GL Account Tables & Account Framework

This will be a short post. A question came up today on the GPUG forums that reminded me to blog about this one. So, I thought I’d create a short article with some of the tidbits that you may find useful!

Account Framework

When Dynamics GP is installed, one of the few non-editable decisions (*) to make is deciding on the Account Framework. This step is done by whomever installs Dynamics GP, but is a critical decision that should occur after first conversations about Chart of Accounts design and general “what might happen in the future” type discussions take place, to correctly set up the framework for present and future possibilities.

Long story short: what is chosen here affects all company databases that will be added to the environment later on, as it is defining the maximum number of segments & total number of characters a GL account can have, and how many characters each segment itself has.

(*) by “non-editable”, I simply mean this is not something that is easy to change within Dynamics GP. There are some ISV tools to edit an Account Framework, but otherwise there are no out-of-the-box tools to edit this once system database is created.

GL Account Tables

The various GL account tables created when new companies are added, including Fabrikam, will have columns specific to that Account Framework. For example: if my setup looks like this (shown via the Account Format Setup window), where my “max” is 6 segments:

… then the GL tables in my environment will look like this, with columns up to ACTNUMBR_6 but nothing further. If the max is 8 segments, then columns for ACTNUMBR_7 and ACTNUMBR_8 will be in the tables as well, for instance. There is a maximum of 10 segments and 66 total characters allowed in the Account Framework.

A common misconception, particularly for end users who rarely see different Dynamics GP environments, is that *everyone’s* GL tables look the same, i.e. have the same number of columns as everyone else. It would be easier, theoretically, if Dynamics GP just automatically installed the max so all GL tables were the same, but that’s not how it works today!