Introduction
Its good practice to periodically reconcile the General Ledger control accounts to the sub ledgers. In this post I’ll highlight the reports and enquiries that can be used in Dynamics GP versus the reports and enquiries that can be used in Dynamics 365 Business Central to achieve this task.
Dynamics GP
On the General ledger side you can obtain a balance on a GL code at any given period via the “Enquiry > Financial > Summary” window shown below:
This window provides information on the debits, credits, net change and period balances for an individual account for the year selected.
I love this view as it gives you a lot of information in a handy window that’s also easy to consume. You can drill down by clicking on the blue hyperlink headings to get to the detailed information.
** Incidentally Dynamics GP stores the information displayed in the summary window in a separate table from the detail information. Its not summed data based on detailed transactions. This provides performance efficiencies if there’s lots of data however on rare occasions it might not accurately reflect the period balance. (seasoned GP users will be well aware of this headache).
Unfortunately you can’t get the General Ledger balance at a date that’s in the middle of the period using this window. If you want a General Ledger position at a given date I’d recommend using the “Reports > Financial > Trial Balance > Summary” report.
With the restrictions I’ve added above I can see the General Ledger balance at the 25/04/27. If I wanted a detailed breakdown I’d use the “Reports > Financial > Trial Balance > Detail” using similar restrictions.
Once you have the control account balance you can obtain the AP or AR balance via the relevant Historical Aged Trial Balance report. You can access this via “Reports > Sales (or Purchasing) > Trial Balance > Historical Aged Trial Balance”. The options for the report are shown below:
Key fields on this window are:
Print/Age as of:- Using this report you get a retrospective position on the ledger at any given time. For example if I wanted to reconcile back to January 2020, I’d simply change this date to 31/01/2020 and the report would disregard all activity after this point.
Select Transactions for Report Using:- You can select either Document Date or Posting Date. When reconciling to the General Ledger its recommended to use Posting Date.
Detail:- You can either tick or untick this option if you want a summary per Debtor or Creditor or the detail information.
Using the information from this report you can reconcile back to the GL to ensure the ledgers balance.
Its also worth noting that there is a “Reconcile to GL” feature you can use via “Tools > Routines > Financial > Reconcile to GL”. This tool is very useful as it provides an insight into potential differences between the GL and a given subledger. i.e. it would highlight manual journals that could be causing issues.
Dynamics 365 Business Central
If I want to see a quick balance of a General Ledger code in Dynamics 365 Business Central I’d start by going to the Chart of Accounts page as per below:
In this page I can filter for the General Ledger codes in question and filter the totals using the “Filter totals by:” option.
When I enter a “Filter totals by:” restriction the values shown in the “Balance at Date” and “Net Change” columns change automatically based on the filter (however the “Balance” column always shows the current balance). Therefore in the screen shot above the “Net Change” is showing the change in April and the “Balance at Date” is showing the balance at the end of April.
This is a great feature as I can simply change this filter to any date in the year. I can then drill down on the detail transactions by clicking the amounts.
** Incidentally, the “Balance at Date” and “Net Change” values are dynamic as the data displayed on the page is based on detailed data. (they also don’t exist as fields in a table – they are a special type of field called flow fields). The “Filter list by:” filter is a special filter called a “Flow Filter” that work with those flow fields and performance is maintained by SIFT indexes (SQL Indexed Views).
Its also worth noting I can get a simpler view showing all period amounts for a given General Ledger code by highlighting the General Ledger code and selecting “Navigate > Balance > G/L Account Balance” from the navigation bar.
Again I can drill down on the amounts to see detailed information. This also offers a more familiar way of viewing the balance for a Dynamics GP user.
To obtain a balance on the AP and AR side I’d use the relevant Aged Accounts reports as shown below. (just search for “Aged Accounts” to see these)
The key fields are
Aged as of:- this is similar to the GP option “Age/As of” and will give you the position “as at” a given date enabling you to reconcile to a point in time.
Print Details:- With this option checked the report is printed with transaction detail however left unchecked you are presented with a summary per debtor.
Using the information from this report you can reconcile back to the General Ledger to ensure the ledgers balance
Conclusion
As expected both products offer great and simple options for reconciling your sub ledger back to the General Ledger control accounts.
As I stated above I really like the GP summary enquiry screen however I also love the flexibility that the flow filters provide in Dynamics 365 Business Central. (FYI, this functionality is offered throughout the system).
Also, in Business Central, as the summary values are provided based on detailed data in the ledger entries table, I can guarantee the balances are providing accurate information every time.
Thanks for reading!
The Dynamics Explorer 