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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Explore the capabilities of Dynamics NAV 2016 and discover all you need to implement it
About This Book
- Learn the key roles of your Dynamics NAV partner and the roles within your customer's organization
- Create configuration packages and perform data migration on your own
- Find out how to troubleshoot your problems effectively with your Dynamics NAV partner
Who This Book Is For
This book is for Dynamics NAV partners and end users who want to know everything about Dynamics NAV implementations. It is aimed at those who want to be project managers or get involved with Dynamics NAV, but do not have the expertise to write code themselves.
What You Will Learn
- Study the roles within a Dynamics NAV partner and within a customer's company
- Create reusable data migration packages
- Work with the debugger to pinpoint error messages
- Get to grips with the key tables used in data reporting and analysis
- Successfully upgrade your installation to the latest version
- Manage and expand your existing installation with additional functionalities
- Explore the free third-party add-ons that can leverage your existing installation
In Detail
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application used in all kinds of organizations around the world. It provides a great variety of functionality out-of-the-box in different topics such as accounting, sales, purchase processing, logistics, or manufacturing. It also allows companies to grow the application by customizing the solution to meet specific requirements.
This book is a hands-on tutorial on working with a real Dynamics NAV implementation. You will learn about the team from your Microsoft Dynamics NAV partner as well as the team within the customer's company. This book provides an insight into the different tools available to migrate data from the client's legacy system into Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
If you are already live with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, this books talks about upgrades and what to expect from them. We'll also show you how to implement additional or expanding functionalities within your existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV installation, perform data analysis, debug error messages, and implement free third-party add-ons to your existing installation.
This book will empower you with all the skills and knowledge you need for a successful implementation.
Style and approach
This book is step-by-step guide to implementing Dynamics NAV from start to finish.
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Seitenzahl: 543
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV Third Edition
Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV Third Edition
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
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Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First Edition: January 2009
Second Edition: February 2013
Third Published: April 2016
Production reference: 1050416
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78439-755-5
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Credits
Authors
Alex Chow
Laura Nicolàs Lorente
Cristina Nicolàs Lorente
Vjekoslav Babić
David Roys
Reviewers
Stefano Demiliani
Tony Hemy
Acquisition Editor
Manish Nainani
Content Development Editor
Abhishek Jadhav
Technical Editors
Ryan Kochery
Menza Mathew
Deepti Tuscano
Copy Editors
Kausambhi Majumdar
Vikrant Phadke
Alpha Singh
Project Coordinator
Judie Jose
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Indexer
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Graphics
Disha Haria
Production Coordinator
Conidon Miranda
Cover Work
Conidon Miranda
About the Authors
Alex Chow has been working with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, formerly Navision, since 1999. Over the years, he has conducted hundreds of implementations across multiple industries. His customers range from $2-million-a-year small enterprises to $500-million-a-year multinational corporations.
Over the course of his Dynamics NAV career, he has often been designated as the primary person responsible for the success and failure of Dynamics NAV implementations. The fact that Alex is still in the Dynamics NAV business means that he's been pretty lucky so far. His extensive career in the Dynamics NAV business is evidence of his success rate and expertise.
With a background in implementing all functions and modules inside and outside of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Alex has encountered and resolved the most practical to the most complex requirements and business rules. Through these experiences, he has learned that sometimes you have to be a little crazy to have a competitive edge.
Believing that sharing these experiences and knowledge would benefit the Dynamics NAV community, Alex writes about his journey at www.dynamicsnavconsultant.com. He founded AP Commerce (www.apcommerce.com) in 2005. It is a full-service Dynamics NAV service center. In addition, Alex has written a book about Dynamics NAV titled Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development by Packt Publishing.
He lives in southern California with his beautiful wife and two lovely daughters. He considers himself the luckiest man in the world.
Laura Nicolàs Lorente started working with Dynamics NAV back in 2005, first in the support department, mostly solving functional issues and doubts. She soon jumped to full deployment: consulting, analysis, development, implementation, migration, training, and support. Right from the beginning, she realized that it was very important for a Dynamics NAV consultant to have deep knowledge of business workflows. Technical skills are just not enough. So, she started to train herself in accounting, taxation, supply chains, logistics, and so on.
