Dynamics NAV Coffee Break: Setting Up Subcontractors in Dynamics NAV

This Dynamics NAV Coffee Break is the first of two video blogs that explain how to set up and use subcontractors for the manufacturing process in Dynamics NAV.

Setting up subcontractors for the manufacturing process in Dynamics NAV is not difficult, but ensuring you do the setup correctly from the start is key. This video demonstrates everything you need to do to setup subcontractors - starting with choosing the Location, to General Posting setup, and avoiding errors from the potentially tricky Stockkeeping Units fields.

Look for the next blog on using subcontractors this Wednesday.

You can view this video and other Coffee Break videos for Dynamics NAV on the ArcherPoint Coffee Break playlist. 

For help with your manufacturing processes in Dynamics NAV, contact ArcherPoint.

Dynamics NAV Coffee Break: Using Subcontractors in the Manufacturing Process in Dynamics NAV

This Dynamics NAV Coffee Break is the second of two video blogs that explain how to set up and use subcontractors for the manufacturing process in Dynamics NAV.

If you haven’t see the video on setting up subcontractors, you may want to view it first. Once you’ve set up your subcontractors in Dynamics NAV, it’s quite easy to use them in the manufacturing process. In this short video, you will see a demonstration of everything you need to do to tie it all together, from transfer orders, to purchase orders, to using multiple subcontractors. It really is easy to use subcontractors in the manufacturing process in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

You can view this video and other Coffee Break videos for Dynamics NAV on the ArcherPoint Coffee Break playlist. 

For help with your manufacturing processes in Dynamics NAV, contact ArcherPoint.

Processing Check Payments in Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Microsoft Dynamics NAV users often have to make a payment to a vendor using a check. Fortunately, Dynamics NAV does have a provision to process payments via check.

To get started, navigate to Department, Financial Management, Payable, and select Payment Journal.

There are two ways to generate Payment Entries:

1. Dynamics NAV can suggest the payment that needs to be processed based on last payment date and other fields. Select Suggest Vendor Payment from the Payment Journal as shown below:
   
   Figure 1 - Suggest Vendor Payments

2. You can create payment journal entries for a specific Vendor and apply documents that you want to process against that payment using the Apply Entries function.

   Key in the Vendor No and select 'Apply Entries'. The system will populate Open Entries for the Vendor. You can select one or more documents that you want to process against this payment using Set Applies-To ID in the Apply Entries screen:
   
   Figure 2 - Apply Document(s) Against Payment

For check payment, select the following options in the Payment Journal:

• Bal. Accounting Type = Bank Account
• Bal. Account No. = the bank account you wish to pay from (Note that the Last Check No. should be available & Bank Currency should be same as Payment Journal currency)
• Bank Payment Type = Computer Check
  
  Figure 3 - Mandatory Fields for Check Payments

For a Check Payment Journal Line, the check should be printed before posting the payment. You can preview the check using the Preview Check option.

The Check Report should be printed on the check received from the bank. Standard Microsoft has a letter size check but your partner can customize your check report as you require.

Figure 4 - Print the Check Prior to Posting

Once a user has a printed check, they can post it in the Payment Journal. If there are some discrepancies, then the user can void the check using the Void Check Option from the Payment Journal screen.

If you have any questions about this function or other Dynamics NAV questions for any version, contact ArcherPoint. You can read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV. And, if you are interested in NAV development, check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs.

How to Tweak RDLC Reports to Increase Performance in Dynamics NAV 2013R2 or Higher

RDLC reports can have performance issues occassionally. Microsoft is aware, and has been enhancing report performance in every release since this became an issue. In this blog, I will explain how you can use a small feature in RDLC reports called "labels" to optimize performance.

RDLC report performance depends directly on how optimized the Dynamics NAV dataset is. With Labels, we can reduce the size of the dataset, which in-turn increases the performance of the report.

Report data have two components: Captions and Values. Captions can further be classified into three groups:

1. Table Field Captions: These are the captions used when one selects “Include Caption” in the Report Dataset Designer. 
2. Captions generated at run time: These are the captions generated when a report is executed. 
3. Fixed Text: These are things like the Report Name, or Field Captions, all of which we can define under Global Text Constants.

Figure 1 - Dynamics NAV Report Dataset Designer on Report 111, the Customer Top 10 List

Text Constants (with fixed values) are required to be added in the dataset, and that will increase the size of dataset.

Figure 2 - Dynamics NAV Dataset for Report 111, Customer Top 10 List

As we can see, that last 05 Dataset field value is not changing for any record when we run the report.

Steps to Use Labels

Open the Labels window from 'View Action' and select Labels.

Move all fixed text from Text Constants to Labels.

Figure 3 - Move Global Text Constants with Fixed Text to Labels

You can update the Report Layout and Change Expressions from Dataset Fields to Parameters.

All Table Field Captions and Labels are available as parameters in Layout.

Figure 4 - Update Layout Instead of Fields Select to Parameters

This is how it affects the Report Dataset:

Figure 5 - Updated Report Dataset in Dynamics NAV Report 111, Customer Top 10 List

When using Labels and Table Field Captions, the dataset size will be reduced and in turn performance will increase. If you have any questions about this function or other Dynamics NAV questions for any version, contact ArcherPoint.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

If you are interested in NAV development, check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs.

Jet Reports Web Portal Setup

The new Jet Reports Web Portal brings collaboration and sharing to a new level. Features include version control, central permissions, sharing settings as well as the ability to use Office 365 to use your reports anywhere.

Jet Reports: Server Setup

To publish reports to the Jet Web Portal you first need to install the Services Tier and the Web Portal on a local server. To do this, run the Jet Professional install and check the additional boxes.

Figure 1 - Jet Reports Web Portal Installation

The install will configure IIS and install a Jet Services Tier database. This will be used to host the web portal and control permissions. 

The last step of configuring the Jet Web Portal is to assign a certificate in IIS to direct the traffic to the newly configured web portal.  To do this:

Open IIS Manager > Server Name > Sites > Jet Web Portal > Edit Bindings

Here you can set the SSL certificate. If you do not have a certificate, then you can create a self-signed certificate by going back to the top level of the IIS management tree and opening the feature Server Certificates. Here you will find a link to Create Self-Signed Certificate that you can then attach.

