I am definitely excited about this release. I’ve only reviewed a few of the changes. I guess they are the ones that caught my attention the most….
The Great – #1 Review General Ledger Accounts
Now you can ‘reconcile’ or review entries in general ledger accounts for easy periodic reconciliations, something that has existed in other country versions of BC.
When reconciling accounts at the close of a period, users review the entries to identify the entries that accumulate to balance of the account under analysis. This new feature makes this review faster and easier.
How? The user can mark the entries as Reviewed, leaving only the entries that accumulate to the balance ‘unreviewed’ or ‘uncleared’ or ‘unreconciled’. Then a simple filter on the entries, an Open in Excel and you have the detail of the balance completely define.
On the General Ledger Entries page, there will be an option for G/L Review so that you can identify the entries to the marked. Oh, and if you mark one as reviewed and didn’t mean to, you can simply remove the review setting.
I’m pleased to see that Microsoft considered the fact that companies many have a large number of entries and do not want to spend the time to mark these past entries. In General Ledger Setup, users can specify the date from which to show entries in the G/L Review so that entries before the date defined are already considered reviewed. There is also a feature to set the old general ledger entries to reviewed status in a bulk background job.
This can be hugely helpful for accountant like myself who were trained to reconcile every balance sheet account every month so that you can define the exact transactions that make up the balance amount.
The Great – #2 Add fields from table to card pages, lists and most other page types
No longer do we have to have a developer write an extension to add fields from the item table to the item card or the item list. Microsoft is unlocking all table fields so that consultants and users can add them to their pages to personalize their workspace. The changes can be for a single user or for anyone in a specific role. This is a big improvement for customers to self-service and reduce time and costs of implementation.
The Good – #1 Undo Transfer Shipments
Just as one can undo a sales shipment or a purchase receipt, transfer shipments will now be able to be undone. There are limitations just as currently exist for the other ‘undos’, such as direct transfers cannot be undone, you cannot undo ship a transfer line if there are other receipts against that transfer line, reservations must be cancel to undo a transfer shipment and the transfer cannot have been received.
This is a win!
The Good – #2 Streamlining Intercompany
Not a tremendous amount of detail shared other than to state that things have been moved to one page for partners, chart of accounts and dimensions, bank transactions can be handled in the BI general journal, inbox and outbox are smoother and role center cues have been added.
And the best statement is that ‘you can validate your intercompany posting setup to determine whether you have incorrect or missing settings across partner companies.’
Sounds like a great improvement.
The Good – #3 Preview Item journals before posting
The OK – Posting Groups
Worry set in when colleagues told me that the new Business Central release was going to allow users to change posting groups on transactions. I argued that the entire reason for posting groups was so accounting could define the desired accounts for transactions and not depend upon users for that information. Of course, all my colleagues agreed, why was this a new feature?
What is the business case for this change? The release document cites the example that the transaction is for a bad debt. I might counter that leaving a bad debt on a customer or vendor still leaves the value in accounts receivable unless I do an entry to remove from the customer’s default posting group and add to the a new posting group. And if I do this, I now need to worry about how to run my Aged Receivable Report to balance to my AR and my bad debt (assuming the example cited.) BC Users need to understand the implications of allowing changes to vendor and customer posting groups not just in the general ledger entries but in monthly account reconciliation processes.
There was some relief in my angst when I read the announcement today that does put controls into place while also providing the ability to change posting groups when required. There will be a setting in Sales & Receivable Setup, in Service Mgt Setup and in Purchases & Payables Setup to Allow Alteration of Posting Groups. Furthermore, in both Customer Posting Groups and Vendor Posting Groups only the defined ‘substitutions’ will be allowed. These substitutions can be set to replace the default customer or vendor posting groups specified for a customer or vendor.
Once the substitutions are setup, a user may pick from the allowed values when posting sales or purchase documents and journals. The changed posting groups will act as any other customer or vendor posting group in that the changed value is on the posted documents and the associated general ledger accounts will be used.
Not really sure this is a big win. Consultants beware and understand that this must be explained before used.
Overall, there is overwhelming good and great new features…..can’t wait!!