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How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

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Posted on by ilostmynewunicorn

Hey everyone and thank you in advance for any help

I've recently been hired by a company to help them move into BC. I have no experience with BC and neither do them, so my job so far has been to read the documentation and try things out in order to reach their goals.

Here is the problem I'm facing right now and I'm having trouble finding the documentation about it useful.

The company has has an internal code for every expense. For example, travel expenses would be 2.5 (this is not the actual number), and this number would refer to the account in the balance sheet/general ledger regarding those expenses. Then they have another code, 1.4 (same), which is connected to their income statement.

This helps them keep control of how much they are spending on all the key areas and their revenue/expenses ratio even if they have an external accounting team that delves deeper into the details.

So I spent my last workday figuring this out and achieving nothing, which is very frustrating.

I read all the documentation on cost accounting and managed to create cost centers and a chart of cost types but got extremely lost when it came to connecting those cost types with the cost centers.

I then created dimensions that mimicked both codes and had those dimensions be secondary and part of every purchase order, which defeats the purpose of this thing because a) it would be the purchasing team, and not the financial department, to have to assign those numbers, and b) the financial department would not be able to change posted purchase orders.

Here's one thing I did not try and that I will try when I'm back to work: creating those dimensions but attaching them directly to the general ledger accounts. So travel expenses would get dimension "BLCSHEET" expanded into several codes including 2.5.and "INCSHEET" expanded into 1.4. Then the financial department could simply print the total of 2.5 or 1.4 to get their total amounts in a given period.

Would this work? Can I attach two different dimensions to the same GL account? Am I missing a step? Is there an easier, more effective way to this? Will this help me further along if I create cost centers (i.e. I will just say "Ok this department center will be responsible for all costs regarding code 2.5)? Thank you all again :)

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ilostmynewunicorn 5 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

Figured it out.

The answer was in the date filter.

For those running into the same problem, "C" is what you want to have in your date filter in order to get all the dimensions' totals to date :)

Thanks everyone!

This took A LOT of frustration to figure out!!!
ilostmynewunicorn 5 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

Hello Amit!

Thank you for your answer.

I do already have my dimensions setup with all the values properly assigned to them.

My problem is how to print a report that totals them.

I already have them assigned to some transactions and I know they are working well because if I go on my chart of accounts and do Account -> Set Dimension Filter, I can see that the accounts in which they are set up are indeed totaling as they should.

However, I have no way to print this information. I would like some document that took all these values and summed them up into one, but I can't find any. I've already clicked on every button in the Chart of Accounts page to no avail.

Doing Analysis Views instead and filtering them for these dimensions is also not working: either the resulting pdf comes up empty or it only sums some of the values, sometimes improperly (for example I can see on my chart of accounts that my dimension 1.5 is totaling X in a certain account but in my analysis view the dimension is falling short of X).
Amit_Sharma 2,545 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

Hi,

Refer below link for understanding the dimension concept.

https://erpconsultors.com/dimensions-and-dimension-values-overview-and-setup-in-d365-bc/

For Learning:

https://erpconsultors.com/dynamics-365-business-central-tutorial/

Regards

Amit Sharma

www.erpconsultors.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-sharma-94542440/

Press Yes if Info is useful.
Jun Wang 7,443 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

agree with experts on previous responses. This involves 2 key pieces of work

1/ set up dimension and dimension values correctly, assign those to the account you want to analyze

2/ post some transactions to the account, using the dimension/values you created

2/ use function such as account schedule to analyze the account if working as expected.

Dimension could be rather a complex piece to tackle depending how you want to do with it.

Find help from a partner would help you faster
ilostmynewunicorn 5 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

Hey!

I'm sorry to keep disturbing you but I cannot piece how this works and it's somewhat frustrating. I spent yet a few more hours just reading documentation, watching videos and trying things out but I am getting nowhere.

Our chart of accounts is a 1:1 copy our balance sheet. Transportation is indeed one of those accounts and also an expense account so we could simply look at its amount to get the total amount of transportation expenses without even using dimensions. The reason we wanted to use a dimension anyways would be as a way to verify this process (i.e. the total in the transportation account should be the exact same as the total in the transportation dimension) but it is not the top priority.

The most pressing question is what about our "cashflow" dimension that includes several chart of accounts' accounts (i.e. transportation + meals, for example)? I can connect this dimension to the different accounts and if I filter our balance using this dimension I only see the values connected to that dimension, as I should, but how do I say "Hey, Chart of Accounts, I want you to tell me the total of all the amounts registered under this dimension, the ones I can see when I filter by this dimension"? I keep trying to use Analysis View because it is the only thing the documentation on this topic keeps referring back to, but it is always off when compared with the values I can see in my chart of accounts for that same dimension.

I wish Microsoft had more practical information on their documentation topics like these :( I've read the entire page on dimensions over 50 times now and I don't know what else to do.

Thank you for all your help!
Dallefeld 11,425 User Group Leader on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

Thanks for expanding on your setup and yes the screenshots were helpful.

