Dynamics NAV 2016: Falling into a trap of Russian localized functionality of agreements

Here I need to warn about one trap that is provided to the users by standard functionality of Agreements, included into Russian localized version.

Imagine a situation when you had created a vendor card, and decided not to use the agreements functionality as you estimated only one transaction with that vendor. You made a setup of posting groups and posted a purchase order. Those posted vendor ledger entry would not contain any reference to any agreement (thus, the Agreement No. field would be empty). Then, after some time, you decided that you will need to create agreement with that vendor, as your relationship got better. You select “Agreement Mandatory” option on the vendor card, and create new active agreement. Then, you try to book a payment for the previously posted purchase order. The system urges you to select agreement for the payment transaction, and denies the posting as you now have selected “Agreement Mandatory” on the vendor card. You select the new agreement in the payment line of the journal for that vendor and post it. Now, that posting will have the reference to the agreement in the Agreement No. field in corresponding vendor ledger entry of the payment.

Now, you want to apply the posted invoice to posted payment. Apparently, you will not be able to do this, as NAV thinks they are of different dimension values, one having reference to agreement and the other – not having the reference to agreement. You will get a message “Entries were applied, but there is nothing to post”. This is done in order to prevent users from applying payments and invoices to each other if they belong to different agreements.

Ok, but you need to apply them. Obviously, you will need to correct your posting of the purchase order and somehow reveal the agreement on the posted transaction. The straight way of doing this is to generate a credit-memo without agreement, post it, apply it to the posted order, and create a new posted purchase order that would be posted already with agreement, right?

Here you will find yourself in a trap. You will not be able to create a credit-memo without the reference to agreement, as you have “Agreement Mandatory” option selected. The system would not let you post the credit-memo if you would not select the agreement in its header. If you select the agreement on the credit-memo and post it, you will not be able to apply the posted credit-memo to the posted invoice, as again they will have different agreements – the posted invoice will not have the agreement reference but the posted credit memo will.

Ok, you say, what if to deselect “Agreement Mandatory” on the vendor card and then create a credit-memo without the agreement, post it and apply to the initial posted purchase order, and then activate the “Agreement Mandatory” setting back? Good try, but no. Attempting to deactivate the “Agreement Mandatory” setting, you will just get a warning error message saying that you already have open transactions with a reference to that agreement (it is your posted payment!), and that you are not able to deactivate “Agreement Mandatory” setting.

So, in order to proceed, you would need to:

• first reverse your correct payment transaction with selected agreement to eliminate open transactions with agreement
• deactivate the setting “Agreement Obligatory” on the vendor card
• reverse the invoice without agreement by posting a credit-memo without agreement, apply those transactions
• then, activate back the “Agreement Obligatory” on the vendor card
• post new invoice with the agreement selected
• post new payment with the agreement selected
• and only now you would be able to apply your payment to your invoice

If you are not keen on this long way of correction, then there will be no other standard way of how you would be able to apply your posted purchase order without agreement to your payment with agreement – it is a trap of standard functionality, provided in Russian localization and now the only option is to manually edit the data in the tables.

We at Awara IT Solutions usually go for small customization of Russian localized NAV functionality for our customers. We restrict to switch on the “Agreement Mandatory” setting on the vendor/customer card if there are open transactions for that vendor/customer, posted without agreement (it is indeed a pretty small customization). Alternatively, there is an option to cancel the standard verification when a transaction without agreement could not be applied to a transaction with agreement. Perhaps in later CU this will be the update of the standard Russian localization.