Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

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Posted on by Rob F.

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We are in the process of testing the payment journal for printed computer cheques with approval workflow turned on at the batch level and running into unexpected behaviour. I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered this and if they have found a workaround.

Here is a summary of the process steps:

Populate the payment journal batch lines.
Submit the batch for approval.
Once the batch has been approved, print the cheques. At this point, the system marks the 'Cheque Printed' field and automatically creates a new journal line for the balancing credit entry that posts to the bank account.
Try to post the journal. At this point, the system generates the error message that the batch must be approved before posting, and the error mentions the number of the new line that was added in the previous step as being the reason.

I understand that technically the journal batch has 'changed' and that is why the system thinks it needs to be approved again, but this seems counterintuitive since the change is simply the system creating a balancing entry for the journal. Additionally, the menu item to submit the batch for approval is greyed out, so it's not even possible to submit the batch for approval a second time. It all seems very buggy.

We are running Business Central cloud v19 North America localization.

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dwolf 8 on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Did you ever get a resolution for this?
Anantha123 25 on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hi Rob,

I looked into the 'Business Requirement' question by Marco. Here is my take.

1. The very purpose of checking box "One Check per Vendor per Document" is to avoid the multiple checks being printed against multiple open Vendor Invoices in the payment journal for one vendor. This option is selected at the time of printing the checks. Selecting this option results in the issue we are discussing.

2. Instead, at the time of 'Suggesting Vendor payments', if "Summarize per Vendor' option is enabled, all the open entries of a vendor are summarized into one line and show the net due in the payment journal. Effectively, it avoids the situation of having multiple open Vendor Invoices in the payment journal in the first place and thereby avoiding the need to enable "One Check per Vendor per Document" at the time of printing checks.

If you use the option in the item no. 2 above, the business requirement of making one payment to multiple vendor invoices are easily met.
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Marco Mels on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hi Rob,

Thank you for coming back to me. I fully agree with what you state. That is why the issue is with MS support so it can be raised to the product group via normal escalation process. I have not been contacted since by the MS support engineer related to your support ticket, so I do not know how far the MS support engineer is with the repro.

I assume disabling the option or not enabling the option "One Check per Vendor per Document No." is not a good workaround and that option must be enabled because of business requirements?

Hope you will receive a good answer from the product group via the MS support engineer or MS escalation engineer.

Thanks.
Rob F. 483 on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hi Marco,

I'm glad to hear you were able to reproduce the behaviour.

Regarding this point:

What happens here is that if you enable the option "One Check per Vendor per Document No" (as Anantha Subramanya rightfully) mentioned, the journal batch changes and it requires another approval (which is correct behavior and should happen if the journal batch changes).

...I do understand that technically the system requires another approval because the journal has changed, but from a business process and end user point of view, does that make sense? The content of the journal has not changed - the vendors and amounts being paid are all the same; it is only the layout that has been changed by the system due. So our users are asking why they must complete a second, redundant approval just so that the batch can be posted after printing the cheques. The fact that a second approval is not required for electronic payments (since the system does not change the layout of the journal lines in that case) is more reason to argue that this is a design flaw that we feel should be reviewed by Microsoft.

Rob
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Marco Mels on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hello,

Okay, I was able to reproduce the issue with the additional repro steps provided that had to happen in Power Automate via Create a flow in the Payment Journal. Everything is indeed standard.

What happens here is that if you enable the option "One Check per Vendor per Document No" (as Anantha Subramanya rightfully) mentioned, the journal batch changes and it requires another approval (which is correct behavior and should happen if the journal batch changes).

The journal batch also changes (one additional line if the named option is enabled in request page) when approval is not required.

Hope it helps. You can mention my name to the MS support engineer as I know him though he is working in different time zone.

Thanks.
Rob F. 483 on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hi Marco Mels , thank you for taking the time to look into this. Putting aside the communication issues with our partner and the MS Support Engineer (I did send testing date/time to our partner so MS could check telemetry), I am still confused by some of your comments regarding the workflow.

In general we usually request that the partner or CSP creates a reproduction and then share the reproduction to Microsoft. At the moment we are surely looking into something that is not standard in your environment so we cannot reproduce it at our side despite several attempt from MS support engineer. We do not know where these webhooks are coming and how these have been implemented. Best is to ask the partner to look into this further.

I will attempt to clarify:

As instructed by Partner/MS Support, I have conducted all testing in an unmodified, brand new Sandbox environment using Cronus Canada Inc. company. I forwarded the results of my tests to our partner to pass on to MS Support.

Our partner was not involved in setting up the workflows. They are just acting as a go-between on the support ticket. We do not have any customizations that I am aware of related to workflows or webhooks in our Production environment, and even if we did, I'm not clear how that would affect an unmodified Cronus database that I am using for testing.

The workflow is a standard, out-of-the-box workflow that is created automatically by the system when a corresponding workflow is created in Power Automate that uses a Business Central trigger. I have provided screenshots below of the steps to follow. I did this in a brand new v20 Preview Sandbox just now.

Steps to Create Workflow in Cronus

From the Payment Journal menu, click on Actions > Request Approval > Create flow.

A window appears to select the Power Automate template to use. Select "Request approval for Dynamics 365 Business Central general journal batches".

Power Automate will open in a browser window and setup the connections that are used in the workflow. Click on Continue.

The workflow opens in Edit mode. Set the parameters on the workflow steps for Environment, Company Name, Journal Template Name, and Journal Batch Name.

