This is likely common knowledge in the community however its something I only discovered recently so I thought I’d share in the hope it helps someone else :).
Someone requested for the “Notes and Attachments” FactBox pane to be added to the Customer Ledger Entries page so they could record notes against a customer ledger entry.
As this wasn’t available at first sight I assumed it would require development to add this, however a colleague advised its already there, its just hiding and you can expose it using standard Personalisation 🙂
Therefore to expose this FactBox pane you just use follow the steps in the clip below:
It turns out this is hidden on all sorts of other pages!
For example the General Ledger Entries page and the Vendor Ledger Entries page. Just follow the same steps above to add to those pages.
You receive the message “The Posting Date is not within your range of allowed posting dates” when trying to post a Purchase Invoice in Business Central.
According to the user setup the “Posting Date” of the document I’m posting is within the allowed posting range so why won’t the system allow me to post it?
Background – Value Entries
To provide a little more detail I’m trying to post a Purchase Invoice that I’ve matched to a Posted Purchase Receipt and I’ve increased the Unit Cost on the Purchase Invoice as the price has changed since the goods were received. I’ve also sold the items on a Sales Invoice before I’ve tried posting the Purchase Invoice.
Therefore, if we look at the value entries of this item prior to attempting to post the Purchase Invoice they are as follows
We have a value entry for the Posted Purchase Receipt showing a date of 12/05/2017 and a “Cost Amount (Expected)” of £10.00 (this the amount I used when posting the Purchase Receipt)
We also have a value entry for the Sales Invoice showing a Posting date of 25/05/2017 and a “Cost Amount (Expected)” of £10.00.
Details of the Purchase Invoice
The Purchase Invoice I’m posting is dated 01/06/2017 and I’ve amended the Unit Cost from the original £10.00 that pulled through from the Posted Purchase Receipt to £12.00
Now when I try and post this transaction, I receive the message
Therefore, just to confirm the Posting Date of the Purchase Invoice is within my allowed posting dates below is a screen shot of the User Setup window showing my Allow Posting Dates
The dates are also within the General Ledger allowed posting dates as shown below
Therefore, at first glance its not apparent why the system isn’t allowing me to post this document? The Purchase Invoice posting date is 01/06/17 and this is within my range of allowed posting dates?
The Issue – Automatic Cost Adjustment and Adjust Cost Item Entries
When posting the Purchase Invoice, the system has detected that the cost has changed from the Posted Purchase Receipt, and as this has been sold on a Sales Invoice, the cost of goods sold need adjusting.
The system therefore tries to post an adjustment using the Posting Date of the entry its adjusting (in this case the Sale Entry on the 25/05/17), which is in May, and as this falls outside of my posting range I receive the error “The Posting Date is not within your range of allowed Posting Dates”.
** Please note there is a complex method for selecting the Posting Date if the Posting Date of the entry being adjusted also fell outside of the “Allowed Posting Dates” of the General Ledger and also if “Inventory Periods” are being used. More information on this can be found in this Microsoft document https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/dynamicsnav-2016/dn948192(v=nav.90)
** Its also worth noting I’m getting this message when posting the Purchase Invoice because the option “Automatic Cost Adjustment” is set to “Always” in Inventory Setup. This means the system checks for cost adjustments when you post the transaction. If this wasn’t set to “Always”, then depending on its setting its possible the document would post however when the “Adjust Cost Item Entries” batch job was subsequently run the error would occur.
See below for my Inventory Setup
Solution
There are two possible solutions to my issue here. The first is to change my “Allowed Posting Dates” in the “User Setup” to 25/05/2017 through to 30/06/2017. This will then include the posting date of the entry that will be adjusted.
Alternatively, I could change the “Allowed Posting Dates” in the General Ledger Setup to 01/06/2017 through to 30/06/2017. Then, as per the article I linked to, the system would use the date of 01/06/2017 for the adjustment entries, (i.e. the first open date in the General Ledger Setup) which does fall in my allowed periods to post to.
