Dates Confusion

prashanti

Hi!!

Can anyone please tel me the actual different between the dates which are available on the documnet.
If its order (order date) or if its invoice (invoice date) in which field we should enter i.e. in posting date, order date or document date.

What is the difference between these 3 dates.

Rgds
Prashanti

David_Singleton

In reality you need to sit with the client and see how they do their business, and then compare it to Navision, but as a starting point..

order date = date the order was entered in the system.
Document date is used for AR
Posting date is when it hits the GL

Miklos_Hollender

Order date is obviously when the order was received.

Document Date is basically what for example one would call "invoice date", the date that is actually printed on the document. It is the date when the transaction is supposed to happen in real life. I'd call the Document Date the "real date" or "date of issuing". Simply consider the term "document" just a placeholder and subsitute the name of the document: it's the invoice date, the shipment note date, and so on. It's the external date, it's the date you communicate to your business partners. For example, in the standard - at least in those localizations I am familiar with - currency exchange rates are calculated with Document Date, because your customer does not care when you post your invoice (posting date), he cares only about when it was issued, and that's the document date.

Posting Date is date on which internal posting to the G/L and elsewhere takes place. This is uses for accounting purposes, for example, if you run a report or something for your monthly sum of sales revenue, it will be based on the Posting Date.

Actually they usually tend to be the same, there are some relatively rare exceptions at the ends of a month or a year. If I ship you something at 29/12/2009 and invoice it at 7/1/2010 I will set the document date 7/1/2010 because that's when I made the invoice, but the posting date I will set 28/12/2009 because that's when the actual delivery took place and therefore I will want to have it in my reports as 2009, not 2010.

Many accountants tend to like posting date of the invoice = shipment date of the shipment while document date = today, but of course it can vary by country and even by company, so you should ask them.

kriki

[Topic moved from 'NAV 2009' forum to 'NAV/Navision' forum]

prashanti

Thank u so much for giving so much clarity!!