Entering multiple lines in the General Journals within Business Central can be time-consuming. By leveraging Excel’s capabilities, you can efficiently prepare journal entries, setup a spreadsheet as a reusable template and seamlessly import data into Business Central.
There are three main ways to achieve this in Business Central:
- Copy from Excel and paste into Business Central
- Use the new Edit in Excel option
- Importing with a template via ebs-plus function*
*Note, this option will require a subscription to our ebs-plus extension.
Copy from Excel and paste into the Business Central Journal lines
1. Navigate to the General Journal page and select the relevant batch. Select the first row and press Ctrl+C to copy an empty journal line template. You should see “1 row copied” message on the screen.
2. Open Excel and select Ctrl+V to paste the template data showing the General Journal line columns.
3. Prepare the journal data in the Excel template file. Then highlight the rows and press Ctrl+C to copy the data.
4. Open the General Journal page in Business Central, point the mouse cursor to the first column and row then hit Ctrl+V to paste the data from the Excel file.
5. All the journal line data is now pasted instantly.
Edit in Excel
1. Navigate to the General Journals, select your relevant batch.
Note: You can utilise this with a new/empty batch or use it to change values monthly for a batch.
2. Select Share option from the Action Bar, select Edit in Excel from the dropdown menu.
3. This will download an Excel file containing data from the General Journal screen.
4. Open the downloaded file in Excel. If prompted, select Enable Editing to allow changes to the file.
This may take 1-2 minutes.
Note: If this is the first time you are using this feature you may need to sign in with your Microsoft 365 login to establish the connection between Excel and Business Central
5. This will download all available fields (not just the one’s on your journal screen). Navigate to the relevant fields and make your changes.
In this example, I’ll be updating the date, description and amounts, and adding another line.
6. After making all your edits, go to the Microsoft Dynamics pane on the right and select Publish. This will send your changes back to Business Central.
7. Once it’s successful you should see Publish Successful – workbook updated message.
8. Navigate back to Business Central Journals (hit F5 to refresh) and see the changes.
Importing from an Excel template
1. Navigate to the General Journals, select your relevant batch.
2. From the Home select Import Journal (ebs-plus).
4. When successful, the following message will appear.
If there are any errors, a message will show stating the issues to resolve.