Therefore I’ll change my “Allowed Posting Dates” in the User Setup as per below
And now when I post the Purchase Invoice this is succecssful
If I now view the Value Entries you can see the adjustment entry created with a Posting Date of 25/05/17.
Conclusion
Although this is a simple example it shows why you may encounter this error when it seems the postings date configuration on the User Setup should allow a document to post.
I recently had an issue where a user was stuck in a batch in the Bank Management module. You can usually run the “Clear Activity” option to resolve the issue however on this occasion it didn’t work. I found I had to manually delete a row in an SQL table to clear the lock and allow the user access to the batch.
The exact issue they received is as follows:
With this error message the first thing to try is to clear activity and although this didn’t work on this occasion I’ll detail the steps below.
Ensure there are no users in Dynamics GP and click “Yes” to the message below. (rather than asking everyone to log out I usually just ensure there’s nobody doing any Bank Management activities)
After doing this you will be prompted with the message below confirming activity is cleared
However I found I still couldn’t access the batch. On investigation there is still some activity for the batch in the CBEU1020 table which needed clearing. I therefore ran the SQL query below in the company database to delete the row. (replace TWO18 with the name of your company database)
Within Dynamics NAV \ Business Central you can switch Expected Cost Posting to G/L both ON and OFF via the option below in Inventory Setup.
In this post I’ve been playing with this feature to see how things work and how the various postings differ to Dynamics GP. I also take a look at how the Value Entries in Inventory play a pivotal role in this. I end by taking a closer look at the SQL tables involved and how things fit together.
Expected Costs in Dynamics GP
When you receive goods via a Shipment transaction in Dynamics GP a Purchase Accrual is automatically created to a General Ledger accrual account to record the expected cost in the General Ledger. This account is generally taken from the Creditor Card as per below:
Dynamics GP – Creditor Account Maintenance
The
opposite debit entry is taken from the Inventory Item card as per below:
Dynamics GP – Item Account Maintenance
Let’s add a Purchase Order Shipment transaction in Dynamics GP and see this in action:
Dynamics GP – Receiving Transaction Entry
As you can
see from the screen shot above, I’m receiving one Inventory item, and this has
created an accrual distribution crediting the 000-2111-00 accrued purchases
account I specified on the creditor card. The balancing debit side is to the
Inventory code that we specified on the Inventory Item card.
Now let’s
see what happens when we invoice the Shipment:
Dynamics GP – Purchase Invoice Entry
Just as expected the accrual is reversed via a Debit entry to the 000-2111-00 accrued purchases account and the accounts payable is credited. Therefore, the balance in the accrual account is now nil.
There’s no way to disable this behaviour in Dynamics GP. When you post a “Shipment” for some Inventory Items General Ledger entries are always created. (however you can prevent the entries posting through to the General Ledger via the Posting Setup)
Expected Costs in Dynamics NAV \ Business Central
Before we look at Expected Costing in Dynamics NAV \ Business Central we first have to take a step back and look at the various inventory entries that are created when you post inventory transactions.
When you post an inventory transaction in Dynamics NAV \ Business Central the system creates a minimum of two inventory entries: an Item Ledger Entry and a Value Entry. The Item Ledger Entry records the change in quantity and the Value Entry records the change in inventory values. For the purposes of this post we just need to know that when posting Purchase receipts Value Entries are created for Expected Costs, and when you post Purchase Invoices, Value Entries are created for Actual Costs, and Expected Costs are reversed.
Expected Cost Posting to G/L – Switched ON
Unlike Dynamics GP you can switch ON and OFF accrual postings in Dynamics NAV \ Business Central via the Expected Cost Posting to G/L option in Inventory Setup. When you switch Expected Cost Posting to G/L ON interim accounts are used to post the accrual and inventory entries for Purchase receipt transactions.
