Get the skills you need to produce robust financial reporting using the software you already own! New NAV2013 account schedules training now available!
Posted: August 14, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, financial reporting, general ledger, learning, NAV 2013, NAVUG Academy, training Leave a comment
Looking for training on NAV account schedules? There are new classes now available. NAVUG Academy distance learning is offering two half day instructor led online sessions on September 20th. There is also a full day classroom session on October 21st held as part of the pre-conference training for NAVUG Forum, held in sunny Tampa, Florida. Detailed descriptions of all three classes can be found below, or simply click on the title of the session you want to register!
Account Schedules: Basics – half day course, 9:00am to 1:00pm, (9/20)
Microsoft Dynamics NAV account schedules are a powerful tool used to create custom financial statements directly from your general ledger. In this in-depth training session, you will learn the fundamental principles of account schedule construction. This course is open to any NAV user.
Using hands-on exercises, you will have the opportunity to apply what you learn during class to a basic trial balance and master the three basic account schedule building blocks: row setups, column layouts, and analysis views. You’ll discover how to filter your financial reporting by dimensions, layer in budgeted information, and produce reports by exporting to Excel in the most efficient way possible!
In this class all hands-on exercises will be done using NAV2013. Almost all account schedule functions are applicable to lower versions of NAV, so you will still benefit from the training if you use a version below NAV2013.
Functionality of account schedules is virtually the same, but navigation and look and feel is significantly different. This class is being taught only in the NAV2013 version. If you are using the Classic Client and will not be moving to NAV2009 RTC or NAV2013 soon, please wait to take a Classic class. If you are an experienced Classic account schedule user who wants to learn more about NAV2009 RTC or NAV2013, it is recommended that you begin with the Account Schedules: Basics class simply to get used to the new navigational paths required.
Learning Objectives:
• Understand basic construction of row setups and column layouts
• Learn how to build, update, and apply analysis views
• Use filters, formulas, and formatting
• Incorporate dimensions and budgets
• Integrate account schedules to Excel
Instructor: Kerry Rosvold
Audience: Finance
Level: Intermediate
Prerequisites: Intermediate to advanced level of experience as a NAV financials end user
Account Schedules: Beyond the Basics – half day course, 2:00pm to 6:00pm, (9/20)
If you already understand the three basic account schedule building blocks and you’ve got a firm grasp on dimension and budget filtering (or if you’ve already taken Account Schedules Basics), you are ready to expand what you know with this class! This course is open to any NAV user.
Using hands-on exercises, you will have the opportunity to apply what you learn during class to a simple balance sheet and income statement. You’ll discover how to design and use multiple column layouts with the same row setup base and expand time periods reported beyond the basics. Move past simple dimension filtering and incorporate dimensions into row setups and column layouts! Learn how to use more advanced formulas like base for percent and see how to use account schedules as an alternative way to reporting from the NAV budget tool.
In this class all hands-on exercises will be done using NAV2013. Almost all account schedule functions are applicable to lower versions of NAV, so you will still benefit from the training if you use a version below NAV2013.
Functionality of account schedules is virtually the same, but navigation and look and feel is significantly different. This class is being taught only in the NAV2013 version. If you are using the Classic Client and will not be moving to NAV2009 RTC or NAV2013 soon, please wait to take a Classic class. If you are an experienced Classic account schedule user who wants to learn more about NAV2009 RTC or NAV2013, it is recommended that you begin with the Account Schedules: Basics class simply to get used to the new navigational paths required.
Learning Objectives:
• Build essential financial statements, including an income statement and balance sheet
• Extend knowledge of additional time periods used in column layouts
• Expand use of dimensions into account schedules
• Use account schedules to report on all budgeting information
Instructor: Kerry Rosvold
Audience: Finance
Level: Intermediate
Prerequisites: Intermediate to advanced level of experience as a NAV financials end user; have taken Account Schedule Basics or equivalent prior experience with account schedules
Account Schedules and Analysis Views – full day course, 8:00am to 5:00pm, (10/21)
Microsoft Dynamics NAV account schedules can be a powerful tool used to create custom financial statements and analysis reports directly from your general ledger. Attend this all day training session to get a firm foundation on the basic principles of account schedule construction and learn how to build all of your essential financial statements. Using hands-on exercises, you will have an opportunity to stretch beyond the basics and discover how to build multiple row and column layouts, how to create dynamic reports using dimensions, how to incorporate budgets into your schedules, and how to leverage the power of integration to Excel to make your reports even more flexible. Additional time will also be spent on analysis reports and analysis by dimensions.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV version: This class will be taught in NAV 2013, and backward compatible with NAV 2009 RTC. If you are using NAV 2009 Classic, you will benefit from the class as the concepts and approaches are the same, however the navigation and user interface is different. These differences will be addressed during class.
