This product in the past was introduced by Great Plains as Small Business Manager and currently it is part of Microsoft Dynamics family of ERP products. SBF is in essence scaled down version of Great Plains Dynamics with DYNAMICS.DIC - Dexterity written business logic dictionary. Current version is 9.0. It also has FRx reporting, version 6.7 is distributed with latest SBF. As Small Business Financials is for small businesses, it is often common that they do not upgrade to the new version and even skip one or two versions. In this small article we will consider upgrade scenario from version 6.0 to 9.0:
1. Microsoft SQL Server or MSDE version. If you are on 6.0, you may already be on SQL 2000. Version 9.0 could be hosted in SQL 2000 as well or you may consider after upgrading SBF to 9.0 also update MS SQL from 2000 to 2005
2. Intermediate version 7.5. We recommend you to stick to upgrade path via version 7.5 as in our opinions it was very solid and bug free versions of Great Plains Dynamics. On the Server, insert CD of SBF 7.5, and select install Multi-User Server components. Be sure to make a backup prior to upgrading, plus print out major reports: balance, P&L, AR and AP aging - we recommend you to compare it with the same after upgrade reports
3. Continue toward version 9.0. You do not need to enter 7.5 reg key, assuming you have them for version 9.0. Version 9.0 installs into standard path on drive C Program Files: Microsoft\Small Business Financials
4. Modified Reports. These are stored in Reports.DIC file. SBF Utilities will offer you to upgrade modified reports. Please know that not all the reports could be upgraded, some of them need to be rebuilt or re-modified.
5. FRx upgrade. It is similar to FRx for Microsoft Dynamics GP. You again should be aware about ODBC connection, data tables in Dynamics database as well as know the role of sysdata folder, where FRx configuration files reside