The equivalent Dynamics GP accrued purchases account is called Invt. Accrual Acc. (Interim) and is specified in the General Posting Setup window and is selected based on the Posting Groups used on the Item and Creditor. (see my previous post for more details on the posting groups). I’ve highlighted this below
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – General Posting Setup
The Inventory code for the debit side of the transaction is taken from the Inventory Posting Group and again is based on the combination of posting groups used. I’ve highlighted this below
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – Inventory Posting Setup
The key difference here is Dynamics GP doesn’t use an interim Inventory account whereas Dynamics NAV \ Business Central does.
In my Cronus demo data, the option Expected Cost Posting to G/L is currently switched ON so let’s see how this works when I create a Purchase Order for an Inventory item and receive it.
Here’s my Purchase Order and after clicking Post I’m going to choose receive so I receive the items into the Inventory:
When I view the item I can see this has created the following Value Entry (Number 454) which shows the Cost Amount (Expected) and Expected Cost Posted to G/L both populated.
If I highlight the Value Entry and click Navigate > General Ledger I can see the G/L Entries associated with the Value Entry
As expected,
we can see the 5510 Accrual account is being credited and the debit entry is
posting to the 2111 “Interim” Inventory code.
Now let’s invoice the purchase order and take a look at the G/L entries. First I click Post and select Invoice on the Purchase Order. (Incidentally if I were to select Receive and Invoice the system recognises I’ve already received the items. It doesn’t receive them again)
This has created the a new Value Entry (Number 455) . There’s a few things to note here. Firstly the Cost Amount (Expected) and the Expected Cost to G/L have been reversed. Secondly the Cost Amount (Actual) and Cost Posted to G/L have been populated.
Again if I highlight the Value Entry and choose Navigate > General Ledger we can the G/L Entries associated with this Value Entry.
As you can see the original entries created via the Purchase Receipt have been reversed by posting a debit to the 5510 Inventory accrual account and a credit to the 2111 Interim Inventory account. The system has then posted new entries to the 2210 Resale items inventory account (debit) and the direct cost applied account (credit). (for more info on the direct cost applied account see my previous post).
So that’s it. Although there are a few extra distributions to Dynamics GP everything makes sense. Its also apparent that the Value Entries have a direct relation to the G/L entries that are created.
Expected Costing to G/L – Switched OFF
Now let’s see what happens when we post a Purchase Receipt with the Expected Cost Posting to G/L switched OFF. First I switch the option OFF and then create and post the Purchase Receipt
This has created the following Value Entries (Number 456)
The key thing to note here is that although the Cost Amount (Expected) is populated the Expected Cost Posted to G/L isn’t. This means no G/L Entries have been created. To prove this click Navigate > General Ledger to view any G/L Entries
Let’s now invoice the Purchase Order and see what happens:
This has created the following Value Entry
This Value Entry records the Cost Amount (Expected) being reversed and the Cost Amount (Actual) and Cost Posted to G/L are also populated. Therefore we get the following G/L Entries
As expected no expected cost postings have been created or reversed for this transaction.
Bonus – G/L Item Ledger Relation and Post Value to G/L SQL tables
An unexpected bonus of writing this post was the chance to geek out on some of the Dynamics NAV tables. Unlike Dynamics GP, I don’t have much of a grasp of the SQL tables in Dynamics NAV however while going through the various scenario’s I was curious about how a couple of things worked which encouraged me to dig a little deeper.
The first thing was how I was able to drill down on the G/L Entries from the Value Entries screen? This meant there must be a direct or indirect relationship between the tables.
After some digging I found the link was via the G_L – Item Ledger Relation table. Therefore writing the SQL query below enabled me to join the G/L Entries and Value Entries table to see all the details for Value Entry Number 455
The next thing I was curious about was what would happen if the Expected Cost Posting to G/L was switched from OFF to ON when there were lots of Purchase Receipts that hadn’t yet been invoiced?
I found the answer to this question lay in the two prompts you receive when you switch Expected Cost Posting to G/L from OFF to ON (or ON to OFF). Below are the two messages you get when toggling the setting
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – Inventory Setup
As per the first message it seems when you switch the option Expected Cost Posting to G/L ON the system determines if the Actual Costs for the Purchase Receipt have been posted and if not a record is written for that Value Entry to the Post Value Entry to G_L SQL table. This has a link back to the Value Entry so the system knows to create the Expected Cost interim postings for this Value Entry.