Laura discovered a whole new world and she found it very interesting. After having enough consultancy experience, she got a chance to manage the first project on her own. And then she realized that even tech and business knowledge are not enough—she also needed management skills. That is why, after reading different management books and trying different approaches on the projects she worked on, she decided to deepen her knowledge by taking a master's degree in project management. Laura is now transitioning to agile management and agile development for better project success. She continues her training in the three areas (technology, business workflows, and management) whenever she gets the chance. The Internet is a huge source of inspiration for her: groups, forums, blogs, books, and so on. She also contributes by sharing her knowledge and experience with the Spanish Dynamics NAV community. Laura is also the coauthor of the book Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, Packt Publishing which had really good feedback from different Dynamics NAV experts.
Cristina Nicolàs Lorente has been working with Dynamics NAV since 2005. She started in the ERP world as a developer, but soon evolved into a complete Dynamics NAV professional, doing all the tasks involved in Dynamics NAV implementations: consultancy, analysis, development, implementation, training, and support to end users. When Cristina started developing solutions for Dynamics NAV, she had no idea about accounting or any kind of business workflow. They don't teach those kinds of things for a technical university career. Soon, she discovered that it is important to know the set of tools used, but even more important to understand the meaning of whatever you develop. Without knowing the accounting rules, practices, and legal requirements, it is impossible to develop useful accounting functionalities even if you are the best developer of all. Only when you fully understand a company's processes will you be able to do the appropriate developments. Having that in mind, Cristina has taken courses in accounting, warehouse management, and operations management. She is also willing to take courses on any other company-related topics. She thinks that the best way to learn is to teach what you are learning to someone else. She has actually learned almost everything she knows about Dynamics NAV by responding to user questions on Internet forums, by writing a blog about Dynamics NAV, and of course by writing the book you have in your hands. When you have to write about something, you have to experiment, try, investigate, and read. It is definitely the best way to learn. Cristina is also the coauthor of the book Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, Packt Publishing.
Vjekoslav Babić is a Microsoft Dynamics NAV expert, consultant, and architect with 18 years of experience in the IT industry and 14 years of experience delivering project success on large-scale, international, and high-risk and implementations of Microsoft Dynamics solutions. He has project experience in various industries, including retail, telecommunications, insurance, food and beverages, manufacturing, distribution, and many more. He has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award since 2010. Vjekoslav is an avid author and has published more than 400 technical articles about software development, database design, and Internet technologies in a number of online and printed magazines, as well as on his blog at http://vjeko.com/. He speaks regularly at Microsoft Dynamics NAV conferences worldwide.
Based in Zagreb, Croatia, he runs his own Microsoft Dynamics NAV consultancy business.
You can contact Vjekoslav through his blog at http://vjeko.com/.
David Roys has worked in the computer industry since 1992 and currently works as a Dynamics NAV programmer and consultant for Intergen, a leading Microsoft Gold Partner. He is the Dynamics Presidents Club member in New Zealand.
After coauthoring the original Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV book by Packt Publishing in 2009, David has written two novels.
About the Reviewers
Stefano Demiliani is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD), MCAD, MCTS on Microsoft Dynamics NAV, MCTS on SharePoint, MCTS on SQL Server, and a long-time expert on other Microsoft-related technologies. He has a master's degree in computer engineering from the Politecnico of Turin, Italy.
He works as a senior project manager and solution developer for EID (http://www.eid.it), a company of the Navlab group (http://www.navlab.it), one of the biggest Microsoft Dynamics groups in Italy (where he's also the chief technical officer). Stefano has a long-time experience of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, since the first versions of the ERP. His main activity is architecting and developing enterprise solutions based on the entire stack of Microsoft technologies (Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft SharePoint, Azure and .NET applications in general, OLAP, and BI solutions for data analysis), and he's often focused on engineering distributed service-based applications.
He works as a full-time NAV consultant, having spent more than 15 years on international NAV projects, and is available for architecting solutions based on Microsoft's ERP and for NAV database tuning and optimization (performance and locking management). He's the author of different Microsoft-certified NAV add-ons (such as the first cost accounting add-on on NAV).
Stefano has written many articles and blogs on different Microsoft-related topics, and he's frequently involved in consulting and teaching. He has worked with Packt Publishing in the past for many Microsoft Dynamics NAV-related books.