Now that everything is up and running, open the Jet Administration Console and connect to the newly created service. Here you will manage the data sources and user rights. Simply add your users and data sources and now you are all setup. 

Jet Reports: User Configuration

Each user will need to have their Excel profile reconfigured to use the Jet Services Tier service. To do this, open Excel and in the Jet Ribbon select Application Settings. Inside Application Settings, change the Settings location from Local user profile to Jet Configuration Service, update the server name and test. If all is correct then your data sources and permissions are now setup and you no longer have to setup users individually.

Figure 2 - Jet Reports Application Settings

In the Jet ribbon, the Publish button should now be available. Once you build your report, you can then publish it to the Jet Web Portal using this tool. 

After published, you can run the report by logging into the Jet Web Portal page at HTTPS://ServerName

Figure 3 - Jet Reports Web Portal Page

If you have any questions about Jet Reports, please contact ArcherPoint.

For more advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV, please visit our resource center and subscribe to our blog.

Dynamics NAV Coffee Break: Finance Charge Memos

Dynamics NAV makes it easy to create a Finance Charge Memo. In this In this latest installment of our NAV Coffee Break video series, Gwen demonstrates how to create the charge, identify the charge terms, interest rates, interest time periods, as well as minimum charges. She also shows how to assign a customer and send the finance charge memo.

You can view this video and many other video tutorials for Dynamics NAV at ArcherPoint's YouTube Channel. 

For your convenience, the transcription of this video follows:

Today’s coffee break is on finance charge memos. You want to create finance charge memos and add an additional fee. That’s something that Navision does pretty easily. So the first thing you need to do is actually create your finance charge terms. So we do that under Departments, Financial Management, and we’re going to go to Receivables and then way down here at the bottom under Administration, we have our Finance Charge Terms.

So I’ve got a couple created in here. I’ve got one for domestic and foreign. I have different grace periods and things like that depending on where they’re located. So you may want to do the same thing.

Here we’ve got – let me just make this a little bigger for you. We’ve got the first one which is 1.5 percent charge for domestic customers and I’ve got a description here just to let me know what it’s for and then I’m saying that I want to calculate my interest based off of the open entry. So you can do closed entries or you can do both.

For the interest calculation method, I go for an average daily balance. But you could also do balance due. For the interest rate for my domestic customers, I charge a 1.5 percent interest rate and the interest period is broken down into 30-day buckets.

The minimum amount is I put $15.50. So what happens is it’s going to go through and calculate the interest. If it’s less than $15.50, then it’s not going to create a finance charge memo. So we’re basically not going to bother. So once it hits this number, then we’re going to go and have them create the finance charge memo.

In addition to creating a finance charge, we’re going to do an additional fee for my time and sending out mail and all that good stuff. So my additional fee is $7. We’ve got a grace period of five days and my due date calculation is one month.

Now over here, we have the line description. It has actually got some symbols in there that will be replaced with data. So in this case, I have “percent for” which ends up being the interest rate. So we will actually show 1.5 percent finance charge of and then in here, we’re going to have the amount. So it’s going to replace those symbols with data. If you want to see different options for that, we have here – I’m going to hold this up for a minute so you can get a screenshot. But the line description field will look at these little predefined options and replace them with the data accordingly.

All right? So you can see how I chose my interest rate and the amount. All right. So now that I’ve got that, I say I do want to go ahead and post the interest, which means I’m going to have to establish a GL account for that interest to be posted to and I will show you where to do that and I want to post my additional fee, which is that $7 fee.

All right. So once that has been created, I need to assign it to my customer. Let’s go back up here to the customers. Let’s go back up here to the customers. There we go and on my customer card, on the payment tab, there we go, I have on the payment tab over here Finance Charge TermsCode. So this is a domestic customer. So I went ahead and assigned the 1.5 domestic code to that account.

Now while I’m in here, I told you it’s going to go to a GL account. Well, your customer posting group is where you establish that account. So let’s go ahead and take a look at that. Over here we have the interest account and the additional fee account. So mine, I’m going to the same GL account. You may want to break it up into different accounts and that’s fine. But that’s how it knows which GL account to hit and you’re going to need to know that because at the end of the year, most people don’t like to pay the finance charges and you’re going to have to write it off. So you’re going to be looking at that account in here.

All right. So once that’s done, we can go ahead and create our finance charges. So we do that by going to Financial Management and Periodic Activities and then we’re going to go ahead and go to Receivables and Finance Charge Memos. So what we’re going to do is first create them and we’re going to take a look at them and see if we want to use them. So you put in your posting date and your document date and this will be course the date that the finance charge hits their account and I click OK.

It generates them and let’s just take a look at one here. All right. So you can look at this and you can decide that you don’t want to issue it and you could just delete it and go to the next one or maybe you want to edit it. So this is just a suggestion and you will see here that all the header information came in with the customer’s information. All their different invoices are listed and that description that we’ve put in, that “percent for” was replaced with a 1.5 percent finance charge and of course that percent five was replaced with the amount.

So here we have the amount that’s remaining on the invoice and then here’s the finance charge that was created at 1.5 percent. We have an additional line down here to that GL account that we looked at and it’s for $7 and then we get a grand sum total here of everything that’s due. So once you’ve looked this over, and you’ve approved it, you issue it. So up here in my home ribbon, I click on Issue and you can email it. You can print it. I’m going to print it so that you can take a look at it and if these sat for a few days and you need to replace the posting date, you can certainly do that.

Once it’s – now there comes out of my printer. Once it has been issued, it moves off this list and you would go to the next one. So once you’re done, these live over in Issued Finance Charge Memos. Just click down here and this is the one that we just created and let’s just preview it for you.

So this is what it looks like. It has got the customer address. This is our return address and then it has got all those invoices on there, the additional fee, and the total. In addition to being located in the Issued Finance Charge Memo area, you can see it from the customer part.

Let’s go back to receivables and we will just take a look at this customer and if you need to reprint it for them because they claim they didn’t get it, you can go to Navigate, IssuedDocuments and Issued Finance Charges and that’s where it lives. You can also drill into their balance and you will see down here the finance charge that was created. So the document type for finance charge, although it is an invoice, it does flag it as a finance charge so that you can see the difference and that’s the total of the finance charges plus the – that additional fee. That concludes our lesson on creating finance charge memos.

