Category: Dynamics

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1.

The 33rd of the new functionality in the Application section is manage subscription billing and revenue and expense recognition.

Businesses are finding ways to create recurring revenue streams by selling goods and services on a subscription basis. This release lets you manage subscription contracts in Business Central. The new subscription module lets you spend more time selling and less time organizing and invoicing contracts.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Companies across sectors have increased their adoption of digitalization and are revamping their products and services to accommodate subscription-based business models.

You can now support many different types of subscription scenarios in Business Central. There’s a simple set of processes that let you manage portfolios of the items and services that you bill on a recurring schedule. For example, hardware maintenance, IT support, cleaning services, and so on. You combine the sale of services and items in mixed subscription contracts that hold information about the items, services, and billing schedule.

Templates simplify the process of creating subscription contracts by standardizing the parameters and schedules for recurring billing. You can manage current pricing and plan for future price updates. On the accounting side, posting accruals to balance sheet accounts is automated, and revenue or expense are assigned to the correct periods in the income statement.

The new module comes with:

• Contracts for which you do recurring billing for items and services.
• Billing schedules with flexible parameters that cater to typical use cases for recurring billing.
• Usage-based billing.
• Automated billing.
• Deferral integration.
• Revenue recognition based on billing schedules.
• Contract updates (parameters and prices).
• Standard reports for contracts, customers, billing schedules, recognized revenue, future billing dates and amounts, and so on. Most reports are available as Power BI reports.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

So, in the article I discussed how to stop people posting to a closed year, but I started thinking about why you would want to post to a closed year. After all, the year has been closed to prevent posting.

The main reasons I can think of are to allow adjustments and corrections to be posted. Adjustments might include correcting errors which have been found, audit adjustments or additional postings, or legal obligations which require changes to be made. However, all of those could be managed by stopping posting until the year is closed rather than closing and continuing to allow posting.

I’ve not found a good explanation for why Business Central works the way it does, so I’m still waiting to understand this one myself; I’ve previously worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP which, depending on settings, allowed users to post only to the last closed financial year and the changes were automatically rolled forward into the open year.

One point to note for Business Central, is that if users do post into a closed year then the Close Income Statement process, must be run again. If this isn’t done then the closed year postings, won’t be transferred to retained earnings.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Being fairly new to Business Central (compared to the 19 years I worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP), I’ve been a bit surprised by the process required for closing a year in Business Central. I’m going to cover the process over a few posts, each dealing with one part of the process.

As I’ve warned in each post about closing fiscal years in Business Central, one of the things I was surprised about Business Central is that even after a year had been closed, people can still post to the year

To stop them posting to a closed year, the Allow Posting From field on the General Ledger Setup (118) page needs to be changed to (at least) the first date of the new financial year.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Being fairly new to Business Central (compared to the 19 years I worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP), I’ve been a bit surprised by the process required for closing a year in Business Central. I’m going to cover the process over a few posts, each dealing with one part of the process.

Once the Year End Close has been run, the next step is to close the income statement.

To do this, open the 94 task.

There are a number of fields which need to be entered/selected:

• Fiscal Year Ending Date – should default to the date which needs to be closed; always worth checking to make sure the date is the one you expect and that you’re not in the wrong company.
• Gen. Journal Template and Gen. Journal Batch – template and batch which will be used for the closing journal.
• Document No. – will default from the journal template/batch, but can be overridden.
• Retained Earnings Account – G/L account to which P&L accounts are to be closed.
• Post to Retained earnings Acc – choose whether detail or only balance si required; balance is the default option.
• Posting Description – description to be used on the journal.

The close by options can be configured to post by business unit, set dimensions for the closing journal.

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… Close the Income Statement”

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Being fairly new to Business Central (compared to the 19 years I worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP), I’ve been a bit surprised by the process required for closing a year in Business Central. I’m going to cover the process over a few articles, each dealing with one part of the process.

The first part of the process, is to close the fiscal year and accounting periods. To close the year, open the Accounting Periods (100) page and click the Home » Close Year action:

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… Close a Fiscal Year”

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

in an earlier article, I covered the only mandatory step to close a period in Business Central which is to set the allowed posting from and to dates (you can override these for individual users), but there are also other steps which would be recommended to do at period end.

These steps are largely going to be common with other accounting systems, but I thought it was still worth outlining them:

General ledger

• Post all necessary general ledger (G/L) adjustments.
• Update and post recurring journals.
• Run financial reports.

Sales and receivables

• Post all sales orders, invoices, credit memos, and return orders.
• Post all cash receipt journals.
• Update and post recurring journals related to sales and receivables.
• Reconcile accounts receivable to the general ledger.
• Run the Delete Invoiced Sales Orders batch job; if archiving is enabled the shipped sales orders will be moved to the archive rather than deleted.

Purchases and payables

• Post all purchase orders, invoices, credit memos, and return orders.
• Post all payment journals.
• Update and post recurring journals related to purchases and payables.
• Run the Aged Accounts Payable report and reconcile accounts payable to the general ledger.
• Run the Delete Invoiced Purchase Orders batch job; if archiving is enabled the invoices purchase orders will be moved to the archive rather than deleted.

Fixed assets

• Create and acquire any assets.
• Post adjustments.
• Post depreciation.
• Post all maintenance costs that have been posted through the fixed asset journals or invoices.

Intercompany

• Process intercompany transactions.

Calculate and process VAT

• Complete VAT statements if required; depending on profile, this may only need to be done every one, two or three months.

Depending on your processes, there may be other steps which you need to do at month end, but the above gives an overview of the most common.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

In the last article, I covered how to close a period, which prevents users from posting into the closed period. However, it is sometimes useful to close the period to stop most users from posting to it, but allowing some in finance to post to the period to finish off accrual or adjustment journals.

Fortunately, Business Central allows you to do this, on a per user basis. To override the posting dates for a user, open the User Setup (119) page and set the Allow Posting From and Allow Posting To fields for the required user(s):

You may need to add a line for the user by selecting them i the User ID field before you can set the allowed posting dates.

Once adjustments have been posted, the fields on this window should either be blanked or set to the same values as the General Ledger Setup (118) page.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

While you do create fiscal years and accounting periods in Business Central, it is not a period based system, but a date based one.

This means that there is not a period end which needs to be run to close one period and transfer balances from the old period to the new. In fact, in Business Central there is only one action which you need to take at month end and that is to change the dates to which posting is allowed.

To change the allowed posting dates, open the General Ledger Setup (118) page and edit the Allow Posting From and Allow Posting To dates:

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… Close a Period”