Dynamics 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central – How to Post a VAT only Invoice

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Although not a regular occurrence, from time to time users need to post a VAT only invoice onto the sales or purchase ledger. If this happens below are the steps you can take to do this:

Please note these steps are specifically for a Purchase Invoice however it should work the same for a Sales Invoice.

Step 1: Add a new VAT Product Posting Group

First go to “VAT Product Posting Group” and add a new VAT Product Posting group for FULL VAT as per below

Step 2: Configure VAT Posting Setup

Next we need an additional FULL VAT entry in the “VAT Posting Setup” matrix as per the screen shot below. I’ve included FULL VAT twice, once with a blank “VAT Bus. Posting Group”, and once with a “VAT Bus. Posting Group” of DOMESTIC.

Please note I’ve set the system up this way so if entering a VAT only invoice via a “Purchase Journal” I only have to populate the “VAT Prod. Posting Group” whereas if I were to enter the invoice via “Purchase Invoice” its likely the supplier would have a “VAT Bus. Posting Group” of DOMESTIC. Setting the system up this way covers both scenarios.

Step 3: Entering the VAT only invoice via a “Purchase Journal” window.

In this example I’m entering a £100.00 VAT only invoice via the “Purchase Journal” window.

To do this I’ve entered the invoice details as follows:

Just to confirm, I’ve selected a document type of “Invoice” and the Vendor account of “1000”. Then for the “VAT only” element to work I’ve selected the following for the various columns:

Bal. Account Type = G/L Account

Bal Account No. = 46330 (this is the VAT account specified in the VAT Posting Setup)

Bal. Gen Posting Type = Purchase

Bal. VAT Bus. Posting Group = BLANK (I could select DOMESTIC as well if I like)

Bal. VAT Prod. Posting Group = FULL VAT

Please note using the “VAT Posting Group” setup outlined in my screen shot above a combination of a blank “VAT Bus. Posting Group” and a “VAT Prod. Posting Group” of “FULL VAT” equates to 100% full VAT

If I now preview the posting on this transaction I can see 3 G/L Entries and one VAT entry:

If I drill down on the G/L Entries this shows the full amount posting to the VAT control account specified in the VAT Posting Setup. (as this is a Purchase Invoice the credit side goes to the Creditors Control Account):

And when I drill back on the VAT entries I can see a VAT entry for the full amount:

Step 4: Entering the VAT only invoice via the “Purchase Invoice” option

Once in the “Purchase Invoice” page I enter the invoice line as per below.

To confirm, I’ve entered the line as per below:

Type = G/L Account

No. = 46330 (this is the VAT account specified in the VAT Posting Setup)

Vat Prod. Posting Group = FULL VAT

Now when I check the “Statistics” on the invoice it shows the full amount to VAT:

Also, when I preview the posting I can see G/L entries to the VAT account and a VAT Entry of the full amount:

Step 5: Ensure FULL VAT is included on the VAT Statement

Once you have posted the transaction you should also ensure the new “VAT Prod. Posting Group” (i.e. FULL VAT) is included on the VAT statement so any transactions posted to this are picked up correctly when reporting the VAT.

As you can see below I’ve included this in the Purchases section:

I hope this helps anyone who needs to post a VAT only invoice in Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Thanks for reading!

Dynamics 365 Business Central – A walk through of Unit Cost, FIFO Items and the Automatic Cost Adjustment option

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Introduction

Recently I’ve been looking into how the “Unit Cost” is calculated for items using the “FIFO” costing method. I’ve found even if the item is set to “FIFO” the Unit Cost still displays an “Average Cost”. What’s more, depending on your “Inventory Setup”, this “Average Cost” might not be an as it seems either.

The answer lies in the role of the “Automatic Cost Adjustment” setting in “Inventory Setup”. (and therefore the “Adjust Costs – Item Entries” batch job)

In this post I’ll walk through a series of postings and check back on the “Unit Cost” while also checking the “Value Entries” to see what costs are being posted to the GL.

Here goes 🙂

Unit Cost when “Automatic Cost Adjustment” set to ALWAYS

In the first test I set the option “Automatic Cost Adjustment” to ALWAYS in my Inventory Setup as per below:

I then created a brand new item with a costing method of FIFO and gave it an initial “Unit Cost” of £10.00

With this configuration I then received and invoiced the following quantities and values:

A Purchase Order with a Quantity of 5 and a unit cost of £20.00

This changes my original “Unit Cost” to £20.00.

A Purchase Order with a Quantity of 5 with a unit cost of £50.00

Now when I check the Unit Cost on the Item page its showing as £35.00.

So why is this, and what cost will be posted when I sell the item?

