Blogiversary Top 20 (#10) Learning about Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013

We’re celebrating our one year blogiversary by reposting the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year, as determined by you, our readers! Follow this link to see the entire list. Enjoy!

My company has started seriously discussing what we’re going to do about upgrading our NAV ERP system. With NAV 2013 released to market in October, we’ve got plenty to talk about. Of course, just like you and your companies, we’re nailing down exactly what the benefit of upgrading will be to our company specifically. We’ve talked about performance improvements and greater ability to get to data needed for reporting, but some of those concepts can get pretty intangible in these beginning discussions.

We’ve already talked about the big concepts, but what people really want to know about right now are the real concepts:  exactly how will an upgrade in the software increase our productivity, make us more efficient in our jobs, and ultimately, help us to drive revenue, decrease costs, or increase cash?

So, I’m beginning to gather ways to start to show people at my company, in a tangible way, what the upgraded version can do for them. Here’s where I’m at so far:

1)  Get groups of stakeholders to start to attend webinars about NAV 2013. I’ve had to chance to attend Microsoft Convergence and see all this stuff, they haven’t. I need to get them exposed to seeing this incredibly different version and what it can do for them. One way I’ll do this is to have them attend webinars sponsored by the NAV user group, NAVUG. They’ve got one scheduled called “A Guided Tour of NAV 2013”, and I’ve got a group organized to attend already.  I’m betting we’ll see quite a bit of material about NAV 2013 from the user group in the next year. One of the best things about the user group webinars is that they’re recorded, so if we want to review the webinar later, anyone in my company has that option.

2)  Learn as much as I can about the nitty-gritty details so I can promote them in a real way. I’m constantly searching the web (seriously, I “Bing” everything) for new information about just about anything. Right now, I’m focusing on NAV 2013. I just found a great YouTube video, “What’s New Dynamics NAV 2013 – User Productivity Enhancements“. In six quick minutes I got about five takeaways that I can start to use. My favorite?  NAV 2013 has improved error messages to help end users resolve problems. I’m going to take this info back to work with me and make sure people know we could have less help desk traffic because the new NAV version makes it a lot easier for end users to solve their own errors on the spot.

3)  Get a test copy of NAV 2013 installed so I can start to play around with it myself. I’ve done this with previous versions, so now it’s time. I can get a demo copy installed and start touring the menus, trying things out, and teaching myself how to use the new version. What’ll I try out first?  I can’t wait to get my hands on the cash flow forecast!  Once I’ve got some level of mastery of the new version, I can start showing folks what improvements will apply to them personally, in their jobs.

I’ll keep posting here as I find useful things to share with you.  Hopefully, as you begin your process to discuss the upgrade plan for your company, you’ll find some ideas on things that’ll work for you and your companies.

Blogiversary Top 20 (#12) Aging methods in NAV – which buckets are you looking for?

We’re celebrating our one year blogiversary by reposting the Top 20 Most Viewed in the last year, as determined by you, our readers! Follow this link to see the entire list. Enjoy!

When running any type of financial report, it’s important to ask the right question in order to get the right answer. When running your accounts payable or accounts receivable aging reports, it’s especially important since there are three available options that will give you the same total answer but will break your transactions down into different aging bucket categories. Choosing the correct option for the question you actually want to answer is the key.

Question #1:  How overdue is the invoice?

By choosing the Aging Method of Due Date, you are asking NAV to age each bucket on your aging in intervals based on the Due Date of the invoice. Remember the due date is based on a calculation that applies payment terms against the document date of the invoice.

Question #2:  How many days have passed since the invoice was posted?

By choosing the Aging Method of Transaction Date, you are asking NAV to age each bucket on your aging in intervals based on the Posting Date. This is sometimes confusing to new users since on both the purchase and sales invoice forms, the two available dates are posting date and document date. The posting date should always be the date you want to post the invoice to your books and therefore the fiscal period the invoice will report in. For the purposes of your aging reports, posting date is equivalent to transaction date.

Question #3:  How many days have passed since the vendor billed us – or – since we billed the customer?

By choosing the Aging Method of Document Date, you are asking NAV to age each bucket on your aging in intervals based on the Document Date. This one makes a little more sense to folks because at least the terms are the same. But darn us accountant types, we often call the document date the invoice date when we’re referring to it. Basically, this date should be the date your vendor has provided on the invoice, or from the customer side, the date you shipped and therefore the date you provided on the invoice to the customer. Any payment terms defined on the account will use the document date to calculate the due date.

An example of two invoices shown with all three aging methods

In a perfect world, our posting dates and document dates would all be the same. Let’s pick a perfect example with posting date of 11/01/10 and document date of 11/01/10 and payment terms of Net 21. This would calculate a due date of 11/22/10 on this invoice.

Then let’s pick an imperfect example. Let’s pretend someone at our company turned in that 11/01/10 invoice sometime in December, after the November books were closed. We still need to book this late invoice, so we’ll choose a posting date of 12/01/10, but since it was not the vendor’s error, we’ll use their invoice date of 11/01/10 in order to calculate the payment terms correctly.

Now, let’s look at an aging as of December 15th, 2010, all three ways. Take note that for all three methods, the balance due is exactly the same. The differences appear in how the aging buckets are defined and how transactions age into the different buckets.

Aging Method of Due Date

Key difference here is the aging buckets start calculating at the due date, so you’ll see column headers of current, up to 30 days, 31-60 days and over 60 days only when using this aging method.

Aging Method of Transaction Date

This aging is based on the posting date, the date that corresponds to the fiscal period you posted the invoice in. Note the late invoice with a 12/1/10 date shows as current.

Aging Method of Document Date

This aging has the same buckets as the one run with transaction date, but is based on the document date or invoice date.