First, does your chart of accounts look like. When you talk about wanting to know the total spent on transportation, why isn't transportation an expense account?

Second, I feel that your analysis view is the culprit as you can get the information from the chart of accounts.
ilostmynewunicorn 5 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

Hello and thank you in advance for your help

I took a few screenshots so maybe they can help. I don't want to run any risks regarding confidentiality so most things are blacked out which is why I was reluctant to share the screenshots to begin with :P The screenshot below shows my dimensions setup: I created the dimensions "Cashflow" and "DR". The two dimensions that are blacked out (x and y) are our global dimensions.

Both these dimensions have values. For example, take the screenshot below shows a value for the dimension "DR" titled "1.4", description "Transport". The idea here would be to have any expense related to transportation be assigned to this value. And the idea behind that is, if we ever wanted to know how much we spent on transportation, we would just ask the system to print the totals for dimension DR - 1.4 in a given period.

Then there is the "Cashflow" dimension which just has broader codes. They do not have any descriptions associated with them. So, for example, CF has the value "3" and the value 3 would include any expense related to travel, including the value 1.4 from the DR dimension and some others (e.g. a code referring to hotel expenses). The idea being that if we wanted to total our overall travel expenses (as opposed to the detailed expenses), we would associate every relevant expense to this value and print its totals. I've also made rules that define the possible combinations for these two dimensions.

The screenshot below shows the dimensions of the account in the Chart of Accounts where we record our transportation expenses. It has 3 dimensions associated with it: our global dimension X, the value 1.4 from the DR dimension shown previously and the Cashflow dimension with the code that includes that 1.4 value and some others.

The plan here would be the following: all our transportation expenses would be registered here and we could then simply print dimension DR value 1.4 to get the total of these expenses. I've applied the same thing to some transactions that contributes to the balance of this account and although this does seem to work on the filter (I have no screenshot of this, but if I filter our chart of accounts by DR-1.4, I will get the correct balance on this account reflecting all the transactions that have that dimension within it) if I then try to run an analysis view on it to print the totals of DR-1.4, I will not reach the result I want (which would be the total of all the transactions to which I associated this dimension).

I don't know if this has made it any clearer :P Thank you all for your help regardless.

We do have an experienced partner but we have limited hours with them so we're doing our best to figure out as much as possible internally so that when we are with them we can have more focused and streamlined questions.
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Dallefeld 11,425 User Group Leader on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

It is really hard to take what you are writing and visualize what you are seeing and what you desire to see. Screenshots would be helpful.

I am concerned that you are trying to have two dimensions that reference the same 'travel expenses' but again, hard to understand without some visuals.

And I agree with NorthW that you should consider having an experienced BC person guide you on your first implementation.
ilostmynewunicorn 5 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

Hey! Thank you for your help.

However, I'm still a bit confused as to how to do this.

I have created all the dimensions with all the values and I have associated those values to the cart of accounts' balance.

For example, let's imagine that I have the code 2.4 described as "Travel Expenses". I created a dimension for it and then went and assigned that dimension to the "Travel Expenses" account in the chart of accounts. I have also corrected dimensions to make sure that the balance in that account was assigned to this dimension. And indeed if I filter the chart of accounts for this dimension I am able to get this value while getting no amount in any of the other accounts.

But I am still unable to do anything with it. I would like to get a total of each of these dimensions, but every time I try to run an analysis or search "Dimensions - Total" or "Dimensions - Detail", the resulting report comes back without any value.

What am I missing?

Thank you again for your help :)

EDIT: I think I got it. Dimensions - Total seems to be working now, I probably forgot to update the analysis view.

EDIT 2: After a bit more of experimenting, it turns out I am still confused as changing the values in the chart of accounts is not updating my totals even after updating the analysis view :(
Inge M. Bruvik 32,748 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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RE: How do I connect expenses to a general ledger account?

First of all - congratulations on your new assignment. Working with Business Central is always exciting projects.

Then I would say that if this is your first time ever working with Business Central I would strongly recommend you to find an experienced Business Central partner that you can work together with in order to make this a successful implementation.

In many aspects Business Central is a product design for rapid and easy deployment - but it is not so simple that you can really expects to do a success full implementation with out any product experience.

When it comes to your challenge around accounting I think it is important that you do not over complicate things.

And to me it looks like dimensions should be the solution you try to work on. You can define default dimensions for every general ledger account and you can also have rules to define what dimension combinations are allowed to be used.

learn.microsoft.com/.../finance-dimensions

And when it comes to your purchase invoices it is considered best practise to implement an approval workflow that makes sure they are approved both when it comes to amount, accounting and dimensions before they are posted. So you should also look into using approval workflows in this case.

learn.microsoft.com/.../across-set-up-workflows

For you personally I also think you should consider studying for the MB-800 exam if you plan to make a career implementing Business Central.

learn.microsoft.com/.../mb-800

Please circle back to the forum with more questions around specific details if needed.