Understanding Microsoft Dynamics NAV Account Schedules

Understanding Microsoft Dynamics NAV Account Schedules

Account Schedules within Microsoft Dynamics NAV are used to allow for the analysis of your Chart of Accounts by Dimension, in the previous blog post we discussed how Dimensions can be used for recording information relevant to the business with transactions, Account schedules now allow us to access and report on this information within the GL

Future Blogs will cover the other areas of the system relating to dimensions (Customers/Items/Vendors…etc) but in this post we will be focusing on the GL Account Schedules

Overview:

The Microsoft Dynamics NAV Account Schedules are designed so that after training, financial users are able to create their own reports from the GL,

It is possible for a finance user to create, Profit and Loss statements, Cost or Revenue reports, overheads, budget variance …etc then save these reports for running again into the future

When you add dimensions you can go significantly further by running these reports based on specific dimensions, in my examples I will be using the dimensions from the previous blog post again, these dimensions are:

Office – Melbourne, Sydney, Perth
Item Class – Building, Plumbing, Electrical
Department – Finance, Sales 1, Sales 2, Human Resources

If you have not read the previous post on Dimensions I suggest you do (here) to before continuing and it will give you the background to understand what we discuss here with account schedules

Further the system allows the saving of template row and column layouts; this means that you are able to use the rows from your profit and loss statement and combine it with the columns from your budget variance report to create a new Profit and Loss variance to budget in a few minutes without having to create the report from scratch

Being a Microsoft Product the Account Schedules can be exported directly into Excel, it is also possible to export them directly into PDF to attach to an email as a report pack

Now into the detailed bits:

 Account Schedule Layout:

The account schedule is split into two sections, the first is the Row Layout, and the second is the Column Layout

The row layout contains accounts from the GL or Budget, the rows can be actual GL accounts, Budget accounts, or calculations based on GL accounts for example, Sales lest cost of sales = profit

It is also possible to repeat a GL account but with a filter applied, so for example you are able to have the stationary account several times on the rows, but the first time with a filter of Perth, and the description changed to “Perth Stationary” the next line being “Melbourne Stationary” …etc. Following the office breakdown you are able to create a total line

It is also possible to create headings and structure the report into sections in the same way you would in Excel

Below are the fields you are able to use to format and calculate on the Rows, followed by some samples of row layouts

The Column Layouts determine how the numbers will be displayed there are many ways they can be used but some examples might be:

Calendar vs financial days, weeks, months, years

Multiple periods showing monthly columns

Budget figure for a period

Actuals for a period

A calculated column of the variance between budget and actual

Columns showing the period to date previous year / month and variance to current

Below are some examples of Column Layouts:

In closing:

Account schedules allow for the financial users to create their own financial reports & statements, and use the dimensions in the system to allow for a high level of detailed reporting

The rows and columns that are created by the user when they create new reports can be re-used meaning making new reports or adapting current reports becomes easy