SL System Manager. Crystal Reports provides powerful reporting and query capabilities for both novice and experienced users. Use it to select, analyze, summarize, and present data in almost any way imaginable.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Define and deliver web-based, personalized views of key performance indicators (KPIs) to individuals’ desktops so that they can monitor and make strategic decisions on business performance.

MANAGEMENT REPORTS DESIGNER USER

One user included with each Business Essentials or Advanced Management user. Additional users can be purchased a la carte by Business Essentials and Advanced Management customers. Designer—The Designer license includes the Administrator and Designer roles within Management Reporter. These roles allow the user to administer, design, generate, and view reports with access to both Report Designer and Report Viewer applications.

MICROSOFT FORECASTER

Microsoft Forecaster is the fast, affordable way for midsize businesses, large organizations, and divisions of global enterprises to realize the benefits of a budgeting and planning application. It can be implemented quickly to provide users with immediate control of the entire budgeting and planning process. Microsoft Forecaster is a fully integrated budgeting and planning application designed to help companies create and execute accurate and realistic budgets.

QUICK QUERY EDITOR

Connect to more than 100 predefined views of your financial data. This interactive screen sorts and selects information, and allows for filtering and saving of custom views or connecting to a custom SQL Server® view.

QUICK QUERY EDITORS

Connect to custom SQL Server views and choose which fields to display and which Microsoft Dynamics SL screen to drill back.

Supply Chain Management

ADVANCED SHIPPING MANAGEMENT

Automatically create shipping labels, build shipment detail, charge shipments, and do much more with Microsoft Dynamics SL Advanced Shipping Management.

E-COMMERCE GATEWAY EDI

With Microsoft Dynamics SL, you can take advantage of the benefits of conducting business electronically to solidify your position in the value chain. Microsoft Dynamics SL E-Commerce Gateway—EDI Edition works with Microsoft Dynamics SL Order Management to help integrate and automate business transactions with customers, vendors, and remote warehouses.

INVENTORY

Help to ensure that your customers get what they want, when they want it—and maximize return on your inventory investment. Microsoft Dynamics SL Inventory helps you deal with a full range of inventory issues, including outgoing orders, incoming stock, returns, backorders, surplus inventory, and dead stock.

INVENTORY REPLENISHMENT

Replace inventory more accurately and help improve customer satisfaction. Microsoft Dynamics SL Inventory Replenishment provides integrated tools that optimize inventory stocking levels and automate purchasing to maintain favorable customer service levels and inventory balances.

LANDED COST

Capture actual shipping, handling, and import fees (landed costs) and easily roll them into the total cost of goods. With Microsoft Dynamics SL Landed Cost, distributors and manufacturers can calculate accurate inventory valuation by including additional charges beyond item purchase costs, such as miscellaneous origin and destination fees.

ORDER MANAGEMENT

Improve customer satisfaction by keeping order management employees on task and on top of the entire sales order process—under any circumstances—with Microsoft Dynamics SL Order Management. This core distribution module provides comprehensive capabilities for a range of industries, such as distribution, service, and manufacturing, to help improve efficiency and customer service now and as your business grows.

ORDERS TO PURCHASE

Accurately promise customers the goods they want, when they want them. Microsoft Dynamics SL Orders to Purchase helps balance inventory carrying costs with customer service levels so your representatives can fulfill customers’ requests for goods, even when stock is short.

PURCHASING

Boost productivity and reduce transaction costs with increased purchasing accuracy, speedy processing, streamlined receiving, and efficient invoice matching and vouchering. Microsoft Dynamics SL Purchasing provides buyers with accurate, up-to-date vendor and pricing information to help them make consistent, cost-effective buying decisions.

REQUISITIONS

Help increase control and reduce paperwork by enabling employees to enter purchase requisitions online for manager approval and automatic transfer to Purchase Order Processing.

Manufacturing

BILL OF MATERIAL

Define, analyze, and manage your company’s products with Microsoft Dynamics SL Bill of Material. Comprehensive features in three important manufacturing categories—bill of materials, production routings, and product costing—provide support for costing and production of manufactured and assembled goods.

WORK ORDER

Streamline the planning and handling of your work orders, so you can control costs and maximize profits. Easy-to-implement and easy- to-use, Microsoft Dynamics SL Work Order helps plan and track product item costs and keep general ledger accounts and inventory quantities seamlessly integrated and in balance.

Project Management

ANALYZER

Enhance business decision-making with efficient access to comprehensive data about project performance and profitability. Quickly collect and summarize data for key metrics, selectively pinpoint details for analysis, and present results in intuitive and practical formats. COMMUNICATOR Enhance control of project progress and profitability by increasing awareness of changes in key indicators or documents awaiting action. Automated alerts keep you informed of pending deadlines, required approvals, escalating costs, and eroding margins, making it easy to intervene so projects and profits stay on track.

CONTRACT MANAGEMENT

Streamline time-consuming contract management tasks and increase the productivity of subcontractor interactions for even the most complex projects. By improving control over change orders, document tracking, and subcontractor disbursements, you can help ensure timely completion, enhance cash flow, and boost project profitability.

EMPLOYEE UTILIZATION

Get the information necessary to improve the profitability of service professionals and other human resources. Track personnel availability, billable time, revenues, and the realization of established utilization goals. View timecard line-item details, or speed up analysis by customizing and summarizing data in a variety of groupings and time periods.

FLEXIBLE BILLINGS

Shorten billing cycles and improve cash flow by taking control of unbilled receivables and converting them more quickly to revenues. Streamline invoicing with automatic generation, formatting, and submission of drafts for approval; then easily note needed corrections, finalize invoices, and post receivables.