You can get more details and keep in touch with him by going to http://www.demiliani.com or via Twitter (@demiliani) or LinkedIn.
Tony Hemy has been deeply rooted in Microsoft Dynamics NAV from the age of 16. Over the years, he has architected and customized Microsoft Dynamics NAV solutions for global organizations such as Warner Brothers and Viacom, earning an outstanding reputation and the role of technical reviewer on four books published on Dynamics NAV. Tony also served for more than 5 years as a reserve soldier with the British Army, where he expanded not only his technical skills but also his personal skills, which have contributed to his disciplined work ethic and his determination to always do things right.
His hands-on development experience with Microsoft Dynamics has given him an exceptional ability to help clients define the proper requirements that will enable them to achieve their objectives. He has delivered extended capabilities through every version, every module, and every feature of Dynamics NAV, building thousands of unique configurations along the way. Tony also oversees software development, where he manages and mentors a talented development team and facilitates the best practices and standards that ensure clients receive the highest quality solutions and service. Tony is well-traveled, well-rounded, and well-liked for his personable nature and "no shortcuts" approach, whether he is writing complex code or coaching his team.
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Preface
Let me start out by saying congratulations on your decision to work with Dynamics NAV. When I started working with Dynamics NAV (formerly known as Navision) back in 1999, Dynamics NAV was nothing more than an accounting system out of Denmark. After a couple of releases, acquisition by Microsoft, and a couple more releases, Dynamics NAV has become a full ERP (enterprise resource planning) software with rich functionalities. With every release, we see improvements in the technical aspect as well as the functionality aspect. And they're not done yet.
At the time of writing, Dynamics NAV's installation base is 110,000 companies. No other ERP software for the small and medium-sized market comes close to that number.
In addition, Dynamics NAV has a wide range of add-on solutions available. Most of these add-ons are built directly within the Dynamics NAV environment with the same user interface. So, using these add-ons, your company will not need to learn any other new software.
One of the main selling points of Dynamic NAV from the very beginning is the ability to customize it exactly the way you run your business. Because of its flexibility, you can find a lot of tutorials and explanations on how to develop specific tasks, but not a lot of tutorials on how to create a project from scratch.
To take advantage of the flexibility that's built into Dynamics NAV, a deep understanding of the standard application is required. Just because you're able to completely rewrite Dynamics NAV does not mean you should. Without knowing what you have out of the box, you may end up creating a function that's already part of the standard system, wasting your valuable time and resources.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Exploring Microsoft Dynamics NAV – An Introduction, introduces you to what an ERP is and what you can expect from Dynamics NAV. It introduces all the functional areas found in Dynamics NAV 2016 and the different environments available, such as the Windows client, the web client, the SharePoint framework, or web services. For the nostalgic, we have also included details on the history of Dynamics NAV.
Chapter 2, What's New in NAV 2016?, gives an overview of the changes made within the application. Dynamics NAV 2016 introduces quite a few new features, that is, new functionalities and tools available for the end user, such as the improvements that can be made to the Windows client or the assembly management feature. The chapter also covers development and IT changes.
Chapter 3, Dynamics NAV – General Considerations, is all about the Dynamics NAV structure, its data model, how information flows, how posting routines works, how users can navigate through their data, why everything leads to accounting, and how data integrity is approached.
Knowing the Dynamics NAV philosophy on how things are done is important for everyone. It is important for users because they need to know how to work with Dynamics NAV and also need to be aware of the consequences of what they do; it is also important for consultants, analysts, and developers because they need to use the same structures and the same way to make information flow when developing new functionalities.
Chapter 4, The Implementation Process (from the Reseller), explains the meaning of implementation and covers different methodologies that can be applied while implementing Dynamics NAV. Several people may get involved in an implementation process, each one playing their own role and performing different jobs. This chapter also covers the phases and tasks needed to complete a Dynamics NAV implementation, from presales to deployment.
Chapter 5, The Implementation Process on the Customer Side, explains what is expected from the company's team (users, key users, and project leader), and how to deal with the change that the new ERP will make for everyone in the company. For a really successful implementation of Dynamics NAV, the company that NAV has been implemented for has to actively participate in the project.