NAV Coffee Break: Setting Up and Purchasing with Credit Cards in Dynamics NAV 2017

It is convenient to be able to purchase goods using a credit card in Dynamics NAV 2017. And while it is not difficult to do, here are a few necessary steps to the setup process that are critical before you can start making purchases. In this latest installment of our NAV Coffee Break video series, Gwen walks through each of these steps from creating a payment method to posting general ledger updates.

You can view this video and many other video tutorials for Dynamics NAV at ArcherPoint's YouTube Channel.

For your reference, a transcript of this video follows:

Welcome to today’s coffee break. Today’s coffee break is on setting up and purchasing with credit cards.

So there are a lot of people who want to know how do you set it up in the system so that we can easily purchase goods from let’s say – we’re going to use Staples today as our example and we automatically show that it was paid with a credit card. So it doesn’t show as like an open balance on account.

So there are a few set-ups you need to do ahead of time. But once you do them, it works great. So let’s go ahead and do those set-ups. I’ve actually done them ahead of time. But I will show them to you.

So we go to Financial Management, General Ledger, and we’re going to look at the Chart of Accounts. This is the first thing I did is I set up my different credit cards that I used for paying utilities, things like that. I set them up in the Chart of Accounts.

So I have one here for American Express. This is what we’re going to focus on today. I have a couple of others as well. Once you’ve created those accounts, you need to create a payment method that’s associated with that credit card.

So let’s just show our payment methods here. Here, I have one for American Express, MasterCard, Visa and what I want to show you is that those GL accounts that we just set up are associated here as the balancing account. All right?

So that’s where all this really works. So once you’ve got that set up, you’re going to want to go ahead and apply that new payment method to your vendor.

So let’s go to Payables and we look at our vendors. I’ve created Staples. So I go to my Staples account and over here, I have my payment method as American Express and remember that American Express payment method automatically defaults to a balancing account with that account we’ve set up in our balance sheet.

So let’s say that I want to go ahead and create a purchase invoice to Staples. We will go here and we will just go ahead and we will put our office expenses in here. There we go. Office supplies. Obviously you break this out in whatever detail is appropriate for you.

Once you’ve got that entered, I just want to show you here that on the invoice details down here, that payment method has defaulted from the vendor’s card and let’s go ahead and post this and let’s take a look at that posted invoice.

So here I am. I’m on that posted invoice and let’s navigate and see what it did. All right. So if I look at the vendor ledger entries associated with that transaction, I see the invoice that we created, plus the payment. It’s already done and they’ve been applied to each other. So on that vendor’s account card, they have a zero balance.

If we look at the general ledger, again we see our accounts payable for the vendor. We see our expense office supplies and then we see – I’m sorry. This is our accounts payable. This is that account that we set up for the balancing account. So now, what will happen is you’re going to get a bill in a few weeks from American Express.

You’ve already broken out the expense, the appropriate expense accounts. So all you’re doing is you’re going in. I’m going to just create a general journal entry here and basically you get the invoice from American Express and let’s see what I have set up for American Express. There we go.

You would put the total amount in the invoice and the balancing account will be that account that we created – our balance sheet account for the American Express.

All right. You would go ahead and post that. Looks like I’ve done this before. We post. OK. So let’s go take a look at that. So if we go to the Chart of Accounts, I see now that there’s no longer a balance on this account, right? Because we washed it out when we paid American Express. If we go to the American Express vendor account, I see here the invoice that we just posted for $100.

So now what will happen is when I go to do my check run, this will pop up. But the hard work of breaking out that American Express bill was already done when I created the purchase invoice. So it just simplifies things. It’s a different way of doing things and from an end user standpoint, once all the set-ups are done, it all works pretty cleanly.

Thank you very much. That concludes our lesson on setting up credit card payments.

Thanks for watching this ArcherPoint video. If you found it helpful, make sure to check out our website and blog at www.ArcherPoint.com. Additionally, if you have any questions regarding our products, services or information in this video, feel free to email us at info@archerpoint.com. Thanks.

Running Objects from Dynamics NAV Classic Client

In RTC (Role Tailored Client versions of Dynamics NAV (2013 and above), the Classic Client is still available, but, it is now called the Development Environment. It can be opened by running finsql.exe typically located here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\90\RoleTailored Client\finsql.exe

Once opened, it will look similar to the old Classic Client; however, you do not open companies from here. You can only open databases. Once the DB is opened, you can view the objects using the Object Designer. Open the Object Designer just like the old Classic Client: Tools/Object Designer.

Figure 1 - Selecting the Object Designer

You can run reports, tables, pages and codeunits from here. But, it is best practice to run these from the RTC client. Anything you run from the Object Designer will actually run in the RTC client. Even the tables will open in a pseudo-temp list style page with all the fields displayed.

For more helpful hints on getting the most out of Dynamics NAV, please visit our website. Be sure to subscribe to our blog and newsletters, so as never to miss update. 

Dynamics NAV Coffee Break: How to Correct and Print 1099 Tax Forms

It happens all the time, you didn’t realize a customer was a 1099 vendor, or their vendor card wasn’t set up properly from the beginning; fortunately, it is fairly simple to correct and print a 1099 tax form in Dynamics NAV. This video provides an overview on correcting and printing 1099 tax forms in Dynamics NAV. Gwen demonstrates how to ensure a vendor has a 1099 code in their vendor card, how to update ledger entries, indicate if a vendor and/or transaction is 1099 liable, and how to print out the 1099 once complete.

You can view this video and many other video tutorials for Dynamics NAV at ArcherPoint's YouTube Channel. 

For your convenience, the video transcript for correcting and printing 1099 tax forms in Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP follows:

All right. Today’s coffee break is on correcting and printing 1099s. As we all know, we get to the beginning of the year. We get ready to issue our 1099s and we realize that we have not been collecting 1099 information for a given vendor and we need to make some corrections, so that we can prevent the 1099.

It’s not uncommon. Either you didn’t know they were a 1099 vendor or that you weren’t set up properly. It doesn’t really matter. It fits this bill the same. So what you do is you go to the vendor card first. So I go to Departments and I’m going to go ahead and go to Purchases, Planning and open up my vendors.

So the first thing we want to do is look at the vendor’s card and make sure that there is an IRS 1099 code established. All right? So if there isn’t one, you can go ahead and put it in there or if there is one, great. Maybe the transactions just weren’t flagged as 1099 transactions.