Learning Objectives:
• Build essential financial statements, including an income statement and balance sheet
• Understand construction of row setups and column layouts
• Use filters, formulas, and formatting
• Integrate account schedules to Excel
• Incorporate dimensions and budgets to account schedules
• Extend principles to use of analysis reports and analysis by dimensions
Instructor: Kerry Rosvold, Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Audience: Finance
Level: Intermediate
Prerequisites: Intermediate to advanced level of experience as a NAV financials end user
nChannel lists Dynamics NAV Financials as a top Microsoft Dynamics NAV Blog
Posted: April 30, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, budgets, Dynamics, financial reporting, Microsoft, NAV 1 Comment
nChannel gave Dynamics NAV Financials a really nice mention in their recent listing of top Microsoft Dynamics NAV blogs.
Here’s a blurb from the article:
About the Blog: Kerry uses her extensive experience in Dynamics NAV to give readers an in-depth look at account schedules, financial reporting, dimensions, budgets and more. Readers can also follow the blog on Facebook, follow Kerry on Twitter and subscribe via email in order to receive notifications of new posts (the blog is updated often, with some days generating multiple posts).
For the full article, listing twelve other really fantastic NAV blogs and communities, click here!
DynamicsNAVFinancials blog celebrates one year with top 20 postings
Posted: April 1, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, budgets, Classic Client, Convergence, dimensions, Dynamics, Excel, export to excel, financial reporting, financial statement, general ledger, NAV, NAV 2013, NAVUG, payment terms, PowerPivot, tips and tricks, user group 2 Comments
It’s our blogiversary! I started this blog in April 0f 2012, inspired by the number of NAV end users I had met over the last year who had the same questions that just weren’t getting answered. What better way to get that information out to folks than a blog where I could write up the topic in an easy to understand way?
You’ve shown your support! Over that last year, we’ve had over 15,000 views, almost 100 followers via email, have people following us on our new Facebook page, and know that many of you follow postings through the RSS feed. People from more than 120 countries are reading DynamicsNAVFinancials! The blog has gotten enough attention to be picked up for syndication through Microsoft Dynamics Community and I was even asked to participate as one of the eleven official bloggers at Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013 last month.
Special thanks has got to go to the NAVUG. The user group has been especially supportive of me and of the blog, finding opportunities for me to speak to NAV users in person, in webinars, online classes, and through this blog. Without the support of the user group this would have been a much longer road and I am so grateful for the constant work they have done to get me in front of as many readers as possible.
Publishing over an entry a week in the last year, there’s a lot to choose from, but in the month of April, I’ll be re-running the top 20 postings determined by the most viewed entries. Enjoy, and thank you so much for reading! There would be no reason to do this without you!
19 The NAV accountant’s little helper: the reconciliation account check box
18 Learning about Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013: on demand learning from NAVUG is a fantastic resource!
17 Tis the (Budget) Season! Three handy NAV account schedule tips to get you through
16 Tips and tricks for a flawless budget load in NAV
15 Why NAV users should be using dual monitors
14 Video Demo: How to export NAV account schedules to Microsoft Excel
13 Basic row setup options for NAV Account Schedules
12 Aging methods in NAV – which buckets are you looking for?
11 Complete row setup options for NAV account schedules
10 Learning about Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013
9 Where can I learn more about NAV analysis reports and analysis by dimensions?
8 10 easy tips for payment terms success in Microsoft Dynamics NAV
6 Getting started with a new account schedule
4 Maximize your Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Classic screen space with user level configuration options
3 Basic column layout options for NAV Account Schedules
2 NAV keyboard shortcuts – Classic to RTC
1 The Account Schedules Formulas Page
Add NAV dimensions as your business changes (part 14 of 15)
Posted: March 28, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dimensions, financial reporting, financial statement, global, NAV, shortcut Leave a comment
Setting up dimensions should not be something we exclusively do when we implement NAV for the first time at our businesses. Change is the norm in business, and I would be genuinely surprised to hear from anyone at this point that their business has not changed significantly in the last five years. So for finance and IT professionals, what changes when the business changes? Reporting requirements!