To show this in action, I switched the Expected Cost Posting to G/L option OFF and queried the SQL table:
SQL Query on Post Value Entry to GL Table
As per the image above the SQL table is currently blank.
I then created
a Purchase Order and received it as per below:
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – Purchase Order
After posting this I queried the Post Value Entry to G/L SQL table again to see if any new rows had been added and the table was still blank
SQL Query on Post Value Entry to GL Table
I then checked the Value Entry for my receipt and as per the screen shot below the Cost Amount (Expected) is populated but the Expected Cost Posted to G/L is blank. As this is only the Purchase Receipt the Cost Posted to G/L is also zero.
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – Value Entries
I then went back to Inventory Setup and switched Expected Cost Posting to G/L back ON and clicked YES to the prompt and now when I check the Post Value Entry to G/L table its populated as per below
SQL Query on Post Value Entry to GL Table
After toggling the Expected Cost Posting to G/L option to ON the system has determined that this Value Entry has no G/L Entries for the Expected Costs and has inserted a record into the Post Value Entry to G_L table with a direct link back to the Value Entry that was created when I posted my receipt.
Now if I run the Post Inventory Cost to G/L batch job as instructed in the second message G/L entries are created for the purchase receipt, the SQL table is cleared, and the Value Entry is updated. See below:
The report output
of the “Post Inventory Cost to G/L” shows entries have been created:
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – Post Inventory Cost to G/L
Below are the expected cost General Ledger entries created to the interim accounts. (in my previous example these were created immediately because I had Post Expected Costs to G/L switched ON)
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – General Ledger Entries
And finally the Expected Cost Posted to G/L field on the Value Entry has been updated to show the General Ledger entries have been created and posted.
Dynamics NAV \ Business Central – Value Entries
If I now check the Post Value Entry to G_L table in SQL I can see its been cleared.
Incidentally if I were to switch OFF Expected Cost Posting to G/L before running the Post Inventory Cost to G/L batch job the SQL row is removed from the Post Value Entry to G_L table.
Conclusion
In conclusion I find the way Dynamics GP deals with expected costs to be a much more conventional and simple approach however there’s no doubting that Dynamics NAV \ Business Central gives more flexibility.
Although I don’t know much about the inner workings of Dynamics NAV \ Business Central it also seems to me that G/L Entries are created based on the Value Entries.
In another post I hope to look at how Expected Costs work with Sales Shipments and Sales Invoices.
All ERP systems aim to make data entry simple, fast and accurate. One way to achieve this is to default as much data as possible when the user is entering transactions, including the General Ledger distributions. In this post I aim to show how Dynamics NAV \ Business Central defaults the General Ledger codes when entering a Sales Invoice using inventory Items. Also, as I come from a Dynamics GP background, I’ll start off by providing a quick overview of how Dynamics GP achieves this, to offer a comparison between the two Dynamics systems.
The Dynamics GP way
In Dynamics
GP you enter default General Ledger codes on entities like customers, vendors,
items, fixed assets and then the “catch all” which is the Posting Accounts Setup window.
Once this has been configured the General Ledger codes default automatically onto the transaction. For example, when creating a Sales Invoice for an inventory item usually the control account would default from the customer card and the revenue code would default from the inventory item (you can change this but usually it would be setup this way). At this point the user can potentially edit and change the General Ledger codes on the transaction prior to posting thus overriding the system defaults. Being able to edit the General Ledger codes inside the transaction gives the user more flexibility however it can also introduce mistakes or errors. An example would be someone changing the control account, which would likely cause a reconciliation issue at month end.