Return to Business Central and open the Workflow page. There will now be a new workflow created with source "Power Automate".

The workflow configuration is automatically completed by the system. The conditions on the workflow correspond to the same conditions that were set in the Power Automate workflow. The record restrictions are created automatically by the system as well. The exported XML code is attached.

With all this in place, create a Payment Journal batch for computer cheques, submit for approval, approve it, and then print the cheques. After printing, try to post the batch. This is where we are stuck, because the system says the batch needs to be approved again, but it is doing this because the system creates a balancing line (modifies the journal) when the cheques are printed which seems to reinstate the record restriction on the batch.

Rob
Marco Mels on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hello,

Thank you for the message. I noticed that the case number is already in my mailbox, these responses are sent to a folder in my Outlook, so I do not get notified. I should pay a bit more attention to this folder in Outlook!

The support request was initially closed due to communication failures between partner / MS support engineer. Luckily these communication failures appear to no longer happening. The support request has been reopened since.

The MS support engineer requested a few times to have the customer (you) try the scenario again and then share the date / time of when you tried the scenario so we can look up in our telemetry. We may then be able to find out what exactly did happen. I do not see that this information was shared with MS support engineer, or at least it is not visible to me in the support case.

I ran through the work flow that the partner shared with the MS support engineer (MS-GJBAW-WH-01) and I compared it with an output I generated in CRONUS. I am not sure if this is due to localization (I ran the comparison on a Dutch BC SaaS environment), but it does surely not seem to be standard despite confirmations that it is standard workflow based on work flow template in CRONUS.

In the standard work flow we do not see the step or function while we see these in the work flow template shared with the MS support engineer:

FunctionName="RUNWORKFLOWONGENERALJOURNALBATCHBALANCED">

<WorkflowStepArgument />

</WorkflowStep>

<WorkflowStep StepID="488" PreviousStepID="487" Type="1" FunctionName="RESTRICTRECORDUSAGE">

<WorkflowStepArgument ResponseFunctionName="RESTRICTRECORDUSAGE" />

</WorkflowStep>

<WorkflowStep StepID="489" PreviousStepID="488" Type="1" FunctionName="SENDNOTIFICATIONTOWEBHOOK">

<WorkflowStepArgument ResponseFunctionName="SENDNOTIFICATIONTOWEBHOOK" />

</WorkflowStep>

<WorkflowStep StepID="490" PreviousStepID="489" Type="0"

In general we usually request that the partner or CSP creates a reproduction and then share the reproduction to Microsoft. At the moment we are surely looking into something that is not standard in your environment so we cannot reproduce it at our side despite several attempt from MS support engineer. We do not know where these webhooks are coming and how these have been implemented. Best is to ask the partner to look into this further.

In MS support we may sometimes deal with reseller partners and supportive partners. Maybe there is another partner that is responsible for the webhooks implementation at your side? But in general we cannot make educated guesses about the root cause of an issue if we do not have all information available. Best is to have that conversation between partner, MS support engineer and yourself so that all confusion is getting out of the way.

Hope it helps.
Marco Mels on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hello Rob,

Sure, I can take a look at status. Can you send me in a DM the case number raised by your partner?

Thanks.
Rob F. 483 on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Hi and Marco Mels , over 3 months into this and I still have not received any updates on the support ticket that our Partner opened with Microsoft. The last request I got from Microsoft via our Partner last month was to submit an export of the Power Automate workflow, which suggests to me that they are still not understanding what the actual issue is that I'm trying to point out. Any change you could take a look from your end?

As an update, I just tested the same scenario in a Preview v20 Sandbox and I get the same result. In addition, the error message displayed in the Journal Check FactBox makes no sense - the cheque has been printed already but it's still showing "Cheque Printed must be equal to Yes..."

And this is the error that appears when trying to post the journal batch after it has been approved and the cheque has been printed:

"Record Restriction Mgt."(CodeUnit 1550).CheckRecordHasUsageRestrictions line 21 - Base Application by Microsoft "Record Restriction Mgt."(CodeUnit 1550).GenJournalLineCheckGenJournalLinePostRestrictions line 9 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Journal Line"(Table 81).OnCheckGenJournalLinePostRestrictions(Event) line 2 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Jnl.-Post Batch"(CodeUnit 13).CheckRestrictions line 3 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Jnl.-Post Batch"(CodeUnit 13).CheckLine line 21 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Jnl.-Post Batch"(CodeUnit 13).ProcessLines line 48 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Jnl.-Post Batch"(CodeUnit 13).Code line 38 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Jnl.-Post Batch"(CodeUnit 13).OnRun(Trigger) line 9 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Jnl.-Post"(CodeUnit 231).Code line 67 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Jnl.-Post"(CodeUnit 231).OnRun(Trigger) line 5 - Base Application by Microsoft "Batch Processing Mgt."(CodeUnit 1380).BatchProcessGenJournalLine line 12 - Base Application by Microsoft "Gen. Journal Line"(Table 81).SendToPosting line 4 - Base Application by Microsoft "Payment Journal"(Page 256)."Post - OnAction"(Trigger) line 2 - Base Application by Microsoft
Anantha123 25 on at

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RE: Payment Journal Approval Error with Cheques

Even I am experiencing the same issue and exploring options to resolve it.

Interestingly, If you don't select 'One Check per Vendor per Document No.' while printing the check, the system does not create the second line and everything flows smoothly without seeking additional approval.

But how practical is this?