For NAV, that means opportunity for using dimensions differently or to add new dimensions. Hopefully you are happy with your global dimensions, the two most important dimensions for your company, and you’re ready to add some shortcut dimensions so you can expand your reporting capabilities. There are four main things you should keep in mind when adding a shortcut dimension.
1) Keep in mind timing and financial cutoff. If you choose to start collecting data on a new dimension today and today falls in the middle of a fiscal period, you’re going to create a disconnect in your financial data where you have data with the new dimension value and data with the blank dimension value in the same period. Don’t do it. Find out when the end of the fiscal period is, and start gathering the new data starting with the start of the new fiscal period. This doesn’t have to be the year-end, it could be a month, or whatever period you have at your company, but do take the time to plan this out, your finance department will thank you later.
2) Know that collecting a new dimension will not magically attach to your historic data. Assigning dimension data to your item or customer or vendor only begins the collection of that data on any new transactions generated since you assigned the dimension data. There is nothing out there that will magically attach this new requirement to old historic data. There are ways to go back and change the historic data, but this is generally beyond what you want to do manually. Involve someone experienced in SQL or call your partner for some help with this. And for goodness sakes, try this in a test system first. It’s always good to do a practice run on this kind of change, and should be mandatory if you’re planning to change a large amount of data. Remember that in many cases, it is perfectly ok to collect new data without catching up the history. Only you can decide what you need for your reporting.
3) Don’t abandon your pending data. Don’t forget there are things out there you created prior to assigning that new shortcut dimension. Sales orders, purchase orders, transfer orders and any other type of form that may be in process at the time you defined that new dimension will need to be caught up to the new requirements. If you forget this, NAV will remind you by throwing a dimension error when you, or your colleagues, try to post those documents to the system.
4) Consistency is the key. Make sure you set up this new dimension with the same level of consistency you’ve used with your other dimensions. Start with your master data, but follow through by adding the safety net of the chart of accounts, and remember to incorporate your choice of value postings.
Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.
Communicating to IT about NAV dimensions and NAV2013 dimension sets (part 13 of 15)
Posted: March 27, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, default dimensions, dimension sets, dimensions, financial reporting, financial statement, NAV, NAV 2013 Leave a commentToday I’ve got some old news and some new news for you regarding dimensions, but first I need to re-emphasize that finance and IT must be of one mind when it comes to dimensions. As a finance professional, you’ll definitely have your perspective on how dimensions will help you to efficiently produce financial reports with control and consistency. But remember that finance and IT need to work in partnership on a NAV dimension strategy in order to be really successful. One way these two roles must work together is regarding how to get your hands on posted dimension data in NAV. If you’re using NAV only tools to get your data, you won’t need this information, but once you progress to using outside reporting tool packages, you need to know a little bit more to get your collective hands on that data.
Here’s the old news: if you are using any version of NAV prior to NAV2013, dimensions are kept in a separate table behind your main data. You can see this, though it may not be obvious to you, when you populate dimensions using Ctrl-Alt-D or when you view dimensions through the dimensions button from master data. This table is actually called the default dimensions table (table #352). If you’re using something like SQL for reporting, you’ll need to perform a join between this table and the table(s) to which the data are related. As of today, the large majority of NAV users are using versions prior to NAV2013, so this is important information to have if you’re to get all the data you want into your reports now.
Here’s the new news: With NAV2013, dimension sets are turning dimensions upside down, treating them in an entirely different way, in order to make the way dimensions are stored in NAV more efficient. We’ve all heard the horror stories of ginormous databases with performance problems due to overuse of dimensions. Those stories have always been frustrating to me because it seems we should be able to use dimensions in as robust a manner as we can handle. Well, Microsoft has made a great improvement with the creation of dimension sets. I’ll admit that explaining the mechanics of exactly how dimension sets work is beyond my technical capability, so I’ll hand that off to experts more talented than I. I did get to see a presentation by Jesper Lachance where he showed an example (which he allowed me to share in my recent Dimensions presentation at Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013) that shows a twenty fold decrease in number of data items stored by using dimension sets instead of the pre-NAV2013 method.
Faithie Robertson of Archerpoint has a fantastic article A Better Mousetrap! Dimension Sets in Dynamics NAV 2013 (Navision) which does a really great job of explaining exactly what a dimension set does differently.
If you’re looking for a textbook explanation, visit MSDN on their page Dimension Set Entries Overview.
Encore Business Solutions has an illustrated guide NAV 2013 – Dimension Sets.