So once that has been confirmed, you’re going to go to their ledger entries. So I’m going to go up here to History and click on the ledger entries and I have all the invoices and payments for this particular vendor and they are not showing up when I print my 1099s. So I need to edit these entries to show both of their 1099 – that they have a 1099 code and that there is the 1099 amount. So I’m going to right click and go to Choose Columns and I want to see two columns. One is the 1099 amount. I’m going to add that and the other is the 1099 code. So I will add that as well.

I’m going to go ahead and move these up, just to make it easier for us to work. All right. I click OK. And it’s just going to rebuild that screen, so that I can see those two columns. So as you see, all these invoices do not have a 1099 code and they don’t have a 1099 amount. So what we want to do is just go ahead and edit this list and what you do is you put in here the amounts.

Now remember, this is a vendor’s invoice. So the amount is going to be negative just like it was originally. So I just put in the original amount. One thing to note while I’m doing this is that the entire invoice may not have been 1099-liable. So in other words, maybe we got a service from this vendor and that is 1099-liable, but maybe there were some paths through cost that would not fall into that category and this 1099 amount doesn’t necessarily need to be the same nor should it be the same as the original amount of the invoice.

I just realized I made a mistake. Let me fix that. So in this case, I’m just going to go ahead and put in the same amount as the original invoice. But I want you to know there’s some flexibility there. So once that’s done, I just need to select the code that is appropriate for this vendor and I’m going to choose the non-employee compensation code and I’m just going to go down the list and do the same thing.

OK. One other thing that you need to know is that if an invoice has not yet been paid, it’s not going to show up in your – on your 1099 form. So you should still go ahead and put the amounts and the codes in here because it will make a difference in the future once this is paid.

But just know that you’re not expecting to see that amount on the actual 1099 form. So you will just go down the list and you will update each of the invoices. It’s a little tedious. But it’s not the end of the world. You usually don’t have that many. Make sure that you put in the code on each of them and lastly, we will go ahead and put this one in.

All right. So now that I’ve done that, I can go ahead and get out of the screen. I’m clicking OK and I can print my 1099 reports. So if I click up here on report for this vendor card and I go to 1099 – Vendor 1099 Miscellaneous and I put in my calendar year. I can go ahead and print them right from here, right?

So that’s it. It really is that easy and you can also – prior to printing the actual forms, you can go into Vendor 1099 Information and go ahead and preview that report and that will show you all the different forms and the amounts that you should expect to see when you print the 1099s. That’s it! That concludes our lesson on correcting and printing your 1099s.

Thanks for watching this ArcherPoint video. If you found it helpful, make sure to check out our website and blog at www.ArcherPoint.com. Additionally, if you have any questions regarding our products, services or information in this video, feel free to email us at info@archerpoint.com. Thanks.

NAV Coffee Break: New Feature of Dynamics NAV 2017 - Report Settings

Report Settings is a new feature of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017. This new technology allows you to create and save canned filters on reports, any report, within Dynamics NAV. Having the ability to create and save report filters can help save time and improve efficiency in your day-to-day NAV use. While this feature works for any report you use, in this video, Gwen demonstrates setting up filters for the trial balance report.

You can view this video and many other video tutorials for Dynamics NAV on ArcherPoint's YouTube Channel.

For your convenience, you may read the video transcript:

Welcome to today’s Coffee Break. Today’s lesson is on a new feature that’s available in NAV 2017 called Report Settings and what report settings do is they let you pre-filter – actually let you save filters on reports. So what I’m going to do is show you the trial balance and we’re going to set up some canned filters that we might want when we’re running our trial balance report.

So the first thing I do is I’m going to show you the trial balance and detail summary. So right now, it looks like your standard trial balance. I’m going to preview it. I’ve filtered out my inventory items or my inventory accounts. Let me just close this and I’m just going to run it again and I want to show you something that pops up. You may notice this when you get your 2017 out of the box.

You get this new box at the top that says “saved settings”. So right now, it says “last used options and filters,” and if I click on the dropdown, there are no other choices. So what it does is it’s just keeping track of the last information that I filtered on. In this case, my inventory accounts. What I can do though is I can create additional filters. So I’m just going to go up here to Report Settings and this is found in the – under administration, application set-ups, general and report settings or you can just do the search for report settings.

So what has happened is because I ran that report, it’s actually listed in these report settings with my last filter. What I want to do is create a new filtered, pre-filtered trial balance and just so you know, as you run each report in the system, this particular table will become more and more populated with those different report IDs.

So if you want to preview a report and then you decide you want to come in here, once you’ve previewed it, you will see it listed in here. So I’m going to go ahead and copy this number, the report ID, and I’m just going to do New and we will do one for accounts receivable, same report.

But now what I want to do is I want to click on Modify. So I’m going to change my accounts to be my accounts receivable accounts. We will do domestic and we will do foreign. There we go. For the date filter, I’m going to do from the beginning of time up until the last date in my test database here.

The other thing I like to do is I don’t like to see entries that were booked directly to the GL, usually because I’m comparing this to my accounts receivables reports. So I’m going to need to go ahead and put an additional filter here for my source code and say I don’t want to see anything that was booked directly to these accounts through the general journal. I just click OK.

So that’s preset. Now I’m going to do the same thing for accounts payable. Same report. Different filters. Again I modify and I’m going to put in my accounts receivable accounts. I’m going to do foreign and domestic. There we go. My same date filters. You don’t have to put in a date filter. You can leave as blank. I’m just showing you, you have different options here and again I will do my source type – sorry, my source code, not equal to general journal.

OK. So let’s go back to the trial balance, detail and summary, and now I have a list of options in my saved settings dropdown box. If I choose Accounts Payable, that information in the filter box gets updated according to the filters that I set in the report settings. Now when I preview it, I will see only my accounts payable accounts just like I wanted to see. That’s it. You can do that for any report in the system.

You can actually use permissions to assign it to different people. But I just wanted to sort of introduce this new technology to you that’s available in NAV 2017. A lot of people have been asking this for many, many years. So they will be very happy to see this. I hope you enjoyed this and take advantage of it. That concludes our lesson on setting up report settings.

Thanks for watching this ArcherPoint video. If you found it helpful, make sure to check out our website and blog at www.ArcherPoint.com. Additionally, if you have any questions regarding our products, services or information in this video, feel free to email us at info@archerpoint.com. Thanks.