Chapter 6, Migrating Data, covers the tools that can be used to import data into Dynamics NAV, such as RapidStart services or XMLports. Companies may be new to Dynamics NAV, but they are usually not new companies. They have been working for a while and they have all kinds of data, such as their customers, vendors, items, and accounting information.
This chapter also explains which kind of data is commonly migrated to Dynamics NAV and the strategies used to migrate it. With a step-by-step example, the chapter enables you to migrate master data, open entries, historical data, and open documents.
Chapter 7, Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics NAV, explains the migration process from Versions 3.xx, 4.xx, 5.xx, 2009, and 2013. Upgrading to a different version of Dynamics NAV is not a "Next-Next-Finish" process. It is a complete project that has to be planned and executed carefully.
We will explain the steps that have to be followed for all the versions and the tools that are out there to help us get through the whole process.
Chapter 8, Development Considerations, covers the main development considerations that should be taken into account when developing for Dynamics NAV. This includes a deep explanation of the data model principles in Dynamics NAV and how the posting processes are designed. It also includes explanations about where and how to write customized code.
Almost every Dynamics NAV implementation implies development. The customized code must fit inside the application's standard code and it should look as if it were part of the standard. This makes it easier for the user to understand how customized modules work and for partners to support them.
Chapter 9, Functional Changes in Existing Implementations, explains how to handle functional changes in existing implementations with a set of four examples. After working with Dynamics NAV for a while, companies may ask for functional changes on their implementations, such as adding some extra developments or starting to use an existing functionality. Some extra things have to be taken into account when dealing with such projects.
Chapter 10, Data Analysis and Reporting, provides an overview of the tools available to analyze Dynamics NAV data, both inside and outside the application, such as the use of filters and FlowFilters, statistics, charts, existing reports, analysis views, account schedules, or how to extract data from Dynamics NAV. Data analysis and reporting is an important part of the management of a company.
This chapter also includes a report development section that is meant to explain the anatomy of reports, to show how to define your dataset, and to show how the visual layout is designed.
Chapter 11, Debugging, covers debugging in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Conditional breakpoints, debug other user sessions, and debug C/AL code in the RTC client instead of incomprehensible C# code. All these features will convert the debugging experience into a happy experience.
Chapter 12, Popular Reporting Options with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, explains what other popular options you can utilize with Dynamics NAV. There is a standard NAV reporting tool, but with the advances in reporting technology, such as BI, Excel, and so on, there are a lot of other options you can utilize to have your Dynamics NAV data come alive.
What you need for this book
To successfully follow the examples in this book, you will need to install Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016.
Who this book is for
This book is meant for Dynamics NAV implementation consultants, project managers, and developers who want to get a deeper view of what Dynamics NAV can offer.
It is also meant for Dynamics NAV developers who want to learn more about the whole application.
And finally, this book may be useful to IT managers of all kinds of companies that are considering the implementation of Dynamics NAV in their organizations, to fully understand what to expect and how to accomplish it.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "The Customer table is the master data table for the Sales and Marketing area."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Not all items in the Navigate tab are secondary master data".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Errata
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Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.
Chapter 1. Exploring Microsoft Dynamics NAV – An Introduction
Microsoft Dynamics NAV is anEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that is specifically made for growing small to mid-sized companies.
Note
This is, at least, what Microsoft's marketing department says. In reality, Dynamics NAV is being used by large and publically-traded companies as well around the world.
An ERP is a software that integrates the internal and external management information across an entire organization. The purpose of an ERP is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of organizations. An ERP system is meant to handle all the functional areas within an organization on a single software system. This way, the output of an area can be used as the input of another area, without the need to duplicate data.
This chapter will give you an idea of what Dynamics NAV is and what you can expect from it. The topics covered in this chapter are the following:
Understanding Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 is a Role Tailored ERP. Traditionally, ERP software is built to provide a lot of functionalities where users will need to hunt down the information. This is more of a passive approach to information in which the user will need to go somewhere within the system to retrieve information.
Dynamics NAV works differently. The role-tailored experience is based on individuals within an organization, their roles, and the tasks they perform. When users first enter Dynamics NAV, they see the data needed for the daily tasks they do according to their role. Users belonging to different roles will have a different view of the system; each of them will see the functions they need to properly perform their daily tasks. Instead of the users chasing down information, the information comes to them.
