For as long as I have been consulting, there have been Account Schedules in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central/NAV (That’s a very long time and now it’s about to change!)
In the second major release for this year (2022 Release, Wave 2 in Oct 22) we see a new name for Account Schedules. Financial Reporting is the modern, new name along with some new features that should make this underutilised functionality a little more user friendly & dynamic.
Within the Finance menu, you will find the Financial Reporting Option.
When you open the new list of Financial Reports, you will have a ready-made list of reports to run with your pre-set Row & Column definitions. If you’re a slice & dice kind of person, then you can still do this and the last combination used will be saved in the Financial Reports list ready to use next time.
Here is the list of my ‘Financial Reports’.
The list may end up larger than your current ‘Account Schedule’ list as you may want to create the different versions of your Financial Reports, defining the rows & columns for each version, rather than the mix & match style of the Account Schedules.
If I select the Financial Report Name, I open the viewing mode where the row & column layout are set and I can change my run time options such as date periods & budget or dimension filtering.
- Options
- Select the View by – Day/Month/Year/Quarter/Year/Accounting Period
- Show All Lines *NEW*
- Previously when you set a row to Show = No, this did not change the report preview, only the printed report was affected. Now you can toggle the Show All lines on/off to show or not show rows in this report preview as well as the printed report.
3. Dimension Filters
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- You can still apply your dimension filters and a budget filter (though you want to take advantage of being able to set budget filters at line or column level so you can use more than one budget in the report. (Compare Actuals to Budget to Reforecasts.)
4. Period
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- Use the Previous & Next Period buttons to change the date filter without typing the new date range.
5. Export to Excel
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- Sending the report to excel remains the same, create a new workbook or update an existing one.
Since we are viewing the Financial Report & not editing, we don’t get the option to mix & match our rows & columns here. We can still do that we just have to use the Edit Financial Reports option.
I can edit my report & change the row or column layout & that will update the Financial Report list. All the previously listed run time options are also available in the Edit Financial Report page.
The other big difference between Account Schedules and Financial Reporting is the creating & editing of Rows. Editing Row Definitions now has its own function, separate from the Edit Financial Report mode. With Account schedules, editing the row layout was completed in the Edit Account Schedule page.
Account Schedules have always been a great user-defined report-writing tool that didn’t require developers (nothing against developers, as users it’s nice to be able to write our own reports 😊). This latest update has given this great report-writing tool some tweaks that make it easier to understand with some nice new touches to improve the overall user experience. It’s a big thumbs up from this long-term Account Schedule advocate.