You can see why, with dimensions being stored in a separate table, and with dimension sets showing up as a new improvement, everybody on the team needs to understand how dimensions work, where they’re kept, what your particular company conventions are, and how you’ll report against them accurately and effectively. I haven’t heard a lot of feedback yet from end users about how working with dimension sets is working for them and whether it is making reporting better or challenging in different ways. But, the feedback from programmers, developers, and database administrators has been a resounding: THANK YOU MICROSOFT!!!
Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.
NAV dimensions in budgets and consolidations (part 12 of 15)
Posted: March 26, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, budgets, Classic Client, consolidation, dimensions, financial reporting, financial statement, global, NAV, shortcut Leave a commentNow that you know you can view dimensions on postings and in financial reporting though account schedules, let me show you how you can utilize dimensions in budgets. NAV budgets opens up a few more possibilities for you where dimensions are concerned. Take a look at this screen shot, using the classic client, that shows clearly what the available dimensions are in budgets.
If you look at the left side, you can see the persistent global dimensions of Department and Project which the test database for Cronus uses. Just like all areas of NAV, global dimensions are available everywhere, even in budgets. On the right hand side, you can actually see four more dimensions. These are shortcut dimensions and if you count, you can see you’ve got a total of six dimensions available with NAV budgets to use for your planning process. As long as you budget for a dimension then you can report actual versus budgeted against that dimension.
In addition, you can also see there is a field called business unit filter, which I’ve always counted on as a “bonus” dimension. This field becomes useful when you have multiple companies in NAV and use them to consolidate your financial statements. I’ve got a very simple setup where I have two companies and a consolidation company. When I consolidate my statements monthly, and when I load my budgets, I designate the business unit filter for each of the two companies so I can report on them individually as well as together, on a consolidated level. Because I use separate companies with the business unit filter I don’t need to use a dimension to designate company for my financial statements.
Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.
NAV dimensions in account schedules (part 11 of 15)
Posted: March 25, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, Analysis Reports, analysis views, dimensions, financial reporting, NAV Leave a commentWe’ve spent a good deal of time talking about how to get dimensions into your financial data, now we need to talk a little bit about how to get that information back out in the form of reporting. One of the most direct ways to get financial reporting out of NAV is by using account schedules, which are the native NAV financial reporting package that report on general ledger transactions. Account schedules naturally access the two global dimensions for financial reporting in all cases, as shown below in the old classic client.
By applying analysis views to an account schedule, you get to choose any four of your dimensions, in any combination, to use for your financial reporting. This gives you much more flexibility and power in your financial reporting, allowing you to look at your financial data in many different ways. The most important thing to remember about analysis views is to keep them updated, whether you do this manually or in some automated way.
There are also tools like analysis by dimensions and analysis reports that can be used along with dimensions. For more information see this post Where can I learn more about NAV analysis reports and analysis by dimensions?
Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.
NAV default dimensions and value postings on the chart of accounts (part 7 of 15)
Posted: March 19, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Account Schedules, chart of accounts, code mandatory, dimension value code, dimensions, Dynamics, financial reporting, master data, Microsoft, NAV, tips and tricks, value posting Leave a commentValue postings on the chart of accounts are your next line of defense to ensure a solid dimension strategy execution. You could probably be content by only applying value postings to your master data, but by adding value postings to your chart of accounts in addition to your master data, you are adding a layer of consistency and control into your transactional posting.
But what could go wrong, you might ask? How would the value postings on your master data fail you? If you are using code mandatory with a default value posting, what could possibly go wrong? Here’s what could go wrong – you could forget to populate the dimensions on a new master data item. Let’s say you set up a brand new item, or maybe a big group of items; how about a whole season’s worth of new items? You set them up and forget to populate the dimensions on them. You could go days, weeks, even months (hopefully not if you’re watching your financials) with these new items merrily populating your system with blank dimensions compared to all of your other items that are populating with default dimensions. Once you catch the error, you’ll need to track down all those blank pieces of data and do journal entry reclassifications to all the effected accounts, with all the effected dimensions, in order to fix your financial reporting.
[Sidebar: Easiest way to do this is to run an account schedule covering the effected accounts with the dimension filter set to ” (that’s two single quotes, the symbol for blank in NAV). You can then see every transaction that’s posted with a blank dimension, and use that to construct your correcting journal entries.]
If you’d like to avoid all of that pain, set up value postings on your chart of accounts. Here’s the trick: your should not use a default dimension value code together with your value postings. What you want to accomplish with this is to have your chart of accounts act as a control point for your postings. If your chart of accounts carry a code mandatory on the accounts, they are requiring that they receive dimension data from the master data card before they will allow any transaction to post to them. So, what happens when that rogue item with no dimensions tries to post through? The code mandatory setting on the general ledger account prevents it from posting, ensuring you never end up with any blank dimension postings in your transactions.
Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.
NAV default dimensions and value postings applied to master data (part 6 of 15)
Posted: March 18, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: chart of accounts, code mandatory, dimension value code, dimensions, Dynamics, financial reporting, master data, Microsoft, NAV, same code, tips and tricks, value posting Leave a commentYou’ve decided you want to use dimensions, you’ve picked a strategy, you have people in both finance and IT on board with the plan, and you even have two global dimensions and a few shortcut dimensions all planned out. Now what?
Now you need to go through the process of applying your dimension strategy to all of your master data using value postings.
Master data are all the things in NAV that have a “card”. When you think about the sales process in NAV, what might have a card? How about the customer card, the item card, or even the salesperson/purchaser card? Where else are there cards in NAV? How about the vendor card, the bank account card, or the fixed asset card? All of this is master data you will use when applying dimensions to your system.
Value postings are the requirements you set on your master data when defining dimensions. For the sake of an example, lets say we’re going to focus our dimensions on the item card. You have four choices:
1) Leave the value posting blank. This will impose no requirement for the dimension to be filled out and is the same as not defining a dimension.
2) Choose code mandatory. This option can act in two different ways and is highly useful. If you leave the dimension value code empty, setting the value posting to code mandatory will require the end-user to fill in a dimension value code from the defined dimension code listing before the transaction can be posted to the system. If you fill in the dimension value code with a selection from the list, essentially a default value, any transaction using this item card will populate the dimension value code with the code you have pre-selected as a default. However, if necessary, the end-user can change the value to a different selection.
3) Choose same code. You might think this would be a fantastic option, offering the highest level of control. It is true that choosing same code is the most restrictive. By choosing same code, any transaction must use the code defined in the dimension value code. This can become problematic when your company changes and you need to redefine your default values. Dimensions can be pretty pervasive, getting into places you just didn’t think about when you set them up. For the most part, they’re harmless, just little pieces of data hanging out waiting to be accessed for reporting. But sometimes, when used together with same code, they become vicious nasty little roadblocks. I’ve heard many a horror story of accountants struggling with adjust cost or inventory adjustments or even trying to get sales order postings to finalize because they’re using same code and have needed to make a necessary change.
4) Choose no code. This is the option you choose if you want to tell NAV to never assign a particular code to the item. You could do this if you wanted to reduce the possibility of error from someone trying to apply a dimension that belongs to your customer card to your item card accidentally.
As you can probably tell, my recommendation is to use code mandatory in most situations. It offers the most control over your data while also allowing for necessary flexibility as your business changes. Using code mandatory avoids the problem of “optional” data by requiring some type of data to show up in the dimension value code, whether you put it there as a default to be automatically populated or whether you’ve left it blank so someone down the line can populate it when it is time to make that decision before posting. Using code mandatory can also be a great source of efficiency if you can choose to use default values. If you can decide how to make your dimension postings as automatic as possible, this really can run completely in the background, populating your system with luscious data to be reported on later, with no effort or decision-making required by you. By using default values, you also gain accuracy in your postings since the computer is making the decision the same way every time, whereas you might not be that consistent if you had to define the values manually all year.
Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.
Why finance and IT need to work in partnership on a NAV dimension strategy (part 4 of 15)
Posted: March 14, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dimensions, financial reporting, NAV, tips and tricks Leave a comment
Who’s responsible for determining which dimensions are used, keeping the database clean, and trouble shooting dimension problems – IT or Finance? The answer really should be BOTH!
While your company’s finance NAV expert has a perspective on dimensions related to financial reporting outcomes, control and consistency of data, and accounting staff efficiency, your company’s IT NAV expert will have a different perspective. Many times, the task of resolving dimension errors, data collection disconnects, and database size and speed fall on the shoulders of your IT team.
By working together on establishing what your company’s strategy is on how dimensions are implemented, used, added, and changed, you can blend the best of both worlds and make sure everyone’s interests are represented. Everyone on the team, no matter what their role, should understand why you’ve chosen to use code mandatory instead of same code and how dimension use for items differs from dimension use for customers. Knowing what your global dimensions are, why they have high priority and visibility in your reporting structure, and how to get your hands on data related to shortcut dimensions is useful to both groups as they formulate new reports for the company.
Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.
Dynamics NAV Financials 