Introduction

At the end of a period it maybe necessary to split the balance of an General Ledger account across dimensions. This might be useful if you accumulate costs in a General Ledger account and only split those across cost centres at the period end.

In this post I’ll go through how this can be achieved quickly and easily using the Recurring Journal.

Recurring Journal

The recurring journal in Business Central provides the means of handling repetitive journals that occur on a regular basis.

One example might be a monthly depreciation journal or recurring revenue and expenses. (although I’d hope anyone would be using the Fixed Assets module for monthly depreciation 😊). Typically you’d be using the same or very similar amounts so would use a “Recurring Method” of “Fixed” or “Variable” for those journals.

However there is a “Recurring Method” of “Balance” that provides the ability to transfer the balance of an General Ledger account to another General Ledger account, or more interestingly, split the balance of an account across dimension values.

For example, let’s say I’ve been accumulating “Office Supplies” expenses under one General Ledger code and at the end of the month I want to split this by departmental cost centres.

This see how this works with a Recurring General Journal.

Worked Example

Through the month I’ve accumulated £1000 worth of costs in the “Office Supplies” account.

If I look at a “G/L Balance by Dimension” you can see I have no Dimensional analysis.

At month end I now want to split these costs across my departments. To do this I open the “Recurring General Journal” page, select the “Balance” recurring method, and pickup the “Office Supplies” account. (Note I don’t enter any amount in the journal)

Next we’ll allocate the balance across the “Department” dimension. I want to allocate 20% to the Sales department, 50% to Production and 30% to Admin.

To do this click “Allocations” in the ribbon and pickup the Office Supplies General Ledger account and enter 20% percentage and click “Dimensions”

I then select “Department” as the Dimension Code and “SALES” as the Dimension Value.

I repeat this for Dimension Values “ADM” and “PRODUCTION”, each time entering the Office Supplies General Ledger account, then clicking “Dimension” in the ribbon, and picking up the relevant dimension value.

I now have the allocations I require as per below.

Now when I preview post the journal I can see how this will now be split over the various departments

Finally when I view the “G/L Balance by Dimension” I can see the split across my Department dimension

Conclusion

Although I could have used a normal “General Journal” for this entry, this method shows how you can utilise the “Recurring General Journal” to split costs across dimensions, without needing to know the actual balance of the account therefore reducing errors and saving time.

Thanks for reading!