We’re now on our eighth installment of this blog series exploring videos that take you through the differences and similarities in work processes between Dynamics GP and Dynamics 365 Business Central. Today, we’re focusing on the experience of entering General Journal Entries in Business Central and how it differs from GP. If you missed the first seven posts, you can catch them at the links below:
Stay tuned for the next video in this series that will compare correcting and reversing entries between Dynamics GP and Business Central.
If you need help with your Dynamics GP to Business Central migration, contact TrinSoft today.
Video transcript:
In this video, we’re going to talk about entering in general journals and GP and compare that to the experience of entering in those same transactions in Business Central.
To begin, let’s go to GP where I’ve already created a GL batch and entered in two different general journal entries. The first entry is for a monthly auto insurance bill for a small fleet of company vehicles we have.
I can see the journal entry number, the description, as well as the auto insurance expense account and operating cash being credited. In this same batch, I’ve also entered in a transaction for a monthly interest income on our savings account. I could continue to enter in more journal entries and when complete posts the batch.
Now let’s look at Business Central and see how we can enter in those same journal entries in general ledger. To begin I’ll navigate to the General Journal window. This is where we can create and define batches for our journal entries.
In this example, the batches are set up operationally, but you could also create batches per user if you had multiple users entering transactions into the general ledger. For our purposes, I’ll go ahead and select the default batch.
In the General Journal you can see much of that same information you did in GP. Let’s enter in the auto insurance journal entry we saw in GP. Because I don’t always remember the account number, I can start typing the name of the account and the drop-down will automatically filter for me.
I can update the description or reference if I want more detail and then finish filling out the rest of the journal entry with the correct debit amount and account being credited.
Next, I can select to create a new document and enter in the interest income journal entry. However, instead of entering the next journal entry the same as we just did, let’s look at another way you can enter in journal entries and Business Central.
By selecting the show more columns, you get a slightly different view of how you can enter in journal entries. You can see it’s showing my first document as two lines in the grid with my debit and credit amounts.
You can also enter the journal entry in a single line. Let’s do that for the interest income. You can see how it’s automatically filled in the next document number for me and I can start entering in the savings account and the amount of interest earned.
Next, I can enter in the offset account that will automatically be credited. And this is an example of a quick and efficient way to enter in a lot of journal entries all at once.
Lastly, if you do have a large general entry you are dealing with, you can always choose to edit in Excel, make the changes and publish those back to Business Central. Once the information is populated in Excel, I could easily make mass changes. If I had a large number of lines, I could copy the lines and then edit them.
In our example, I’ll go ahead and make a simple change to illustrate how to make a change and push that back into Business Central. Now that the changes have been published, we’ll go back into Business Central and refresh the screen to see the changes.
Upon refreshing, I can see that my amount has now been updated to $300. Once all the journal entries are entered, I can select to post them. And that’s a quick look at how you can easily and efficiently enter in journal entries in Business Central.
