Date and number fields offer a lot more functionality than most users are aware of. In this blog post I will show you some great things that you can do with them in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
Not everything will be specifically useful to you, so look at where you do a lot of repetitive capturing and figure out which tips below will help you work faster.
Numbers
This is a simple but powerful function. When you capture a value into a Microsoft Dynamics NAV number field, the system will allow you to enter a calculation and it will work out the result. So instead of pulling out the calculator to work out what 225 units at $1.32 each will be, you can enter the calculation directly into NAV.
NAV then replaces this calculation with the correct amount when you press enter.
Dates
There is a lot of functionality hidden in the date field. Clicking on the drop down will open the date field and the arrows at the top will allow you to page from month to month.
Clicking on the month at the top (on the word “January”) will zoom out showing the months, if you need to quickly navigate to a specific month. Clicking on the “2014” will zoom out to years.
Clicking on the word “Today” on the bottom, will select todays date.
You are also able to type some speed codes directly into the date field and have the date filled in for you automatically. Here is a run down of these codes:
“t” for Today
Typing the letter “t” into a date field then pressing enter will replace the letter with today’s date, as illustrated below.
Press Enter
“w” for Work Date
The work date is a date that accounting people are able to specify when they are doing a lot of repetitive entries on a date other than today.
For example at month end, even though today is the X of the new month, the financial people need to post a lot of entries on the last day of last month. They can set their work date to be the last day of last month and NAV will automatically default all journal and documents to use that set date rather than today’s date.
“w” can also be typed into a date field and the system will fill in the work date for you.
Date Format
Microsoft Dynamics NAV is pretty smart when it comes to entering dates. As long as you enter the date in the order that you have set it up to be in, normally – DD MM YY. Although, you can set it to be different. If you want, it will happily accept many different formats.
The following are all valid ways to enter a date of 30 July 2013. So, entering any of the following will return the correct date:
30-06-13
30613
30/06/13
300613
NAV will also work with a 2 or 4 digit year in all of the above, so 30-06-2013 is the same as 30-06-13.
The idea here is that you can easily enter the date any way you want and NAV will automatically change it to the format that has been setup for the system to run. However, I find that most users eventually drop all special characters and enter it in the fastest way which is, 300613.
Part Dates
NAV also assumes this month of this year. What that means is that, as we are currently in June 2013, if I enter a date of 15 and press enter, the system will complete the date as 15/06/2013. The same is true of entering 1504, NAV will change that to 15/04/2013.
More Codes
NAV also accepts week day names. If you type “Mon” NAV will convert that to this Monday’s date. Entering “W24” will have the system fill in the date for week 24 of this year.
Closing Dates
Closing dates are used by the system for the closing of the financial year. These dates are the very last thing at the end of the day for example on 30/06/2013. Several financial reports in NAV can ignore these dates so that you can for example, run a financial report on the income statement and exclude the closing entries.