MICROSOFT PROJECT CONNECTOR

For companies that rely on the scheduling capabilities of Microsoft Project, Microsoft Dynamics integrates directly with Microsoft Project. The integration works in both directions, where the integrity of the Microsoft Dynamics data that flows through a company’s financial system is not compromised. In cases where the relationship between the data in Microsoft Dynamics and that in Microsoft Project might affect financial and audit trail information, one-way integration, from Microsoft Dynamics to Microsoft Project, is available.

PROJECT ALLOCATOR

Gain precise control over project finances by creating flexible, multi-tiered hierarchies to reflect the spectrum of labor rates and billing structures you need. Then automatically allocate charges and revenues, account for work-in-process, transfer or consolidate transactions, and record accurate data for billing and posting to general ledger accounts.

PROJECT BUDGETING

Take control of your project finances with powerful budgeting tools that allow you to significantly increase your project’s profitability. By tracking your budgeting process throughout the life of your project, you can view the impact of budget changes on profitability and manage the information you need to make your project successful.

PROJECT CONTROLLER

Improve your project profitability by providing project managers with the accurate, meaningful information needed to gain control over project revenue and expenses—enough control to make even low-margin projects profitable.

TIME AND EXPENSE FOR PROJECTS

Take control of your labor, project, and travel-related expenses. Accurate, timely cost information gives you the precise information you need to increase your productivity and make better, more effective business decisions.

Microsoft CRM Integration

MICROSOFT DYNAMICS CRM SERVER

Create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers—including complex supply chain relationships with partners and suppliers—from first contact through purchase and post-sales, using a comprehensive customer relationship management solution that’s easy to learn and use.

Field Service Management

EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE

Track and control every aspect of routine and unscheduled equipment maintenance. Microsoft Dynamics SL Equipment Maintenance automates the work order process, allowing your maintenance department to generate work orders more quickly and accurately, track work orders with user-defined criteria (making time stamps obsolete), perform detailed accounting procedures with ease, and execute all of your maintenance/repair procedures with maximum efficiency.

FLAT RATE PRICING

Take full control over every flat rate in your organization and inspire more customer confidence in your organization. The flat rate pricing process, the standard in more service industries every day, is now easier than ever. With Microsoft Dynamics SL Flat Rate Pricing, you can stop purchasing expensive flat-rate books from an outside publisher and enable your technicians to give on-the-spot printed price quotes on specific services from your pricing catalog.

SERVICE CONTRACTS

Manage your service agreements more effectively and maximize revenue for every contract with Microsoft Dynamics SL Service Contracts. If your business has service agreements, you know that managing them can be difficult. But with proper management, service agreements can be a major source of revenue for service companies. With Service Contracts, before a technician is dispatched to a site, the customer service representative will be alerted to any active contracts that exist.

SERVICE DISPATCH

Track and manage every detail of your service organization with Microsoft Dynamics SL Service Dispatch. Flexible capabilities help you manage field technicians efficiently, clarify information about technicians’ profitability, and accurately track customer information, including account status and equipment and service history.

Payroll Management

PAYROLL (UNITED STATES)

Make payroll and benefits administration a smooth, predictable, and timely process with powerful and flexible capabilities that allow you to operate faster, smarter, and more profitably.

PAYROLL—ADVANCED (UNITED STATES)

Take the guesswork out of complex labor and time collection. Microsoft Dynamics SL advanced payroll helps you calculate true labor costs, meet time-sensitive government reporting requirements, provide flexible deductions and benefits, and most importantly, pay your employees accurately and on time. Advanced payroll requires the purchase of the Payroll.

Collaborative Workspace

EMPLOYEE SELF SERVICE SUITE (ESS)

Allow your employees to view or update their personal data and create and manage their absence and enter personal requisitions. With the Employee Self Service license, employees can spend more time focusing on their day-to-day business and tasks and worry less about administrative burdens.

LIGHT USERS

Unlock business potential and enhance productivity by providing role-based access to information and processes from a single web- based portal. Business portal integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics SL to deliver applications, information, and processes to employees, customers, and partners across the organization. In addition, Light User provides connections to Microsoft Dynamics SL ERP data through tools like Microsoft Excel® and SQL Reporting Services. The Light User also includes a Management Reporter Viewer User—the Viewer license includes the Generator and Viewer roles within Management Reporter. Generators have access to generate reports already designed in Report Designer and view.

LIMITED DEVICE CAL

This license allows external, non-employee, non-validated people access to the Microsoft Dynamics database.

MICROSOFT DYNAMICS EXTERNAL CONNECTOR

The External Connector gives stakeholders not employed by the company access to critical business information that can streamline tasks and lower operational expenses.

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT SERVER

Microsoft SharePoint makes it easier for people to work together. Using SharePoint, your people can set up websites to share information with others, manage documents from start to finish, and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions.

Configuration and Development

CUSTOMIZATION MANAGER

Adapt your system to the specific requirements of your organization with Microsoft Dynamics SL Customization Manager. Quickly and easily modify any screen in any Microsoft Dynamics SL module without changing the underlying source code, and update screens as often as necessary to match the pace of your business growth.

TOOLS FOR VISUAL BASIC FOR MICROSOFT DYNAMICS SL

Build complete line-of-business applications with the flexible development foundation of Microsoft Dynamics SL Tools for Visual Basic. By enabling developers to work with familiar and widely used tools, you can minimize the amount of programming effort required to develop applications that communicate with Microsoft Dynamics SL and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

WEB SERVICES FOR MICROSOFT DYNAMICS SL

Extend connections with a web services architecture that leads to better performance and efficient application integrations—both for your current systems and for those you adopt in the future.

SYSTEM MANAGER

Gain flexible control with capabilities that help you import and integrate information and optimize system performance across your organization.