Here's an example of the main screen for an order processor. All the relevant information for a user who is processing sales orders are displayed in a business intelligent (BI) format:
The functional areas within Dynamics NAV
Dynamics NAV covers the following functional areas inside an organization:
These areas are covered in more detail in the next section of this chapter.
One of the best-selling points about Dynamics NAV is that it can be customized. A brand new functional area can be created from scratch or new features can be added to an existing functional area. All the development is done with the programming language called C/AL.
When someone creates a new functional area, a vertical (a wide range of functions for a specific industry) or horizontal (a wide range of functions that can be applied across an industry), they usually create it as an add-on. An add-on can be registered with Microsoft, with the appropriate fees of course. If some features are added to an existing area, usually it is a customization that will only be used on the database of the customer who asked for the feature.
Making add-ons available greatly enhances the base Dynamics NAV functionalities to fit the needs of every industry in every business.
One thing unique about Dynamics NAV is that the entire code is located on a single layer. Therefore, if you customize an area, you have to do it by modifying the standard code and adding code in the middle of the standard object definition. This made it a little tough to upgrade in the prior versions of Dynamics NAV. However, with the release of Dynamics NAV 2016, code upgrades can be done automatically using Power Shell! We will dive into Power Shell later.
Dynamics NAV uses a three-tier architecture:
You can install Dynamics NAV in more complex scenarios, as you can have multiple instances of any of the core components.
History of Dynamics NAV
We are not historians, but we thought that it would be important to know where we come from and where we are going. Some of the current restrictions or features can be better understood if we know a bit of the history of Dynamics NAV. This is why we have added this section.
Dynamics NAV was first developed by a Danish firm and the program was called Navision A/S. In 2002, Microsoft bought Navision A/S and included it in the Microsoft Business Solution division. The product has gone through several name changes. The names: Navision Financials, Navision Attain, and Microsoft Business Solutions Navision Edition, have been used to refer to the product that is currently called Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Note that all the previous names included the word Navision. This is why many people keep calling it Navision instead of NAV.
Prior to Dynamics NAV 2009, the development environment was actually the primary end user interface before Microsoft revamped the user interface that we call the Role Tailored Client (RTC).
One of the greatest technological breakthroughs with the original Navision (the name before it was called Dynamics NAV) was that the application programming objects, the user interface, and the database resided together, in one file! Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, no other software came close to having an efficient design like this. This was the main menu for Navision Financials version 2.0:
We're now more than a decade away from 2000 and technology has changed quite a bit. Dynamics NAV has been very up to date with the latest technology that has the best impact for businesses. However, most of these improvements and updates are mostly in the backend. This is an important reason why Dynamics NAV has never faded into history. There were a couple of user interface improvements; however, largely, it mainly looks and feels very much the same as before. This is the main menu for Dynamics NAV 5.0:
Then something happened. With the rise of a company called Apple, people started paying more attention to the aesthetics and the overall interface of the technology they're using. People demanded not just powerful software with a strong backend, but they also wanted an elegant design with a simple and intuitive user interface.
Because of this shift in user perception, what was once the greatest innovation in accounting software since sliced bread, had become not obsolete, but outdated.
When you put the old interface (called Classic Client) against some of the newer applications, even though the backend was light years ahead, the Classic Client was the ugly one. And we all know somebody who made a terrible decision based only on looks, but not really what's inside.
So when NAV 2009 was introduced, the Role Tailored Client was released, which is the interface you see when you install Dynamics NAV for end users. NAV 2009 was unique in that it allowed both Classic Client and Role Tailored Client to coexist. This is mostly to appease the existing NAV gurus and users who did not want to learn the new interface.
In addition, NAV 2009 replaced the classic reporting with the report definition language client-side (RDLC) reporting. RDLC reports brought in a big change because the layout of the report had to be designed in Visual Studio, outside Dynamics NAV, to bring in the advantages of SQL Server Reporting Services technology; while pages changed the way of developing the user interface.
