Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Electronic Payment files for Vendors

Electronic Payment files for Vendors:

  • Navigate to Accounts payable ->Journals->Payments ->Payment journal                     
  • New ->Select  Name -> click on lines -> Enter vendor account 
  • Click on Functions ->Generate payments 
  • Select the Export format option, and then, in the Export format field, select a format for the export file
OR
  • Select the Payment method option, and then, in the Method of payment field, select a method of payment that uses the appropriate format for export files.
OR

After Entering Vendor account on the Click on Payment tab and select Method of Payment as Electronic .



In this way you can make electronic payments for vendors.



Automatic Creation of Purchase Orders

Hi ,

In today's post we would be discussing about how to Automatically create purchase orders  upon purchase requisition approval.

For achieving  this navigate to :

  • Procurement and Sourcing ->Setup ->Policies ->purchasing policies
  • Create New policy ->Specify Name under general tab->Select Company under policy organizations.
  • Select Purchase order creation and demand consolidation
  • Create a policy rule.

  • Click on Manual purchase order creation tab.
  • Click the ‘Automatically create purchase orders’ radio button to select it




Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Relationship in Account Structure

                   
Account Structure and Relationship:
Scenario:

Let’s say we have a requirement which says Business Unit should have control .For this we have to create organizational hierarchy first.
Now we need to go to Configure Account Structure form and select  the activated account structure.
Click on Relationship

On the Relationship column look for the organisation hierarchy name which you have created, select the row which has Business Unit as Party A and Cost centre as Party B

Click on Ok and Activate the Account structure.
Go to General Ledger and post a transaction.
The user will  be able to see only the cost centers which were allowed in organisation hierarchy




Tuesday, June 23, 2015

ACCOUNT STRUCTURES

Account Structure

Account Structure is used to define valid combinations of Main Accounts and financial dimensions.

To Ceeate Account Structure navigate to

  • General ledger -> Setup-> Chart of accounts->Configure account structures


  • Specify the Values which are allowed.



  • Click on Add Segment to Add Financial Dimension

  • Specify the values 


Click on Validate then Activate
Navigate to ledger form and select the created Account structure
Now ,If we go to General ledger and try to post a transaction we can see our Account Structure is working as designed.











Sunday, June 21, 2015

General Ledger Introduction

General ledger:
General ledger are used to manage legal entities financial records.Its an register which contains all debit and credit entries through which we can identify financial growth of the company.You can define your Accounts,financial dimensions,Account structures,Financial calender's,Currencies on generel ledger.

Ledger Form on General ledger : Common configuration mistake
A common configuration mistake is not using the "Organisation hierarchy" effectively while creating account structures. Account structures can be radically simplified by creating a relationship between the account structure and organisation hierarchy. Look for my future blog on how to build relationship between account structures and financial dimensions.

Specify the Chart of Accounts .
  • The Account Structures (Defined under GL->Setup->Chart of Accounts->Configure Account structure->It should be Activated)
  • Specify the Fiscal Calendar(Defined under GL->Setup->Fiscal Calenders)
  • Accounting Currency,Reporting Currency.(Any ISO standard defined currency code that suits your business needs)
  • Specify the Main Accounts that would be used during processes which include currency revaluation.


Tax Setup: 
I feel the tax setups should be standardised and these should be available using data import just like postal codes setups. Do leave a comment on the blog with your email address if you want to receive recomended "Australia GST setup" as a DAT/DEF file" including BAS statement setups. 

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Creating Legal Entity in AX and factors to think about!!!

Scenario: An implementation requires us to install and configure AX for a group of companies which contains multiple legal entities. The question we need to answer is to setup these legal entities as Business units or different legal entity in AX.

We need to ask the following questions befor making a decision on legal entity.

  • Management and sponsorship team goals: Sometime customers might want to bring organisational changes to consolidate different legal entity in conjunction with ERP implementation. 
  • Sharing of data across legal entity: If the customer master, item master, catalog, vendors etc needs to be shared across legal entity, then there might be enough commonality between the organisation to create one legal entity and reduce data maintenance. 
  • Data security: If one company in the group is directly competing with another entity in the group, then it might be difficult to keep sensitve information away from each other. 
  • Integrations with third party systems: Will the integrations with external parties be simplified or become more complicated in a consolidated legal entity environment. 
  • Different business processes which cannot be reconciled: Is the sponsor team want to drive single process for all legal entity going forward?
  • Will there be any difficulty in configuring automatic defaults for financial dimensions on transaction. Sometimes ensuring that the expenses and income are allocated to correct business units automatically(based on transaction inputs) might be a critical deciding factor. Using management reporter reporting based on different business units will allow users to create statuatory reports. 
  • Sometime it might come down to trade off between maintenance of multiple companies vs single company in AX. In most cases creating business units instead of legal entities would win. 