Dynamics GP – Default SOP Distributions can be edited as per above
The Dynamics NAV \ Business Central way
From a Dynamics GP perspective things change quite dramatically when you look at how Dynamics NAV \ Business Central defaults the General Ledger codes. Instead of assigning specific General Ledger codes on customers, vendors, items, fixed assets, you assign Posting Groups to each of these entities. It’s the posting groups that have the General Ledger codes assigned and based on the combination of the posting groups used, general ledger postings are automatically performed when the transaction is posted. This means unlike Dynamics GP you can’t edit or change the default General Ledger codes prior to posting which gives less flexibility but there’s also less chance of mistakes being made.
So how do Dynamics NAV \ Business Central posting groups work?
There are two main types of posting groups – Specific and General.
Specific posting groups are used to default the control accounts. For example, I’ve assigned the specific Customer Posting Group “DOMESTIC” to the customer below:
Business Central – Customer Card
If we open the Customer Posting Group window and look at the setup, we can see when I post a transaction for this customer the General Ledger code 40400 will be used for the receivables control account.
Business Central – Customer Posting Groups
Moving on
to the General Posting Groups things
become a little more complex.
General
posting groups can be split into two further groups – Business and Product. You
assign “Business” posting groups to customers and vendors and “Product”
postings groups to Items.
The
combination of the General Business
Posting group from the customer and the General
Product Posting Group from the item determines the General Ledger codes
that will be used. This is something that is best explained via an image, so
I’ve included a screen shot below of the General
Posting Setup window from my demo version of Business Central.
Business Central – General Posting Setup
As you can see the posting groups form a matrix and the combination of “Business” (labelled Gen. Bus. Posting Group in the window) and “Product” (labelled Gen. Prod. Posting Group in the window) determines the General Ledger codes used when you post a transaction.
Therefore,
based on the General Posting Setup
above, if a customer has been assigned a Gen.
Bus Posting Group of DOMESTIC as per below:
Business Central – Customer Card
And the
item they are buying has been assigned a Gen.
Prod Posting Group of RETAIL as per below:
Business Central – Item Card
Then based on the General Posting Setup matrix defined in the General Posting Setup window the General Ledger sales account that will be used when the transaction is posted is 10200.
Defaulting the VAT Codes – VAT Posting Groups
A similar concept
is used when Business Central is determining the VAT percentage and VAT General
Ledger codes to be used. The matrix is defined in the VAT Posting Setup window as per below:
Business Central – VAT Posting Setup
So, in this
example if the VAT Bus. Posting Group
on the customer was “DOMESTIC” and the VAT
Prod. Posting Group used on the Item is “STANDARD” the VAT percentage used
would be 20 and the General Ledger code used would be 56100.
So there you have it. A very quick overview of how Dynamics NAV \ Business Central uses Posting Groups to create the General Ledger distributions when posting a Sales Invoice with inventory items.
When attempting to post a recurring general journal you receive the message “There is nothing to post because the journal does not contain a quantity or amount” even though you have specified the General Ledger codes and the amounts and everything appears fine.
This is a common query that crops up, and also something I see from time to time in the forums, so I thought I’d write it up for reference and to hopefully help anyone else who receives this message.
The Recurring General Journal
Below is a recurring general journal. I’ve populated all the required fields however when I try and post it I get the message below:
The Solution
The reason I’m getting this message is because of the unique way in which a recurring general journal works. In a Recurring General Journal the “Posting Date” is compared to the “Work Date” and if the posting date is greater than the work date you receive this message.
I’ll therefore compare the Posting Date on my journal to my Work Date, and as you can see the Posting Date is in advance of my Work Date:
Therefore, in my case, the solution is to change the user date to a date of 01/01/23 (or a date in advance of 01/01/23) and try again:
After doing this my journal will now post 🙂
Conclusion
As far as I’m aware, this is the only journal that behaves this way. For example, I can post a General Journal and the system won’t check the Work Date against the Posting Date.
I suspect the primary reason for this behaviour is to prevent a user mistakenly posting a recurring general journal numerous times, as by default the lines remain on a recurring general journal after you have posted it, and the posting date automatically advances based on the “Recurring Frequency”. (i.e. if the recurring frequently in 1M the Posting Date changes by one month).
