Author: Gavin Whittaker

Dynamics 365 Business Central- How to Reverse a Journal on a different date using the Posted General Journal Page

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Introduction

When you reverse a journal entry using the standard “Reverse” feature there’s no option to change the posting date. By default the journal will automatically reverse on the same date as the original journal postings. This isn’t ideal if you have closed the period and want the reversal to post into a different period.

In this post I’ll show how you can reverse a journal and change the date using the “Posted General Journal” feature. I’m a big fan of this feature as it not only gives the ability to reverse a journal with a different date but you can also reverse multiple journals.

The Issue

As discussed, when reversing a journal using the standard functionality there’s no way to change the “Posting Date”. The field highlighted below isn’t editable.

If the financial period is closed, posting the reversal into a different period becomes necessary, which prevents the ability to use the standard feature.

Configuring Posted General Journal Functionality

Before we can use the Posted General Journal functionality we first have to ensure its enabled on the various General Journal Templates.

Therefore search “General Journal Templates” and tick the option “Copy to Posted Jnl” as per below:

When the option has been selected on the General Journal Template, it can then be toggled off and on at a Journal Batch level as well:

With this option enabled any journal that’s subsequently posted creates “Posted Gen. Journal Lines” in addition to the usual General Ledger Entries.

For example I clicked “Find Entries” on a General Ledger Entry and I can see additional “Posted Gen. Journal Lines”

I find this really useful as if you drill down on the “Posted Gen. Journal Line” it opens the Posted General Journal page which provides a snapshot of the journal that was posted.

This is very similar to how a snapshot of a Sales Invoice is taken and saved as a “Posted Sales Invoice” which you can refer back to.

Reversing a Journal using the Posted General Journal Page

Now we have the option switched on we can walk through how to reverse a journal.

First open the “Posted General Journal” page. You can either search this directly or drill down from the “Find Entries” page.

Once in the “Posted General Journal” page locate the entry you wish to reverse. In my example I’m going to reverse document number G00033.

I therefore filter on this document number and select both lines and choose “Copy Selected Lines to General Journal” as per below:

** Please note you can also select “Copy G/L Register to General Journal Lines” **

Next I’ll choose to replace posting date with an April date and also to reverse the sign:

Now when I open the ACCRUALS batch its the reversing journal is ready to post.

You can also use this functionality to reverse more than one journal at once and I’ve also used it to find out the G/L Register number of a journal postings 🙂

Conclusion

As you can probably tell I’m a big fan of this functionality. I think this is because of my background using Dynamics GP which creates similar snapshots of posted journals.

Thanks for reading!

Dynamics 365 Business Central – Message “There is nothing to post because the journal does not contain a quantity or amount” when posting a Recurring General Journal

Gavin Whittaker1 Comment

Introduction

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.

Thanks for reading!

Dynamics 365 Business Central – Walking through an Adjust Exchange Rates (revaluation) scenario in Business Central

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Introduction

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 :).

Thanks for reading!