A little history is in order here. When Navision (now Microsoft Dynamics NAV) came to the US around 1990, it was primarily an European product, developed in Denmark. The international features of the product are rumored to be what Microsoft was interested in. But no matter...this post is about payroll...
Anyway, if anything differs from country to country, it is payroll. Different taxes, tax calculations, union requirements (or not), federal health insurance (or not), etc. So Navision made the decision (and a good one, thinks I), not to build a payroll program in the US, but to outsource it. They chose a company named VisionPay. The NAV payroll product was written by VisionPay, but included in the Microsoft distribution of the NAV product (at least the basic payroll and HR product was included in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV distribution.
VisionPay then merged with Serenic software, makers of another major add-in for NAV, and both took the name Sereinc Software...sounds nice and peaceful...
I've never been entirely sure what the contract between Microsoft and Serenic, but we always ordered the PR software from Microsoft and any additional (advanced) software from Serenic. Certification on the product was through Serenic, support was through Serenic, but the product came from Microsoft.
All that has changed now. The Serenic product will still be integrated into the NAV product, it will just be ordered from another source (direct from Serenic). This makes PR like any other product.
Confusing, I know. The rationale behind this seems to be to allow Serenic to better control the product. And from what we've seen of 5.0, this release will have some nice features. For example, an "add a new employee" wizard, and support for additional types of accruals and deductions as well as some really nice user interface work.
But...it won't be out until June 2007, at least that's the target date. Clients using payroll will have to wait until then.
