This year’s spring release of Business Central once again includes a number of innovations in finance and accounting.
In addition to a new review function for easier reconciliation of accounts, Business Central 2023 Wave 1 offers, among other things, statistical accounts for optimizing analyses and reports, as well as a posting preview in the exchange rates regulation function.
New preview function for easier reconciliation of accounts
When closing an accounting period, all postings for a G/L account should be checked again for correctness, if possible. A new action for reviewing G/L entries now simplifies and speeds up this checking process, thus reducing workload and providing greater clarity in the respective reconciliation processes. After the review, the entries can also be marked as “Reviewed”.
To use the new functionality, the new action “Review Entries” can now be selected on the Ledger Entries page to review the entries accordingly. When performing an upgrade or migrating a large number of G/L entries, the number of entries to be reviewed can also be limited in the process.
The “Review Entries” action does not require double-entry bookkeeping to check all entries for a given transaction. It is therefore a flexible function. The “Review” setting can also be removed again in case of errors.
Introduction of statistical accounts to optimize analyses and reports
Analyses of G/L data in the company can be significantly optimized by using additional statistical metrics in them. For this purpose, statistical values can be defined and registered in a separate ledger in order to analyze the data.
For G/L account postings, the Quantity field alone does not provide much data for statistics and data analysis on the transactions. More data is often needed to make reports more meaningful.
Statistical accounts streamline analysis and progress tracking because a number-based statistical value can be added to a separate ledger. For example, business metrics can be included in reports and analyses in this way (e.g. square footage of building to track rental costs or number of full-time employees).
The values for the statistical account are entered in the “Statistical Accounts Journals”. Then they are displayed on the statistical accounts ledger entries page or in the ledger entries for an account from the “Statistical Accounts” list.
Posting preview in the exchange rates regulation function
When conducting international business, it is important to be able to do it in more than one currency and to create financial reports in different currencies. Fluctuating exchange rates require regular adjustments in Business Central. The new version therefore provides an additional control for regulating exchange rates. It is now possible to extend and customize an exchange rate adjustment to cover the requirements of different industries or markets.
From now on, for greater transparency and to avoid processing errors, the effects of an exchange rate adjustment on the posting can be displayed as a preview before the actual posting. To do this, the “Preview” action must be selected on the “Adjust Exchange Rates” report request page. It is possible to specify whether a detailed posting to the general ledger by entry or a summarized posting by currency is desired. For this, simply select the “Summarize Entries” field in the “Adjust Exchange Rates” report.
In addition, it is possible to specify how dimensions for entries of unrealized gains and losses are to be treated during settlement. For this purpose, the options “Source Entry”, “By G/L Account” and “No Transfer” are available in the “Transfer Dimension Values” field.