Create Budget from Historical GL Balances in Business Central

Article by: Carlos Lozano – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Consultant

Creating a budget manually or from an Excel import file can be cumbersome, luckily there are a few excellent hidden features that allow you to quickly create a budget based on actual entries from the previous year and use that as the starting point for your budgets going forward.

Steps to Create a Budget from History:

Use the Alt+Q (Tell Me search tool) to search for G/L Budgets and select it from the list.

Select +New to create a new G/L Budget. Then, enter a Budget Name, on Show as Lines enter G/L Account, and complete the other options. Add or remove filters as need.

Select Balance under Budget Matrix and G/L Account Balance/Budget.

• On the G/L Account Balance/Budget window, select Actions > Functions > Create Budget > From History…
• On History Beginning Date enter the first day of your prior fiscal or calendar year.
• On Budget Beginning Date enter the first day of the new budget year.
• On of Periods, enter the number of periods for the Budget.
• On Period Length select the Length of each Period.
• On Percent Change specify if you want the Budget to increase in relation to the corresponding historical period.
• On Round To specify the nearest value you want the Budget to be rounded to.
• On Income/Balance, select if you want to create the Budget for Income Statement or Balance Sheet or both.
• On enter a G/L Account to create a budget for one account or clear value to create it for all accounts.
• On Filter totals by, specify any required filter, for example, Customer Group Small, if the Budget needs to be different for Dimension Customer Group.
• Click OK to create the Budget.

Review the newly created Budget and make adjustments if necessary.

For adjustments, on the main Budget screen, select Budget > Export to Excel, make adjustments and click on Budget > Import from Excel to replace or add entries.

Now you can see actual entries for the new Budget with this useful, neat feature in Dynamics 365 Business Central.

 

 

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by Bond Consulting Services

Year End Process in Business Central

Article by: Lupe Haro – Microsoft Dynamics ERP Consultant

To make the year-end process smoother, we have provided the following information on how you can run the year-end close process within Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Accounting Periods

To be able to run the year-end close process you must first close the year within the accounting periods window.

Closing Accounting Period

Choose the light bulb icon, enter Accounting Periods and choose the highlighted link.

In the Accounting Periods window select Process > Close Year

Click Yes on the warning

(NOTE: Although the year has been closed, this does not restrict users from posting to a prior year. Users will still be able to post to a past year if they are allowed to within the General Ledger Setup or User setup Posting to and from fields.)

The accounting periods for the marked year will now show as “CLOSED”

Creating a new Accounting Period Year

This step is optional if the new accounting year has not been setup. If it has already been set up, please skip this section.

In the Accounting Periods window select Process,> Create Year

In the Edit – Create fiscal year window, enter the new year’s starting date, number of periods, and period length.

Click Ok to create the year

Chart of Accounts

Before continuing the year-end process, it is important that you check the “Income/Balance” field in all your accounts to confirm they are set up correctly. The close income statement process will determine which accounts will roll up to retained earnings (Income Statement accounts) and which accounts’ balances will roll over to the new year (Balance Sheet accounts).

Close Income Statement

Choose the light bulb icon, enter Close Income Statement and choose the highlighted link.

In the Edit – Close Income Statement window, populate the fields as follows

• Fiscal Year Ending Date: Will populate with the last date of the closing year.
• Gen Journal Template: GENERAL
• Gen Journal batch: You can select an existing batch or create a new batch.
• Document No.: Will populate automatically with the next document no.
• Retained Earnings Acc.: Enter your retained earnings account
• Posting Description: Default message is “Close Income Statement” but can be changed if needed.

In the Close By section:

• Business unit code – Mark this option if you are running the close in a consolidation company and want to close by the business unit (company).
• Dimensions – If dimensions are used, click on the “….” to select the dimension codes that you would like to close by. This will create close entries for each Income Statement GL account by dimension.

• Inventory Period Closed – mark this option if you want the inventory periods within the fiscal year ending date to be closed when running this process.

Click Ok. Business Central will then start the creation of the closing journal entries in the batch listed in the Edit – Close Income Statement window.

Post Closing General Journal Batch

Under the Finance menu select General Journals or choose the icon and enter General Journals.

Select the batch that you entered in the Edit – Close Income Statement window.

Closing entries will be marked with a “C” in front of the date. You can then review the transactions and confirm all is correct.

When ready to post click on Process > Post.

 

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by Bond Consulting Services

How-To Troubleshoot a Positive Pay Export Error in Business Central

Positive Pay Exports are used by banks to match checks issued by companies. The bank confirms that the check(s) are listed on the Positive Pay file before confirming the transaction.

Positive Pay definitions are done using Data Exchange Definitions and are linked to a bank using a Bank Import/Export Setup file. Most banks will give you specifications on how to create the file layout to make sure that the records are imported correctly into their banking software.

Generally, voided and financially voided checks are exported into the Positive Pay file, but occasionally a few entries with Check Amount = 0 make it to the list. The following error might be seen while running the Positive Pay Export from the Bank Card:

“Amount must have a value in Positive Pay Detail: Data Exch Entry No.=XX, Entry No.=YY. It cannot be zero or empty.”

The issue seems to occur when a single check is issued for multiple payments and the lines to print on the stubs are not enough. The subsequent printed pages will show as VOID with an amount of 0. The Positive Pay Export fails because a check cannot have a zero amount.

To fix the error –

1. Open Data Exchange Definitions
2. Locate the Data Exchange Definition record
3. Under the “Line Definitions” grid
   • Select the Detail Line Type
   • Click on Manage > Field Mapping
   • Check the Optional box for the Column No. that contains the check amount.

4. Return to the Bank Card and retry the export.

After completing these steps, the error will be fixed.

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by Bond Consulting Services