This is what NAV 2009 in the RTC looked like:
At the first glance, NAV 2009 and NAV 2016 do not look too different. You will have to understand that there were significant user interface and usability changes. We can list out these changes, but if you're not already familiar with Dynamics NAV (or Navision), you'll will find this disinteresting.
That grace period expired when NAV 2013 was released and the Classic Client user interface was completely removed. Microsoft basically renamed the Classic Client as Development Environment. For the foreseeable future, it looks like the Development Environment and the Windows Client environment will remain separated.
Now we're at Dynamics NAV 2016, with tons of performance and usability enhancements, which is what this book is about.
Functional areas
The core functionalities of Dynamics NAV have not dramatically changed over the years. New functional areas have appeared and the existing ones still work as they did in the previous versions. In NAV 2009, Microsoft was focused on changing the entire architecture (for good), and NAV 2013 is the consolidation of the new architecture. NAV 2016 enhances what was released with NAV 2013. All these architectural changes were made to bring Dynamics NAV closer to the existing Microsoft technologies, namely, Microsoft Office 365, .NET, SQL Server, Azure, and so on; in the meantime, the core functionality has not undergone a drastic face-lift compared to the architecture.
Microsoft has been adding small functional features and improving the existing functionalities with every new release. As you have seen earlier in this chapter, the base Dynamics NAV 2016 covers the following functional areas:
In Dynamics NAV, the financial management area is the epicenter of the entire application. The other areas are optional and their usage depends on the organization's needs. The sales and purchase areas are also commonly used within a Dynamics NAV implementation.
Now let's have a closer view of each area.
Financial Management
As we said, financial management is the epicenter of Dynamics NAV. Actually, accounting is the epicenter and general ledger is included inside the financial management area. What else can be found here? The following screenshot shows the main page of the Financial Management department:
We'll give a few details about each of these areas.
General Ledger
Accountancy is the act of recording, classifying, and summarizing in terms of money and the transactions and events that take place in a company. Accountancy is thousands of years old; the earliest accounting records, dating back to more than 7,000 years, were found in Mesopotamia. The fact that it survived this long must mean that it's important.
Of course, nowadays we don't use the same accounting system, but it is interesting that accounting is useful in every single company, no matter how different it is from any other company. Probably the fact that keeping accounting records is mandatory in almost all countries helps! For one thing, you need it to figure out how much money you made so you can pay your taxes.
Accountancy has its own language: accounts, credit amounts, and debit amounts. This language is managed through strict and clear rules such as generally accepted accounting principle (GAAP). Dynamics NAV has implemented these rules using posting groups so the system can translate everything to an accounting language and post it to the general ledger entries on the fly.
An important difference between Dynamics NAV and the other accounting systems is that you don't need to open an individual account for each customer, each vendor, each bank, or each fixed asset. Dynamics NAV does not keep detailed information about them on the general ledger. Only one or a few accounts are needed for each group. This is something that shocks accountants when they use Dynamics NAV for the first time. Then again, most accountants are easily shocked.
G/L budgets
The General Ledgerpart also contains G/L budgets. This feature allows you to create accounting budgets with different levels of details. You can break down the budget by different periods (day, week, month, quarter, year, or any accounting period), by accounts (on single posting accounts or heading accounts), by business units, or by dimensions.
The budget can be edited inside Dynamics NAV or can be exported to Excel, edited there, and then imported back to Dynamics NAV. You can do multiple imports from Excel and the new entries can be added to the existing ones.
You can also create distinct budgets inside Dynamics NAV and then combine them in a single budget. The following screenshot shows the main Budget page:
After presenting the budget, you can find different ways of tracking it. Either from the G/L Balance/Budget page, or from Trial Balance/Budget report, or from the account schedules defined by you.
Account Schedules
Account Schedules are meant for reporting and analysis of financial statements. If it were up to me, I would rename the function to say "Financial Statement Setup", but I'm sure someone higher up believes account schedules makes sense to the majority of the population.
Dynamics NAV includes some standard statements, but the good thing about it is that you can modify the existing ones or you can create new ones in order to meet specific requirements of an organization.
Account schedules can be made of ledger entries, budget entries, or analysis view entries. Analysis view entries are used to summarize ledger entries by a period and a set of dimensions. You can also combine entries from these different sources into a single schedule.
