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”

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 in this series, I took a look at creating the fiscal year using the Create Year process, which works very well if your accounting periods are evenly split into calendar months, but not so good if you use a different structure, such as a 5-4-4 cycle for thirteen week quarters.

In this case, you will need to create the accounting periods manually (or potentially use the create year process and edit the dates afterwards).

To create a calendar manually, open the Accounting Periods (100) page; enter the Starting Date, the Name will default to the month name, but can be overtyped, and, for the first period of the year, mark the New Fiscal Year checkbox:

Repeat entering each required period; you only need to set the starting date of the period as the ending date is automatically calculated by the system when required. I’d recommend following the period creation of the bulk job by also entering the first period of the subsequent year.

In future, to create new fiscal years, you can follow the same process as outlines above. I generally recommend that clients have the current and next financial years created, which ensures there are no problems when the next year starts and that deferrals can be entered spreading across the financial years.

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.

Fiscal years and their accounting periods are created via the Accounting Periods (100) list page. When you open the page, you will see all of the existing accounting periods, the New Fiscal Year checkbox is marked on the first period of each year (this is useful when creating reports in Jet Reports as you can select from the Accounting Period (50) table to get the first date of the financial year).

The easiest way, as long as your calendar is evenly divided (such as into 12 periods/months) is to use the Create Year process by clicking the Home » Create Year… action:

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… Create a New 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.

Business Central is a very flexible system, and allows you to create fiscal years and the accounting periods to meet your business requirements.

Whether your financial year starts on 1^st January, the first Monday of April, or any other date in the year, Business Central allows you to define the fiscal year. You can also choose how long the year is (usually 365 day, but in case a year needs to be longer or shorter, Business Central support this) and you can also specify how long the periods are.

For the majority of the clients I have worked with, their accounting periods are a calendar month in length, but a significant minority have configured periods using a 5-4-4 grouping of weeks, which splits the year into four quarters of 13 weeks. Both of these are possible to configure, although a calendar month is easier and quicker to configure.

As well as being used to control posting in Business Central, accounting periods can also be used as an option in reporting.

As an aside, from a technical point of view, Business Central does not require accounting periods to be used; they are only necessary if you need to close the income statement or run data compression tasks. I don’t know a single client using Business Central who does not require accounting periods, and I’m not sure what the use case for this is.

Over the next few articles in this series, I will step through creating fiscal calendars, closing periods and years.