How to Find Which Version of Dynamics NAV You Are Using

With imminent updates coming to credit card payment processing per the PCI Security Standards Council, the ArcherPoint team would like to share how you can find out what version of Dynamics NAV you are running. This information is important for your NAV partner to know when determining what the next steps are to ensure you will be able to continue processing credit card payments.

How to Find Your Version Number in Dynamics NAV 2009 or Lower Versions

Navigate to Help from any screen in the Dynamics NAV Classic Client and select the “About Microsoft Dynamics NAV Classic” option from the menu.

Figure 1: Selecting About Microsoft Dynamics NAV Classic from the Help menu

Once selected, you will see the version of Dynamics NAV you are running. In the screen below, it is NAV 6.0 R2 (6.00.32012). This is the information your partner is looking for if you are asked “What version of NAV are you on?”

Figure 2: Version information screen in Dynamics NAV Classic Client

How to Find Your Version Number in Dynamics NAV 2013 or Higher

Navigate to the Application menu as seen below:

Figure 3: Navigating to Dynamics NAV version information in the Role Tailored Client

Once selected, you will see the version of Dynamics NAV you are running:

Figure 4: Dynamics NAV version information screen in the Role Tailored Client

When you work every day in Dynamics NAV, you may forget (or not even realize) what version you are working in. But this information is very important to your partner when working to troubleshoot, give an upgrade estimate, or order new users for you. Please bookmark this blog for future reference.

Emailing Reports with a Custom Email Body in Dynamics NAV 2017

This article is an extended version of the article posted last year regarding emailing document reports in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016. With NAV 2017, Microsoft has enhanced the feature of emailing reports with a pre-defined body. It is now a configurable emailing feature in standard Dynamics NAV.

The pre-defined body is not a hard-coded message from Microsoft, but rather is configurable at the user level. Microsoft used the Word layout feature to generate an email body, which is auto-executed and added in email.

With Dynamics NAV 2017, Microsoft provides multiple Word layouts for commonly used reports in Dynamics NAV.

To choose the layout you want:

Open Report Selection Menu. Here you will see a new field added entitled “Email Body Layout Description.” Select the Word layout that you want to appear as the body of email as shown in the image below:

Figure 1 – Selecting a Word Template for Email Body Layout in NAV 2017

To email an invoice, open the Posted Sales Invoices page, and then select the invoice that you want to email. Then from the Action Tab, select the action Send by Email, as shown below:

Figure 2 – Email Document in NAV 2017 with Customer Email & Body Template

If you want to send a document without opening email in Outlook, then un-check the Edit in Outlook option,and you can specify the email address and other details in the same window. Once you click OK, and your SMTP server is configured for the NAV Company, then the system sends an email to the customer.

You can also attach a report in an email. To do so, you can select the Customer Card and email body from the Word layout selection in Report Selections.

Figure 3 – Email Send from Dynamics NAV 2017

Benefits of Using a Custom Email Body in Dynamics NAV 2017

With this feature, we as developers and users of Dynamics NAV can develop specific email body templates for our customers and internal purposes, saving time and effort.

The best part is there is no limit on number of Word layouts that a report can have. Plus, you do not need a developer license nor need to be a NAV developer to create a Word layout for a report. You can do this easily if you understand the mail merge feature of Microsoft Word.

If you have any questions about this function or other Dynamics NAV questions for any version, contact ArcherPoint.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV. If you are interested in NAV development, check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs.

Read more Dynamics NAV blogs by Saurav Dhyani.

How To Create a Test Company in Microsoft Dynamics NAV

There are some very good reasons why you would want to have a test company setup for Dynamics NAV, including new employee training, exploring process changes, or before adding new, or updating existing, functionality. Having a test company allows you to examine the cause and effect of making changes to your master data (customers, items, vendors, etc.) without impacting your production data.

When creating a test company for Dynamics NAV, you need to make a couple of decisions first.

1. Where will it reside? Will the testing company be in the production database or in a test database?  Either way, it is good practice to create and update your test company monthly.
2. How will you copy your production data into the test company?

In this blog, we will create a test company and explore the options for the best location to place the test company. Let’s first walk through the differences between the options. These instructions are for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017.

Deciding Where to Setup the Testing Environment

When you think about how you want to setup your testing environment, you have two main choices: creating the test company in the production database or in a test database. The best practice is to create the test company in a test database. The main reason is to allow you to test different development changes and not affect your production environment. If you determine you don’t want to have changes or new development, ask yourself  the following questions to help facilitate your decision on where to place the test company:

• What will be easier for users to open and use?
• What will be easier for users to determine which company they are in?
• What is easier for the department that needs to create the test company?
• How long does it take to create?

Based on your answers, you will be able to make a decision on the best location for your test company. If in doubt, go with the decision of creating a test database where you can put the test company.

Making a Copy of Production Data

The next step is to make a copy of your production data. There are several ways to create the environment:

1. Backup your Database and Restore the Database in Test Environment

Make sure you understand the process first so that your production database is not accidentally changed.

2. Export Production Data and Import into Test Company

Do the objects/development customizations match between the two systems? If they do, follow the steps below. If they don’t match, you will need to get them in sync before you start.

3. Copy the Production Company

1. Open the NAV production database
2. Search “Companies”
3. Place your cursor on the line of the company you want to copy
4. In the ribbon select copy
5. Fill in the test company name
6. Once the process is complete, you will see the test company on the list

For option 2 above, export your production data into a test company, follow these steps:

Figure 1 – Database Search

5. From the list, select “Export to a data file”
6. Check which companies you want to export
7. Fill in the Description
8. Select which companies you would like to sync between test and production and pick the smallest company, so sync doesn’t take too much time
   
   Figure 2 – Export Data Field
9. Select OK
10. Save the file
11. Open Test while the data is exporting
12. Search Companies, You have two options
    1. Delete the company you want to replace
    2. Rename the company to a - old
13. When the export is done, from the test database
14. Search “Import from”
    
    Figure 3 – Import Data Field
15. Find where you saved the exported data
16. Select OK
17. After the import, you will want to verify the data came in and you have no issues.

Knowing how to create a test company in Dynamics NAV will give you a tool to grow and expand the use of the system.

If you would like to learn more about creating a test company, contact ArcherPoint.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV. 