How To Create Legal Entity in AX:


  • Click Organization administration -> Setup -> Organization -> Legal entities
  • Click New ->Give company Name ->Country/Region ->Ok
  • Specify Language under General tab
  • Specify Addresses  ,Contact information ,tax registration number .






Company Setup :


  • Click Organization administration/setup /Addresses/Address setup
  • Define an Address Format 
  • Define Country/Region, State/Province, County, City, District, Street, Group Postal Codes. 

Once this set up are done it could be used in Addresses fast tab on Legal entities form.

Please add any other variables that you think is critical for decision on legal entities in the comments.




Monday, June 8, 2015

Organization Hierarchy -Introduction

What is an Organization ?

An organization is a group of people who are working together to carry out a business process or achieve a goal.
Organizational hierarchies represent the relationships between the organizations that make up your business.

Why is Organizational hierarchy required ?

Hierarchies can be used for Policies ,Organization charts , Data access , Budget planning ,Project management .

*To view and report on your business from different perspectives
*To create a purchasing hierarchy to control purchasing policies, rules, and business processes.
*Each hierarchy is assigned a purpose in Microsoft Dynamics AX.
*The purpose of a hierarchy determines the types of organizations that can be included in the hierarchy.
*The purpose also determines which application scenarios a hierarchy can be used in.
*An organization can inherit or override the parameters of its parent organization. However, shared master data, such as products and address books, applies to the whole organization and cannot be overridden for individual organizations.


How to create Organizational hierarchy in AX?

CEU->Organization administration->Common->Organizations->Organizational hierarchies.
Click on New Define Name->Organizational hierarchy->Insert->Legal Entity
Click on Legal Entity->Insert->select departments as per organization structure .






Scenario
We want to restrict an user based on his department .User belonging to Dept. Administrator should be able to access the cost centers till range 1 to 100 and user belonging to Dept. Marketing

Should be accessing Cost centers from 101 to 200.

We designed our organization hierarchy accordingly and publish it.

Now we need to go to the Account structure click edit.

Relationships ->Select the created hierarchy.

Now that we want to control the entry of the cost centers based on selection made for the department dimension, select the record which shows Party A = Department and Party B = Cost center and click Ok button ->Activate it.

Navigate to GL > Journals > General journal ->New ->Lines

Enter the Main account -> Department; as soon as we enter department system only shows the Cost Centers we had set up in Organization hierarchy under department.

Further select the values, Amount and post.

Organization hierarchy in financial reports:

Financial reports are very essential part of business .As you create organization hierarchies in Dynamics AX, these hierarchies are dynamically created as Reporting Trees in Management Reporter.
Management reporter is a powerful tool used to create statutory and operational reports based upon your general ledger data. It empowers your managers by providing real-time insights into organizational results; they can take action and work to meet overall corporate goals.



How to use Organization hierarchy in financial Reports ?


Management Reporter is integrated with Dynamics AX ,Every time a new organisational hierarchy is created in AX a new reporting tree with the effective date gets dynamically created in MR .
When choosing an organization hierarchy in Report definition select the desired organization hierarchy and click on Generate button.

Here are some of the ways Management Reporter can help solve your financial reporting needs:
No need to create a connection to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 General Ledger (GL) – Management Reporter is directly integrated with your GL
Build custom reports based on Microsoft Dynamics AX ledger accounts and dimensions – with the ability to slice general ledger information into Rows, Columns, or Hierarchies to get insight into actionable information. Robust formatting helps highlight key areas on a report and create boardroom quality reports. 





Organization hierarchy in purchase policies and procurement. 


What is Purchasing Policy ?

A purchasing policy is a collection of rules that control the requisition process.With the help of these policies procurement administrators can plan their strategies which aligns best with the organizations purchasing needs.


Scenario
An organization operates its business as Head office and regional office and it has Administration departments set in both the offices. The organization wants its Head office – Administration department employees to be restricted to raise the requisition for only the “Laptops category” whereas the regional office –administration department should be restricted to “Desktop computers” Category.

In the above case, let us create “Head office” and “Regional office” as Business units for the organization and “HO-Admin”, “RO-Admin” as the departments.

Make sure that after creating organization hierarchy you have assigned purpose "Procurement Internal control” In order  to make it reflected under "procurement policies"

To create new policy go to Procurement and sourcing>Setup> Policies> Purchasing policies> click new

Name->Click Parameters button->Add the desired hierarchy to the order of precedence.

By adding the hierarchy, we can set up the policies for any element(either business unit or department) in the hierarchy.

Policy organizations -> Select organization hierarchy ->Add the legal entity node, business entity and department nodes to “Selected organization nodes”.

Policy Rules->Click Create policy rule to define the rule. Focus on the desired Category -> Select button to move them to the Selected Categories ->Click OK.


Now, for “HO-Admin” department, only the laptop category is applicable. If any user from this department create a purchaser requisition then, only the items under category “Laptops” can be seen and user can request only those items.