Therefore you could post the journal once and then post it again by accident. Having the system perform this simple check prevents this.
Recently I helped someone in the Business Central forum with a query on revaluing their bank accounts using the “Adjust Exchange Rate” batch job.
We went back and forth for a while, trying various things, however in the end it was resolved by providing a simple worked example of the whole process that the user could compare to their process.
Therefore I thought it might be useful to write this up for anyone else who may have similar issues and want to see the whole process in action. (and as a bonus I can also use it as a reference point in future 🙂 )
** For info the original forum post can be found here
The Scenario
In this scenario my local currency (LCY) is GBP and I have a EURO bank account with several transactions that I wish to revalue at month end using a rate of 1.5.
Step 1 – The initial transactions
To prepare for the revaluation I need some transactions on the EURO bank account. Therefore, I’ve posted the three entries below using different exchange rates.
The transactions total €600 with a LCY amount of £516.
Step 2 – Set the month end rate
Next, I set the month end rate of 1.5 in the Currency Exchange Rate page. This is the rate I want to revalue the bank account ledger entries at the end of month.
** For more info on how to set exchange rates, and what each field in this page means, I wrote this blog post.
Step 3 – Run the “Adjust Exchange Rate” batch job
Finally, I run the “Adjust Exchange Rate” batch job with a posting date of 30/11/22 and added a few additional filters to revalue the bank account ledger entries.
Step 4 – The Results
The system should create an adjustment of £116. This is because the bank account ledger entries total €600, which when revalued at the new rate of 1.5, equal an LCY amount of £400, and the current LCY amount is £516. Therefore an adjustment of £116 is required.
If we look at the General Ledger entries the Exchange Rate Adjustment has created, we can see this is exactly what has happened.
The system has also created a bank account ledger entry to record the exchange adjustment
Conclusion
The “Adjust Exchange Rate” batch job is an essential tool for companies that post transactions in foreign currencies and wish to revalue their customers, vendors and bank accounts.
However, one limitation to the routine is the inability to revalue an individual GL code, which some companies may find an issue, especially if migrating from Dynamics GP which has this functionality as standard. This is because only the LCY amount is held on the General Ledger Entries. (as well as the reporting currency which is something a little different)
Hopefully this functionality will be added in a later version of Business Central :).
Recently I encountered a requirement for a workflow to be created that would send an approval to multiple users, however only one of the approvers needed to approve the request for the workflow to be fulfilled.
This post walks through how I achieved this using a Workflow User Group, and some tweaks to the standard Workflow.
Although at first I thought this would be relatively straight forward to configure, I did hit a bump in the road on way (see step 5 below). Hopefully this post will help others who encounter the same issue 🙂
Scenario
For the approval of Vendors its been decided the approval should be sent to two approvers, however only one approver needs to approve the request, for the approval to be fulfilled. Therefore, when one approver approves the request, all open approval entries for the other approver should be closed.
Step 1 – Workflow User Group
The first step is to configure a Workflow User Group with our approvers as per below:
As you can there are two approvers in the Workflow User Group, and I’ve entered a sequence number of 1 for each user.
Step 2 – Workflow Setup
To create the Workflow I’ll use a Workflow Template as per below:
I’ll then edit the workflow as described in the steps below.
Step 3 – Add the Workflow User Group to the Workflow
First, I’ll add the workflow user group as the approver type, and select my workflow user group I created earlier.
Step 4 – Edit the Events and Conditions
Next, I’ll change the “On Condition” for the second step to “Always” and also remove the third step:
The Bump in the road
At this point although the workflow would work, I found an approval entry is left open for the approver who didn’t approve, even though the record restriction on the Vendor was removed.
Step 5 – Add the additional response
In order to have the workflow close open approval entries after one approval you need to edit the second step and add the response “Approve the approval request for the record”
Conclusion
I found that without the additional Step 5 in the process of configuring the Workflow, one of the approvers would get a build up of open approval entries even though the Vendor would have been approved.
I hope this helps anyone else trying to configure a similar workflow.
The Dynamics Explorer 