How To Use Item Attributes in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017

Have you ever been in a situation where a you wanted to add some additional details about the Items in your inventory and you did not know where to add them? There are Description and Description 2 fields in the Item table, or you can use extended text or comments, but can it hold all the information that you want? For example, when NAV is integrated with an online store, that might demand more information about the Item in a structured way rather than having all the information flat in a Description field.

Fortunately, NAV 2017 comes with a new feature, ‘Item Attributes’ to rescue us from having to spend a few hours on customization to resolve this. It has a few commonly used attributes predefined in the Demo Database and the best part is that you can add any number of attributes to it and define what value types it accepts.

To define new Item Attributes, navigate to Sales & Marketing/Inventory & Pricing/Item Attributes. Then to create an attribute, you should provide the attribute name and the type of value it accepts as shown below. Item Attributes also supports multi language and when an attribute is no longer in use you can block it from the same page by simply checking the Blocked checkbox.

Figure 1 - Define the New Item Attribute in Dynamics NAV 2017

After creating new Item Attributes, we can define the values of the attributes to each item from the Items List page. In the Actions tab of the Items list page click on the Attributes icon, select the attributes, and enter their values in the Item Attribute Values window. Blocked Attributes and blocked Attribute values does not appear in the dropdown list. The information entered here is also available in the Attributes fact box on the right.

Figure 2 - Assigning Item Attributes to the Item in Dynamics NAV 2017

It is also possible to filter the Items based on the attribute values. To do this, click on the Filter by Attributes icon in the Items list page and enter the conditions based on which the list should be filtered. It supports the commonly used filtering operations and makes it possible to filter the items based on multiple attributes and multiple attribute values, which functions similar to page filters.

Figure 3 - Filtering Items by Attributes in Dynamics NAV 2017

The filtering option is helpful in selecting the items in a Sales Order or Sales Invoice page, as you can apply the Item Attributes filter by clicking ‘Advanced’ in the Item field of the order lines.

In NAV 2017, we can also define attributes for the Item Categories, which will be applied to the item as we select Item Category while creating new Items.

Figure 4 - Assigning Attributes to Item Categories in Dynamics NAV 2017

While Item Attributes is a small change in the product, it has a huge impact on customers and partners. Partners should be ready with the commonly applicable item attributes as per the customers’ items. It will be easy to deploy when setting up Dynamics NAV for new NAV customers. We should also be able to customize the reports to allow customers to filter the reports based on the Item Attributes, which will help them analyze data better.

If you have any questions about this function or other Dynamics NAV questions for any version, contact ArcherPoint.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

If you are interested in NAV development, check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs.

How to Backup and Restore NAV Database Using SQL Server 

Data is one of the most valuable assets of any company. To ensure you keep your data safe, database backups are essential.

After the release of NAV 2013 R2, Microsoft discontinued the NAV Database backup (.fbk) feature. An additional option was added to allow for import/export of data in NAV 2013 R2, but doing a backup using the Import/Export Data feature is time consuming. For a complete Database backup, SQL Backup is the best and fastest option.

Creating a Full Backup From SQL Server Management Studio

• Open SQL Server Management Studio from the menu
• Navigate to Database for which you want to create backup

Right click the Database. Select Tasks → Backup

Figure 1 - Select Backup from SQL Server Management Studio

• To create a full backup, select ‘Full’ in Backup type
• Choose where to  save the backup file using ‘Add’ button under Destination

• Under Options select ‘Verify backup when finished’ to ensure that all the files in the backup are readable and can be restored
• Click ‘Ok’. Backup File will be generated in the specified location

Figure 2 - Options in the SQL Server Backup Window

Restoring the Dynamics NAV Database

To restore a full database backup, which we created through previous steps:

Right click the Databases → Restore Database

Figure 3 - Restore Database Options

• Select ‘Device’ and click Assist Edit button.
• Click ‘Add’ and navigate to destination where backup file is stored
• Select .bak file and click ‘OK’
• Click ‘OK’ in ‘Select backup devices’ window

Figure 4 - Select the Backup File to Restore

• Fill in the name of new database
• Navigate to ‘Options’ and uncheck the check boxes under Tail-log backup

Figure 5 - Rename the Database and the Option Restore Window

• Navigate to ‘Files’ and update the data file and log file as shown below
• Click ‘OK’
• Database is restored

Figure 6 - Rename File Window for Database

Best Practices for Dynamics NAV Database Backup and Restore

1. A Complete SQL Backup of Production database should be taken weekly (over the weekend)
2. The SQL Backup process can be automated using a SQL Server Agent

If you have any questions about this function or other Dynamics NAV questions for any version, contact ArcherPoint.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

If you are interested in NAV development, check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs.

Benefits of Using the Dynamics NAV Web Client

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, Microsoft released a new client option, the Web Client. Despite the benefits, many customers are still not using this option. This blog will dispel some myths surrounding the Web Client as well as describe the benefits of using it over the Windows Client.

Enhanced Capabilities

The Web Client capabilities are enhanced with every new version release of NAV, which is not always true with the Windows Client. If a customer plans to switch to using the Web Client, there are other benefits, including:

• installation is not required on every client machine;
• platform cumulative updates are easy to implement (update only required on the server); and
• hardware and software requirements are nearly zero; a client will only need a supported Web browser.

Cost of Using the Web Client

When we look towards the cost of using the Web Client from a license perspective and development cost, it is zero.  The Dynamics NAV user can use both the Windows and Web Client. Development/ customization done by partners and Add-On providers will automatically work with the Web Client without any additional cost.

If you compare the Windows and Web Clients in NAV 2017, there are number of features that only work with the Web Client. Read more about the enhancements in the NAV 2016 Web Client.

If you have read about the new AL Extension for Visual Studio, there are certain features that lead me to believe that the future of Dynamics NAV will be using only the Web Client. For example, the new AL Compiler in Visual Studio auto populates the Web Client after compilation. Moreover, the design mode (In-client Designer) option, where users can add new fields, change layout, and create simple extensions, is only available within the Web Client. Read more about the In-Client Designer option here.

Figure 1: Screen Shot of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Client

Effort of Using the Web Client

Lastly, the level of effort and time required to apply cumulative updates (hotfixes) using the Windows Client instead of the Web Client can be significant. Imagine if you have 300+ user terminals all requiring this hotfix. If you use the Web Client, the hotfix can be applied in a maximum of 30-minutes to one hour; but if you use the Windows Client, you need to apply the hotfix on all of the Windows Client terminals/machines and server(s), which can take hours to complete.

