You are probably thinking about the upcoming holidays and end of year tasks…maybe it’s only a nerd like me who is thinking about how I could do things better, more efficient with less stress in the coming year. Let’s review settings like direct posting and how you can expand their use to your advantage and incorporate use of deferrals. There are several banking related improvements that you can easily make as well. Easily track the amounts that represent account balances with standard features. And think about utilizing tasks for your month end, quarter end and year end checklists.
I seem to always go back to basics so I’m going to remind you to check your direct posting setting on the following general ledger accounts; it should be set to ‘NO’:
Bank Accounts
Accounts Receivable
Accounts Payable
Inventory
Fixed Assets
Why, you ask? To make sure that you start the year out right! Any account in your chart of accounts with a subsidiary ledger, like the above accounts, should never have journal entries or other postings made to them using the account number. By turning off direct posting, you keep your subsidiary ledger in balance with your general ledger.
Taking this concept a step further, I suggest Prepaid Expenses and Deferred Revenue join the ranks of being subsidiary ledgers. This means that you start using the Deferral Templates which holds the balance sheet accounts that can be set to no direct posting. Record your prepaids and deferred revenue once, no more monthly recurring journals and use the Deferral Summary reports for balancing monthly.
Having worked in Business Central and it’s predecessor NAV/Navision for almost three decades, I have one other idea about accounts and direct posting. Think about your sales and cost of sales accounts….If you turn direct posting off on these accounts, your sales reports will balance to your general ledger. You’re first thought may be ‘but I have to do accruals each month.’ No problem, just post your accruals to other general ledger accounts in your sales and cost of sales section.
Ok, lets move on and think about banking, there are several things that you can use in Business Central to improve your processes. First, are you using ACH or electronic payments? These are easy to setup and you save time with every payment cycle. Next, are you importing transactions from your bank to record automatic payments charged directly to your account? Again, easy to set, easy to use and saves you time repeatedly. Finally, with bank reconciliations….have you linked your account from BC to the bank? Are you importing your bank transactions. Please don’t reconcile your bank account in Excel, use BC.
Call me old school but I was taught that every balance sheet account should be reconciled every month. If you know what makes up the amounts on your balance sheet, your income statement must be accurate, in total. I say ‘in total’ because something could be mis-classified but the bottom line will be correct. Why on earth, is this something to improve upon in the coming year. Because BC has made it easy to keep track of the amounts that represent the balance on all accounts in your general ledger with the GL Review feature.
Did you know you can define tasks to remind you of work to be done. You can create tasks for yourself or others and assign tasks to others. So rather than sending emails to your Accounting staff, create and assign tasks instead. Users can mark the tasks complete as they are finished and there is traceability for the tasks.
Don’t forget about GL, Sales and Purchase Budgets, Cash Flow Forecasts, Statistical Accounts and various Analysis Reports that you can define. Learn to take advantage of the Analyze Views. Are you using Dimensions; they can reduce overall complexity of your chart of accounts?
Need help with anything listed herein, contact your partner, reach out on the community sites but set a goal to improve your use of Business Central in 2024.