Purchase Journal

Dynamics 365 Business Central – How troubleshooting the error “Amount must be positive in Gen. Journal Line Journal…” took me on a journey of discovery with Journals

Gavin Whittaker1 Comment

Introduction

I had a user report the error “Amount must be positive in Gen. Journal Line Journal Template Name=’PURCHASES’…..” when posting a Purchase Journal and although the solution is straight forward (the error is telling us the problem) it started a fascinating learning journey into the world of journals in Business Central.

The Beginning – The Error

To confirm the error in full I’ve provided a screen shot below:

A journal line similar to the one being entered, which was causing the error is below. (its a purchase invoice for £100.00)

The simple fix here is to change the “Amount” column to a positive value but why do we have to do that?

The Middle – A Deep dive

If we step back and take a closer look at the journal line we are trying to post we can see the following:

  1. The journal line has a “Document Type” of “Invoice”
  2. The “Account Type” is “G/L Account”
  3. The “Amount” is a negative value.
  4. The Balancing Account Type is “Vendor”.

So, based on this information what are we telling the system to post?

As the “Amount” is negative we are asking the system to “Credit” the G/L expense code, and as the balancing entry is “Vendor” we are asking the system to debit payables and create a positive “Vendor Ledger Entry”. However, if we think about things, this isn’t the expected entries for a Purchase Invoice. For an purchase invoice you’d expect to Debit the G\L Expense code, Credit the “Vendor” and create a negative “Vendor Ledger Entry”. Therefore when we attempt to post the above transaction Business Central produces the error:

“Amount must be positive in Gen. Journal Line Journal…..“

In essence the error is saying:

“In order to post a Document Type of Invoice for this Purchase Journal Template you need to Debit the G/L Code 30100. Therefore the Amount should be Positive”

So, what happens if we post the same journal line but the opposite way around? What happens if we leave the “Document Type” of “Invoice” but select “Account Type” of “Vendor” first, leave the “Amount” as a negative value, and have the “G/L Account” as the balancing entry like this:

When I attempt to post this it works fine, even though the “Amount” is still negative?

This is because I’m now asking the system to Credit the Vendor (and create a negative “Vendor Ledger Entry”) and Debit the G/L Account 30100 which are valid entries for a document type of “Invoice”.

Penny dropped! I now understand how the journals are working!

The End – More Fun with Journals

Taking this further, have you ever wondered how you can post a Sales Invoice from a Purchase Journal? (or just about any transaction from any Journal) Well if we apply the logic above we can see how this will work just fine.

Take this Sales Invoice I’ve entered in the Purchase Journal page as an example:

Here I’ve selected a “Document Type” of “Invoice” and an “Account Type” of “Customer” and my Bal. Account Type is my G/L revenue code. I’ve then entered a positive number in the “Amount” column. (as this is a Purchase Journal the “Amount” had defaulted to a negative value after choosing “Invoice”) If I post this journal line the system will Debit my receivables, create a positive “Customer Ledger Entry” and the balancing G/L code will be credited. It will therefore work just fine.

The Extras – Lets get a bit technical

How is all this working? Every Page in Dynamics 365 Business Central is based on a table. If you run the “Page Inspector” on the Journal pages you can see they are all based on the “Gen. Journal Line (81)” table. (just press CTRL+ALT+F1 on any page to see the Page Inspector)

This is essentially why we can perform the same actions in all the different Journal pages. For example we can post a Sales Invoice in Purchase Journal or even more bizarre post a Sales Invoice in a Payment Journal. (try it…trust me it works!)

The only difference is that some pages, like the Payment Journal page, have specific actions related to paying vendors like the “Suggested Payments” action.

Cool, eh!

Conclusion

I must admit this some of this information might be obvious to a seasoned Dynamics NAV or Dynamics 365 Business Central professional however coming from a Dynamics GP background this was a really important learning experience for me.

Now I’ve grasped these concepts I’m much more comfortable working with journals.

Thanks for reading!

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 – Posting a Payables invoice to multiple GL codes using a Purchase Journal

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Introduction

As I learn and familiarise myself with Dynamics 365 Business Central I often post something in Dynamics GP and then wonder how this same task could be achieved in Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Today’s pondering was looking for the equivalent to the “Payables Transaction Entry” window that we have in Dynamics GP.

I know you can post to G/L accounts via the “Purchase Invoice” page in Dynamics 365 Business Central but to me this is primarily a “Purchase Order Processing” type window. I wanted to post a sundry payables invoice, onto a vendor, to multiple GL codes, without the need to touch the “Purchase Invoice” window.

As usual there is more than one way to do this however I focus on the “Purchase Journal” page. I also elude to why I think you can achieve the same using other “journal” pages, although you might not necessarily want to use those anyway 🙂

Dynamics GP – Payables Transaction Entry

In Dynamics GP you can post a sundry payables invoice in a very straight forward and easy to understand window called “Payables Transaction Entry”.

This window has no link to Purchase Order Processing. We tend to advise users to use this window for posting invoices for sundry items and things you wouldn’t necessarily have a Purchase Order for. You can click “Distributions” and record multiple GL codes for this one invoice. Its also handy to import transactions into very quickly and users seem to prefer this window for speed of entry.

Dynamics 365 Business Central – Purchase Journal

There are various “journal” pages in Dynamics 365 Business Central so I turned to the “Purchase Journal” page to achieve my goal.

The first thing I found I had to select was the option “Show more columns” as per below.

Crucially this adds the “Account Type” option which gives the user the ability to add “G/L Account” when keying in the Payables document:

Now I had the “Account Type” field available for entry I found as long as you keep the Document Number, External Document No and Posting Date the same you are able to add a payables document with multiple lines.

First you add the “Account Type” of “Vendor” and key in the first line with the total amount of the document. On the subsequent lines you can choose “G/L Account” as the account type and enter the G/L distribution breakdown. Also, if you wish to analyse tax to any of the distributions you must populate the “Gen. Posting Type” with “Purchases” and then populate the “VAT Prod. Posting Group”.

In the end you should have something like this and the document will post successfully

Other takeaways

As with any investigation you usually find some interesting things along the way.

The major takeaway I found is that you can post the same purchase invoice using the “General Journal” page. After looking more closely it seems this is possible as both pages are based on the “Gen. Journal Line” table. Therefore all the fields (and business logic) you need are available on the “General Journal” page as well.

See below. The “Purchase Journal” and “General Journal” pages are based on the same table:

Purchase Journal
General Journal

However, as a word of caution, if you were to post the same purchase invoice from the “General Journal” page the transaction is given a “Source Document” of “GENJNL” in the “G/L Register” rather than “PURCHJNL”.

See below. The top G/L Register was posted using the “General Journal” page and the other using the “Purchase Journal” page.

Therefore I’d suspect its best to use the specific “Purchase Journal” for these postings.

Thanks for reading!