You can also define what kind of information is shown in the rows and columns. Each column can show data from different periods so you can compare amounts over different periods. Account schedules are therefore a powerful tool that end users can use to create their own customized financial reports. The Acc. Schedule Overview window has been displayed in the following screenshot:
Cash Management
The Cash Management feature is used to manage a company's bank accounts. You can process the payments received from customers, payments to vendors, and bank reconciliation.
You can create a bank account card for each account the company has in banks. Whenever a transaction is made in Dynamics NAV using a bank account, the system will post an entry in the bank account entry, plus a related G/L entry according to the bank posting group. The posting of bank entries is done from the cash receipt journal or from the payment journal. Other journals such as the general journals could also be used.
Note
It's recommended that you only set up bank accounts for the banks on which you do a full bank reconciliation. For banks that you don't reconcile, such as your money market account or investment accounts, you can just make the transaction on the G/L level.
The payment journal includes a Suggest Vendor Payments action to help you decide what is to be paid.
Fixed Assets
The Fixed Assets functionality is used to manage a company's assets, their cost and depreciation, and also it's related to maintenance and insurances.
Fixed assets has unlimited depreciation books that track depreciation expenses reliably. All the ordinary methods of depreciation are available, plus the ability to create custom depreciation methods is also available.
Fixed assets includes two different journals: the FA G/L journal and the FA journal. The FA G/L journal is used to post entries on the FA ledger entry and also a corresponding entry on the G/L entry. The FA journal is used only to create entries on the FA ledger entry. This means that depending on your configuration, you may not be posting anything related to FA in the G/L entry. You therefore need to be careful and know exactly when to post on the G/L and when not to, but keep everything synchronized.
VAT reporting and intrastat
Value Added Tax (VAT) doesn't really apply to people doing business in the countries where VAT is not required, such as the United States. It is a transaction that is paid by the end consumer and business. In Dynamics NAV, you can find a table called VAT Entry where all VAT transactions are recorded, mainly through purchase and sale invoices. In addition, the corresponding amounts are also posted on the accounts determined by its posting groups.
As in many other areas, all VAT processes are mainly based on their own entries, not on the amounts found in the accounting areas.
A process named Calculate and Post VAT Settlement helps you to post the G/L transactions for a VAT settlement. Dynamics NAV also includes VAT statements that are pretty similar to account schedules we discussed before. Therefore, you can define your own VAT statements that will help you to submit them to the tax authorities.
Intrastat is a a required reporting process for all European Union (EU) companies that trade with other EU countries/regions. Each company within the EU is responsible for reporting the movement of goods to their statistics authorities every month and delivering the report to the tax authority. In Dynamics NAV, the intrastat journal is used to complete periodic intrastat reports.
The intrastat journal requires item entries to contain information related to tariff numbers, transaction types, and transport methods. The tariff numbers are assigned to each item card, while transaction types and transport methods are assigned to sales and purchase documents.
Sales tax
Sales tax is a tax that is only calculated and paid for the sale of certain goods and purchases. Since the tax is applied during the point of sale, the seller will be the responsible party calculating and collecting this tax. Then either monthly or quarterly, the seller gives the collected sales tax to the government.
There are four major components in sales tax that you will need to set up.
Intercompany transactions
Intercompany postings are used to buy/sell goods and services between companies that are set up in your database. This function eliminates the need to enter purchase and sales orders manually in each of the companies that you buy and sell.
When company A creates a document that needs to be sent to company B, the following flow occurs:
A transaction can be sent to the partner's inbox directly if both companies coexist on the same database, or you can also send transactions by e-mail or through XML files.
Consolidation
Theconsolidation is the process of adding up general ledger entries of two or more separate companies (subsidiaries) into a new company, called the consolidated company. Each individual company involved in a consolidation is called a business unit.
Note that we have only talked about adding up general ledger entries; no other entries on the system are used for consolidation purposes. In the chart of accounts of each business unit, you can indicate which accounts are to be included in the consolidation.
The consolidation process creates a summarized G/L entry on the consolidated company for the period you have selected while running the process, and for each account and combination of dimensions, if you choose to copy dimensions on the consolidated company. The consolidation functionality contains a process to help you register the consolidation eliminations.