Benefits of Using the Web Client with Microsoft Dynamics NAV at a Glance:

• The hassle-free Client is now the Web Client. No installation is required
• The Web Client can be accessed from any computer; as a user, one would only need their ID and password
• Executable updates are easier as they only need to be performed on the server
• Using the Web Client outside the company network is easy to configure

If you have any questions about this function or other Dynamics NAV questions for any version, contact ArcherPoint.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

If you are interested in NAV development, check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs.

Read more Dynamics NAV blogs by Saurav Dhyani.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 Architecture

An entire book could be written, and likely has, on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 architecture and how to design the on premise infrastructure to host it. To help you get the most out of this software, and to understand the foundation on which it has been built, this blog provides a summarized version of Dynamics NAV 2017’s complex architecture.

Three-Tier System

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 is a three-tier (or three-layer) architecture system. It consists of:

• presentation tier
• logic or business processing tier
• database management system tier

The presentation tier consists of the NAV Windows Client (formerly RTC), the NAV Web Client, the NAV Tablet/Phone Client (Universal App), and the NAV Development Environment. The business logic-processing tier is where the NAV code is executed and is called the NAV Service Tier or NST for short. The database management system tier is SQL Server.

In the older two-tier (2009 and older) architecture, the Classic Client performed all the business logic processing. It was considered a fat client; it had to be located on the same LAN segment as the database server. The new presentation tier is a thin collection of clients. The one slight exception is the NAV Development Environment that is exclusively used to develop NAV code. The rest of the user interface clients, because of being thin, can be deployed in a variety of dispersed environments, from LAN to WAN to over the Internet. The NAV Windows Client for Dynamics NAV 2017 now comes in a 64-bit version, which enhances performance and supports larger report datasets than the limited 32-bit client from NAV 2013 to 2015.

The business logic-processing tier is a service that runs on a server and links or sits in the middle between the client and the database. There is so much that can be said about the capabilities of the NST service, but the primary take away for this discussion is that the service is 64-bit and multi-threaded, meaning it uses more than one processing core to process. Its job is to execute the NAV code as requested by the client, translating the code into SQL queries, processing the data, and passing the resulting information back to the client.

Many have the misconception that most of the work being done in a NAV environment is on the SQL Server. While SQL server does do a lot of work, the real work to take data and turn it into information is done on the NST. The queries that are generated in the translation of NAV code to TSql are simple. They are reads, writes, edits and deletes. No complicated table joins, table triggers or stored procedures to execute. This means SQL Server uses relatively little CPU cycles compared to the NST. The SQL Server does use a lot of RAM and needs very fast disks particularly for reading.

Best Way to Configure Dynamics NAV 2017

You might be thinking, “Brian, we know about the three-tier architecture since back in NAV 2009 sp1. But how do we size the hardware and what is the best way to configure NAV 2017?” That is a great question and really the point of this blog post. Microsoft has not released performance-testing results since they came out with NAV 2013 R2, but fortunately, the architecture has not changed since then with the slight exception of the 64-bit Windows Client. In the Microsoft white paper, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 Sizing Guidelines for On-Premises Single Tenant Deployments, we see in their conclusions that 500 concurrent users completed 90% of their tasks with acceptable response time.

The amount of RAM used broke down to 5MB per user plus 500MB for overhead. What the paper also suggests is that four CPU cores is the optimum number to handle 500 concurrent users, or approximately 150 users per core. What they found was that beyond 500 users even adding more RAM did not improve performance. Therefore, to handle more users requires scaling out to multiple servers instead of scaling up the hardware. While it is great that the results show a potential for 500 concurrent users performing transactions on a single service, it is important to keep in mind these were done on a small base NAV CRONUS database and simple transactions. In the real world with customization and ISV add-ons, the number is more like 200-250 concurrent users.

SQL Server

SQL Server hosting a Dynamics NAV 2017 database is a light consumer of CPU cycles but a heavy consumer of RAM and dependent on very fast disks. SQL Server is designed to cache as many previously queried datasets into RAM as it can in case those queries are executed again. SQL Server will cache the entire database given time and enough RAM, and this is a good thing. Therefore, a good rule of thumb is you should have more RAM on your SQL Server than the size of your database (plus 2-4GB for the OS). This rule starts to break down with databases larger than 128GB due to restrictions set on the Standard Edition of SQL Server. If your database is larger than 200GB and you have more than 100 users, seriously consider the Enterprise Edition and stick to the rule. Fast disks are solid state or 15k RPM SAS drives in RAID10 arrays on local controllers. There are a glut of best practice SQL disk setup guides, so I am not going to dive deep here. Suffice it to say, NAV is a lot like any other OLTP database with about a 75% read to 25% write ratio, so dedicate a disk array for the data files and another for the transaction log file(s). All other databases and administrative files should be on a third array.

NST Server

The NST server is where the real magic happens; this is where the NAV code is executed. The most important thing I can say about designing this server is use the fastest CPUs possible. I am talking GHz frequency; 2.8GHz is the bottom number. I recommend 3.1GHz and higher for my clients. Newer CPUs that have bursting technology might idle at 2.0 to 2.4GHz, but are capable of spiking up beyond 3.0GHz. For environments of 25-50 people, two CPU cores is all that is needed. Widen the freeway with more cores if you have more users, but make sure the ride is fast with those higher frequency cores. The NST service is 64-bit and can consume higher amounts of RAM. However, the really busy services that I run into rarely use more than 4GB at a time and unlike SQL server will throttle back down when not in use. The NST service is multi-functional or has multiple end-points. It serves four unique functions, client connections, two flavors of web services (SOAP & OData), and the headless client known as NAS. I recommend to my clients that if they are going to deploy more than the client connection function, that they deploy dedicated services for each and disable the functions not used in each service. Theoretically, a fully deployed NST would have four NST services each with a dedicated Active Directory user Service Account. In that case, I would recommend 14GB of RAM for the server. Four for the OS, four for the client connection NST, two each for the SOAP, OData, and NAS services. (Stay tuned for a future posting on best practice NST settings.)