If you drill back on the “Unit Cost” the answer becomes apparent via the “Average Cost Calc. Overview” page:

This is showing that we have a quantity of 10 in inventory at a total value of £350.00 giving an average cost, and therefore a Unit Cost, of £35.00.

Selling an item

Things get really interesting when I now sell an item.

According to FIFO rules, when we sell an item, the system should post the actual cost from the first receipt (i.e. first in, first out). This cost isn’t £35.00, as is shown in the Unit Cost, it should be £20.00.

To see what happens I’ll ship and invoice a Sales Order for a Quantity of 1 as per below. (as you can see the Unit Cost displayed is £35.00)

Firstly, let’s check the “Unit Cost” on the item.

After posting the sales order if I now check the “Unit Cost” on the item you can see this has *automatically* (more on this later) been recalculated as per below:

Its now showing £36.66667 because we have a total of 9 in inventory at a total cost of £330.00 giving us an “Average Cost” of £36.66667 i.e. 330/9=36.66667.

So, what cost was posted to the GL for the Sales Order? Did the system post £35.00 or £20.00?

For this we’ll dig into the “Value Entries” on the item. As we can see the system posted an initial cost amount of -£35.00, as per the “Unit Cost” and then *automatically* posted an adjustment entry of £15.00 giving the correct FIFO cost of £20.00

The key takeaway here is the reason we get the additional “adjustment” posting of £15.00 *automatically* is because we have the “Automatic Cost Adjustment” setting switched to ALWAYS in the Inventory Setup.

As I understand it having this switched to ALWAYS runs the “Adjust Costs – Item Entries” batch job every time you post a transaction therefore posting the correct FIFO cost *automatically*.

Unit Cost when “Automatic Cost Adjustment” set to NEVER

Now, let’s test what happens to the “Unit Cost” and the FIFO costs when we have the “Automatic Cost Adjustment” set to NEVER.

First, I’ll create a new item as per below using the same initial “Unit Cost” and a costing method of “FIFO” as the previous item:

I’ll raise the same Purchase Orders as before however for brevity I won’t include screen shots of the Purchase Orders on this occasion.

When we now check the “Unit Cost” the system is still showing £20.00 as per the first purchase order we received and invoiced. It hasn’t been *automatically* changed to the correct “Average Cost” of £35.00.

However if I check the “Average Cost Calc. Overview” by drilling back on the “Unit Cost” it shows we have a quantity of 10 at a total cost of £350.00.

So, why hasn’t the system updated the “Unit Cost” on the item on this occasion?

This is because we have switched “Automatic Cost Adjustment” to NEVER. This means the “Adjust Costs – Item Entries” batch job hasn’t ran when we posted the receipt and invoice for the Purchase Orders.

Therefore if we want to update the “Unit Cost” we must run the “Adjust Costs – Item Entries” batch job manually as per below:

Then click OK to run this for all items. (I could add a filter for my item if I’d prefer)

Now when I check the “Unit Cost” the correct Average Cost is now showing

Its also worth noting that if I leave the setting “Automatic Cost Adjustment” set as NEVER, when I post a shipment the “Value Entries” produced will be for the “Unit Cost” on the item i.e. now that is -£35.00 as we have ran the “Adjust Cost – Item Entries” batch job. The additional “Adjustment” Value Entry will only be produced when I next run the “Adjust Costs – Item Entries” batch job.

Conclusion

The “Automatic Cost Adjustment” setting has a direct impact on what is shown in the “Unit Cost” of an item. This determines when the “Adjust Costs – Item Entries” batch job runs which, amongst other things, also recalculates the Unit Cost on items.

Thanks for reading.

Dynamics 365 Business Central – Using a Negative Quantity on a Sales Order to Return Items

Gavin Whittaker3 Comments

I ran into a situation recently where a user had shipped some goods from a Sales Order, which had subsequently been returned prior to the Sales Order being Invoiced. This led me to discover an interesting way to return the goods, and then invoice the Sales Order all at the same time.

After some testing I realised they could add a negative line for the same item, and ship and invoice this all at the same time.

The exact situation and steps I took are described below.

Below is a Sales Order that has a quantity of 10 that have been shipped:

Prior to invoicing this the client has returned 2 therefore I’ve reopened the Sales Order and added an additional line item for -2 for the same item.

I can now Ship and Invoice all the lines which will return 2 into my inventory and also only invoice a total of 8.

If I now check my Item Ledger Entries I can see both entries for this item. There’s a negative 10, as we originally shipped 10, and a positive 2 for the items returned.

I tested this with and without different location settings such as “Require Warehouse Receive” and “Require Warehouse Shipment” and it seems to work fine. I didn’t test it with full WMS switched on and I suspect it may hit problems there.

Thanks for reading!