Multicurrency
Multicurrencycan be used if you buy or sell in other currencies besides your local currency. You can assign currency codes to bank accounts and also to customers and vendors. You can also use multicurrency to record general ledger transactions in an additional currency (besides your local currency). The additional currency feature is very useful for international companies that need to report in a currency different than the one they use in their daily transactions. You can register exchange rates for each foreign currency and specify from which dates the exchange rates are valid. Each time you post a transaction in a different currency, a conversion is made to translate that currency amount into the local currency amount. All entries in Dynamics NAV keep all the amounts in the transaction currency and the local currency in separate fields.
The adjust exchange rates process will help you to update the amounts of posted transactions to the new assigned rates. The following image shows how the currency exchange rates are defined for the USD currency:
Sales and marketing
The sales area can be used to manage all common sales processes information, such as quotes, orders, and returns. There are also tools to plan and manage different types of customer information and transaction data.
The following screenshot shows the main page of the Sales & Marketing area:
Customers
In the Sales & Marketing area, everything revolves around customers. The customer card contains a lot of information, but only a few fields are mandatory in order to be used by the customer on transactions; they are the ones that correspond to the posting groups. All other fields can be filled or not, depending on how you want the sales area to work.
You can define a salesperson for the customer, to track the sales of each salesperson. You can set a credit limit for each customer so that you get a warning when you try to create a new order for the customer and the credit limit is exceeded. You can group your customers by price and discounts groups to help you define prices. You can define different payment terms and methods. You can indicate how you are going to ship the goods to each customer, and you can also indicate a currency and language for the customer. Besides this, you can also create multiple bank accounts and credit cards.
Many times, a company establishes criteria to fill up all of this information. As an example, the company could have a norm that high-value customers will be part of a particular price group, will use specific posting groups, and will have particular payment terms. In this case, you can create as many customer templates as the defined criteria and apply a template each time a new customer is introduced to the system. In the following screenshot, you can see all the fields that can be included in a customer template:
Order processing
The order processing part is all about documents. Dynamics NAV allows you to create quotes, blanket orders, orders, return orders, invoices, and credit memos.
The sales process can start with any of the previously mentioned documents depending on the company's needs. In the following diagram, you can see the information flow through the documents. The documents with a gray background are the ones from where the process can start:
All the data from one document is carried forward to the next document. In addition, you can also create new documents by copying the data from any other sales document on the system.
In the previous diagram, the documents with the gray background are passed to the documents with the white background through a posting process, but posting routines can take a while to process.
Dynamics NAV 2016 has a feature called background posting. If background posting is enabled, then data is put in a queue and posted later in the background. This allows users to keep working while the system posts their documents.
When you select a customer in a document, many fields from the customer card are copied to the document header. This is considered as default data from that customer. You can change most of that data on a particular document.
Approvals
The approval system allows a user to submit a document for approval according to a predefined hierarchy of approval managers with certain approval amount limits. The approval of a document can be initiated by an e-mail notification sent to the user. Similarly, reminders of overdue approvals can be also sent. Pending approvals can also be viewed from the Order Processing menu.
The system allows you to create several approval templates where you can choose the document types to be included in an approval process and which approval and limit type to be used for each document. Document amounts are the main criteria to include a document in an approval process. The different limit types that can be used are as follows:
The following screenshot shows how the Approval Templates page looks like:
Pricing
The pricing option allows you to specify how you want to set up the sales price agreements. You can specify prices and discounts. Both prices and discounts can be for an individual customer, a group of customers, all the customers, and for a campaign. You need to specify one price for each item. If no price is found, the last sales price of the item will be used. When a price agreement is created, you can specify whether VAT is included in the price or not. Sales prices and sales discounts are introduced in separate tables.
Dynamics NAV always retrieves the best price. The best price is the lowest permissible price with the highest permissible line discount on a particular date.
In addition to specific item prices and discounts, you can also indicate invoice discounts or service charges. This can only be set up for individual customers, not for a group of customers or a campaign.
When you create a sales document, a Sales Line Details FactBox indicates how many Sales Price and Sales Line Discounts can be applied to the document.
You can see the details by clicking on each blue number found on the FactBox. The sales price worksheet will help you change and update your current prices.
Marketing
The marketing