Client Computers

As for the client computers, any Windows 8.1 or 10 computer with at least 2GB of RAM can host the NAV Windows Client. Microsoft does not officially support Dynamics NAV 2017 on Window 7 (don’t tell anybody, but it runs just fine on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit or higher with Service Pack 1). The NAV Web Client can be accessed from just about any HTML browser. The NAV Universal App can be installed on Android, iOS or Windows devices, but on 4” or more for phones and 7” or more for tablets. The NAV Universal App consumes the secured (https) NAV Web Client site inside or outside the on premise network. There are a couple of ways to deploy the NAV Windows client easily with unattended installation or using Microsoft’s ClickOnce .NET application deployment tool the details for each easily accessible on MSDN.

The Dynamics NAV 2017 three-tier architecture is more complicated than in previous versions. Do not fret though; it just takes a little planning and a little help from your friendly neighborhood Dynamics NAV partner to put together the best possible system for your on premise deployment.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV. For more technical blogs, check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Report Hacks 

Working with reports in Dynamics NAV can be quite interesting and is actually intuitive, especially if you have a few report hacks, reminders, and ways to make things easier at your disposal.

Below are some of the aspects of report development that are often overlooked or forgotten.  Without these reminders, working with reports in Dynamics NAV can be difficult and frustrating. Feel free to print this list out and keep it handy when working with reports.

Top Things to Keep in Mind when Working with Reports in Dynamics NAV

Filters for Integer loop:  Imagine counting from -2,147,483,647 to 2,147,483,647. That is what happens when you run a report with Integer DataItem without filters. It is important to set filters for all the DataItems in the report. When you do not, you will end up with a report displaying items of irrelevant orders, incorrect customer balances, etc.

Scope: Have you ever come across a scenario in which aggregate functions like Sum give a gigantic value?  It often happens in reports with multiple groups. A lifesaver here is the usage of Scope.

Angular Brackets for Dates: When you are developing a multi-language report, make sure that the date formulae are enclosed in angular brackets. If you do not, the formula 1W+1D in English may be converted to 1S+1J in French, which could be a big problem.

Also, do not forget to set language of the report as follows:

CurrReport.LANGUAGE := Language.GetLanguageID(“Language Code”)

Page Size: It is easy to forget about this property, which will result in blank pages/data cut off/ wrapping of data etc. if you do not set the page size.

Rectangle: It is quite common to see texts displayed in incorrect positions especially in Report Headers. This happens even when CanGrow and CanShrink property of the textbox is set to false. Here Rectangle comes to our rescue. Place textbox/textboxes inside a Rectangle and the problem is solved!

Number Formatting: You may wonder why numbers are not formatted even when you set the number format. One of the reasons could be that the textbox values may not have been converted to a numeric value. CInt or CDec function comes in handy to resolve this issue.

HTML: To allow html content in your report make sure you set Markup Type as HTML - Interpret tags as styles in Placeholder properties.

No Image:  If your logo or image is missing in your report then there is a high chance that you missed using CALCFIELDS for the picture field.

Barcode: Use a Barcode scanner to verify if the barcode in your report is readable. Many a times you can see barcode displayed in the report but it will not be readable by the scanner.

Temporary: Make sure that you set the Temporary property for Buffer tables and Temporary variables to avoid deletion of any data.

Page Number:  If you see continuous page numbers across the document, then it is time to check the ResetPageNumber property of the group.

Padding: Is the textbox content wrapping even after setting CanGrow and CanShrink property as False? If so, then adjust the size of text box or change the padding to avoid wrapping.

Report Header Size: If your report header is huge but you do not want it to occupy so much space in all the pages then you can just move the contents of report header to the report body.

Keys: Yes, it does matter in Reports too. You have to set a key for DataItem or use SETCURRENTKEY to avoid long running time of the reports.

Permissions: Set appropriate permissions for the report to use other objects otherwise the users may face errors while running the report.

HRESULT Error: It is a quite common error, which occurs while using Export to Excel. It could happen due to many reasons. One of the most common reasons is setting invalid Cell Type. So make sure that the datatype of a field and Cell Type are compatible.

Read more "How To" blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Check out our collection of NAV Development Blogs, visit our resource center, and be sure to subscribe to our newsletters.

Fixing the Location Filter in Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 to NAV 2016

Dynamics NAV 2017, What’s That? Account Subcategories

Dynamics NAV 2017 and Account Subcategories

I recently have explored some of the new features that Dynamics NAV 2017 has available, and the Account Subcategories deserves a closer look. In a prior blog I mentioned how the Account Category in Dynamics NAV 2017 can be used to set the Income/Balance Field. In this blog, we will discuss Account Subcategories. 

In NAV 2017, Microsoft added a field to G/L Account called the Account Subcategory.  Subcategories are related to the Account Categories, and can be added by users for high level analysis needs.

Defining Subcategories in NAV 2017

From the CRONUS USA, Inc./Departments/Financial Management/General Ledger menu, select G/L Account Categories:

Figure 1 - How to Access Account Categories in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017

The page that opens up reveals the G/L Account Categories and the Subcategories that are related to them.

Figure 2 - G/L Account Categories Page in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017, Showing Account Categories and Subcategories

From this screen you can do a few tasks such as:

• Click the triangle next to each category line, which will explode the Categories to Subcategories.
• Look at the Balance from the assigned G/L accounts associated with the Categories.
• Add and reclassify Subcategories.
• Add additional report definitions from the choices of:
  • Operating Activities
  • Investing Activities
  • Financing Activities
  • Cash accounts
  • Retained Earnings
  • Distribution to Shareholders.
• Open the G/L Account Cards associated with a Category or Subcategory by reviewing the Factbox on the side.

Assigning Subcategories to G/L Accounts in NAV 2017

On the G/L Account card, after assigning an Account Category, you can assign a Subcategory by drilling into the Account Subcategory field. This will open a view of the G/L Account Categories page filtered to the Category assigned to the Account. From here you can easily assign the correct Subcategory.

Figure 3 - Assigning Account Subcategories in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017

This tool gives users quick access to the status of various accounts and allows you to group them as needed. 

In a future blog, I’ll discuss the use of defaulting Account Schedules and shortcuts for running a Default Balance Sheet and Income Statement with Dynamics NAV 2017.

For more on the features and functionality of Dynamics NAV 2017, please visit our website. And be sure to subscribe to our blog so you’ll never miss an update.