Account Maintenance Options

Today’s #TipTuesday is a “back to the basics” tip. I wanted to cover off a few areas in G/L Account Maintenance that are often overlooked or that users are unaware of.

The first one, Allow Account Entry, is a favourite of mine because too often I’ve seen organizations with reconciliation issues that were caused by “rogue” journal entries posted directly to accounts that shouldn’t ever be posted directly to.

Allow Account Entry

I don’t remember when this feature was added, but it’s been years I’m sure. Allow Account Entry is marked by default which means transactions can be directly entered into this account. The intention is to give your organization control over G/L accounts that are tied to sub-ledgers.

How to use it

Let’s use Cash (Chequebook) control accounts as an example. Let’s say that 000-1100-00 is tied to the OPERATING chequebook. You only want transactions to be posted to this G/L account from transactions that use the OPERATING chequebook, right? You don’t want a user to be able to post anything outside of that directly to this G/L Account. I would uncheck Allow Account Entry and thus nothing could be posted to this G/L account unless it is a “default” on any other transaction. Enter a cash receipt to OPERATING? It would debit this G/L account by default and that would be allowed. If a user attempted to overwrite or type in this G/L Account, it would fail because of the control.

So, to extend this further, in Payables or Receivables, the A/P or A/R Control Account(s) would need to be set up on vendors or customers, or as default Posting accounts. That would mean the accounts you want to be the control accounts will default on all of the transactions it should default on, but not be used in any other transaction manually. Even if it’s the appropriate G/L Account for a given transaction, posting would only be allowed if it defaults on the transaction, not if it’s manually entered.

Level of Posting from Series

This one is a little more obscure and from what I’ve seen, most clients don’t get into the nitty-gritty settings here. What this setting is for is choosing whether transactions from those 4 series would post to this account in Summary or Detail. This setting is only triggered if, in posting setup, this following setting is marked, which tells Dynamics GP to look here for the level of posting option.

How to use it

Let’s say your organization has a ton of cash receipts, so much volume that you don’t want all of that transaction history in the G/L history as individual transactions. First, in Posting Setup below, you would go to Sales > Receivables Cash Receipts and under “Create a Journal Entry Per”, choose Batch and then tick Use Account Settings.

Then, on the account(s) where you DON’T want details in the G/L, you would change the “Sales” series level of detail to Summary. So, typically that would be in your Bank and Accounts Receivable accounts but it could extend to more based on where you Cash Receipts typically post. Maybe you want the detail for the Cash side so you leave that at Detail but the A/R side you want in Summary so you only modify that accounts setting. You have options!

Include in Lookup

This 3rd feature is also somewhat obscure and again, I haven’t seen many customers use it but it can be a nice way to clean up the Account lookups in your sub-ledgers to remove (hide) all of the irrelevant G/L Accounts.

How to use it

The user interface on this one is a bit weird, I’ll admit! By default all 4 series are selected which means in those series’ sub-ledgers’ Account Lookup windows, the accounts appear. You users are probably used to scrolling past the various irrelevant Balance Sheet accounts for instance, and maybe you can help them out by hiding accounts that really should never be posted to from a sub-ledger.

Clicking on one item in the list de-selects the rest. Holding down CTRL and an item deselects it (or allows multi-select, if you just want to hide this account from one series for instance and want the other 3 series’ selected).

Here’s what the lookup looks like, for the Cash Account in my original screenshot, when I deselected all series. This is what I see in Payables Trx Entry G/L distribution lookups. I’m at the very top of the list of G/L Accounts and the 000-1100-00 Cash G/L account doesn’t appear any longer. Imagine doing this with the majority of the Balance Sheet accounts that perhaps aren’t applicable to Payables at all? The lookup would be a lot easier to manage!