Dynamics Nav - Dimension usage

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I am relatively new to Navision (and accounting in general) and I am a little confused by some basics regarding the Dimensions (particularly the Global Dimensions). As I understand it (in simple terms) the basic function is to allocate (or "tag") financial entry's to specific Departments and/or Projects (those are the global dimensions we use) via the dimension values (department: Development, Sales, Admin etc. and project: Project 1, Project 2 etc.).

But should all Dimension values link to both Income and Cost? Some of the literature I have seen indicates this (granted, those are mostly internal documents and memo's from people in the field - not official literature) - and I have little access to guidance at my work. Are the dimensions and their values intended to measure profitability first and foremost or should I not be concerned that some of the values do not link to both Income and Cost?

We are currently using Nav 2009 but we are implementing Nav 2013 shortly and that could be a good time to re-vamp the usage of dimensions within the company.

All input welcome

Thanks

Stefan

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Rabin 2,976 on at

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RE: Dynamics Nav - Dimension usage

Hi Stefan,

A dimension is nothing but data that you can add to an entry(any kind of entry - either income - cost - or documents) as a kind of marker so that the program can group entries with similar characteristics and easily retrieve these groups for analysis purposes.

Dimensions can be used throughout the program on entries in journals and documents, as well as budgets.

The term dimension is used in NAV to describe how analysis occurs.

Dimension Value:

Each dimension can have an unlimited series of dimension values that are sub-units of that dimension. For example, a dimension called Department can have departments called Sales, Administration and so on as subunits.

Why Should you use it?

A company's accounts are made up of many entries from many different sources and are associated with numerous activities within the company. It is often necessary to create statements, statistics and analyses that are extracts of the complete financial statements. These extracts can be created using individual dimensions or combinations of dimensions.

You can define as many dimensions as you need in your company, and you can define an unlimited number of dimension values for each dimension. All dimensions defined by you can be used on entries in journals and documents, as well as in dimensions-related reports and batch jobs.

Basically there are 8 Dimension among which First Two dimensions are automatically taken as a Global dimension by the system. Global means it automatically get fetched by the related documents where as you are still given permission to select remaining shortcut dimensions.

Hope it clears the concept....

By the way in Version 2013 Dimension Design pattern has been changed. Since NAV 2013(Ver 7), nav uses Dimension Set instead of manual values and the Dimension set value gets posted and are used to retrieve the Dimension values(it saves the Load of Data).

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Community Member on at

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RE: Dynamics Nav - Dimension usage

Unfortunately, you can require a dimension, but you can't really prohibit any dimension from being used once it is defined.

If one of your dimensions is Project, you cannot, within NAV, prevent someone from entering "Project 1" against any old invoice that is really for "Project 2". Many systems actually create composite records that combine dimensions with accounts, prohibiting "Project 1" activity from going against a "Project 2" fixed asset for example.

Plus of course, you only have two Global dimensions to work with. Personally, I think you need to make dimensions required, otherwise you'll get gaps in transactions and people questioning the results if all your costs, for example, don't have a dimension assigned...

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Alexander Ermakov 28,096 on at

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RE: Dynamics Nav - Dimension usage

Basically, the dimension value is just additional analytics to the (financial) transaction. Having that, you can further filter out the needed accounting transactions by those values.

How you will use them and for which transactions, it is purely your choice. For some cases, you might be interested to have some values only for income part (e.g., if you are interested to divide your revenue by regions: in this case you might not care about the costs). For other cases, you might be interested to calculate net profit by certain analytical value (e.g., you can have a profit center or division, and to show the net profit by division you would need to filter out both incomes and costs).

Thus, answering your question, if you are interested further to build a net profit report by Department or a Project, you would need to "tag" both income and cost transactions. That is, it is recommended you setup all Profit&Loss accounts to have those dimensions obligatory filled - that would prevent users from not selecting them during postings.

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Indikauk 1,759 on at

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RE: Dynamics Nav - Dimension usage

Hi Stefan

The whole purpose of dimension is to analysis of you financial Data for this purpose dimension comes in handy way.

Take the example company having 3 department Sales, Production & Admin they need to analyse profitability for each department in the general ledger level if you don't have dimension & if you have Dimension.

if you don't have dimension :-

Each and Every Expense and Income Account will Required to Create Department wise that means you have 3 department Currently and if you have 100 income & expense G/L accounts you will have to create 300 G/L Accounts,

example electricity expense you will have to create

Electricity Expense - Sales

Electricity Expense - Production

Electricity Expense - Admin

so on, this will create you huge no of G/L Accounts at the end of the Day you will having problem with navigating thorough such huge no of accounts.

if you use Dimension

You need to Create only One Expense or Income Account and during Transactions you can select Department Dimension (Tag) and you use analysis by dimension or Crate Accounts Schedule report to Analyse Dimension wise expense and income

Dimension is Not only to Track Expense & Income if you want to analyse Customer Transaction, Vendor, Bank, Fixed Asset any Balance Sheet G/L Transaction you can use dimension its up to the organization what kind of analysis they want.

below link is to get some general idea about the dimension

leanmfgs.com/.../NAV-Dimensions.pdf

Thanks

Indika

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