Opening Entries for NAV, this how I do it, comments?

cveale

For starters, I am converting a client from an accounting package to NAV. We are not doing this at year end, we are just picking a cut off date, and doing the conversion. Let's say the cut off date is today, Jan. 19.

For AP, I see what is in the AP account as of Jan. 19. All open AP entries should equal this amount. I use a dataport and and import in all the open AP entries into a purchase journal. The balancing account will be the AP account itself. An example.

vendor # 123 CR 200, balancing account would be DR 200 (to the AP account)

This way my journal balances, and I have my new opening entries.

I do the exact same thing on the AR side.

So my purchase and sales journals balance to zero, and then when i import in my Trial Balance (as of Jan. 19 ) into a general journal, and post it, Everything Balances.

One question i have is about inventory, and i may need help here. Now would i take an inventory valuation as of Jan. 19, let's say it's DR 20,000.

To bring in my opening item quantities, I would just do an item journal, tag all the lines as a 'positive adjustment' , enter in all my items, and the total of all my item journal lines should equal 20,000. But before I post, I would change the inventory adjustment account to the inventory account, so when i post the item journal, it would net my inventory account to zero, but then my opening cost would show up for my items.

That is how i think the inventory can be done. Anyone have any comments?

themave

That is how we did ours back in 1999, dataport into Journals and post the journals. Letting Navision post the entries from the journals, gets all the dimensions entered, and all the related posting. Which reminds me, when we did it, there where no separate dimension lines, we posted the departments and program codes etc. right on the journal. Now there are the Line dimensions that you also have to enter. so your dataport with need to bring in those as well.

I would also do the bank ledger entries the same way.

For the general ledger, we actually made net month end entries going back a couple of years, so that going forward we could run financial comparision reports with prior periods.

ssingla

themave wrote:

Which reminds me, when we did it, there where no separate dimension lines, we posted the departments and program codes etc. right on the journal. Now there are the Line dimensions that you also have to enter. so your dataport with need to bring in those as well.

I believe if we call validate call on Journal lines for dimensions they are automatically inserted in Line Dimension table.

dimus

Another option is to setup a Gen. Business Group, i.e. OPENINV and map Inventory Adj. Account to the Inv. Account.
In the dataport set to update Gen. Business Group on the Item Journal Lines to OPENINV. This way we did not have to change posting setups and were able to post open inventory even after go-live w/o any changes to the posting setups.

David_Singleton

cveale wrote:

...We are not doing this at year end, we are just picking a cut off date, and doing the conversion. Let's say the cut off date is today, Jan. 19....

=D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

Very smart move. In all my years in Navision. One thing I have never comprehended is why Navision partners seem to support the idea of doing a conversion on the worst possible days, for example 1-Jan or a month end when every one is very busy. Converting at a neutral mid month day in a quiet month massively increases the chance of a simple successful conversion. Good decision.

By the way the rest of what you suggest seems fine, though I also like dimuses suggestion of creating a new posting group, it just makes things safer and easier to audit later.

idiot

There are reasons for advocating a year-end cutoff rather than a mid year mid month cutoff.

eg Detailed statistics. How do you bring over these? Replicate from beginning of the year? Consolidate reports from 2 different systems? Efforts required?
In cases of discrepancies (especially partial outstanding amounts) which system to adjust?
When accounts are not closed, you have details which you need to verify against a just total after accounts are closed, again effort required?

matttrax

idiot wrote:

Detailed statistics. How do you bring over these?

What statistics would you need to bring over? I would think whatever the customer needed to see would be planned for in advance and base or custom reports would be used / created.

idiot wrote:

In cases of discrepancies (especially partial outstanding amounts) which system to adjust?

Shouldn't you zero out the balances of everything in the old system? I mean it's been moved to a new system to keep track of, so it's not a balance anymore in the old one.

Of course you'll always want to keep the old system around for access by a select group of users, but I don't see any reason to favor the first or last of a month over any other date. Just my two cents.

idiot

The rule of the thumb is to migrate as little as possible, the lesser you migrate, the lesser the possibility of error, the lesser to reconcile. Consistency is another factor. You would want to migrate only consistent & verified data, not a mixture of summary & details. The key: is effort, risk required justified & avoidable? Doing the conversion at year end reduces the risk significantly.

matttrax wrote:

What statistics would you need to bring over? I would think whatever the customer needed to see would be planned for in advance and base or custom reports would be used / created.

eg Report 112, 113
Effort required to produce the report? Would this effort be saved if done at year end after closing where you lesser figures to compare?

matttrax wrote:

Shouldn't you zero out the balances of everything in the old system? I mean it's been moved to a new system to keep track of, so it's not a balance anymore in the old one.

I'm not sure what you mean by zero out the balances, especially in the middle of the month. eg rounding issues can cause headaches when reconciling between the systems with detailed transactions. It's also very common to apply payments to wrong invoices, if it's in the middle of the month, how do you handle? Effort required?

thinafans

themave wrote:

That is how we did ours back in 1999, dataport into Journals and post the journals. Letting Navision post the entries from the journals, gets all the dimensions entered, and all the related posting. Which reminds me, when we did it, there where no separate dimension lines, we posted the departments and program codes etc. right on the journal. Now there are the Line dimensions that you also have to enter. so your dataport with need to bring in those as well.

I would also do the bank ledger entries the same way.

For the general ledger, we actually made net month end entries going back a couple of years, so that going forward we could run financial comparision reports with prior periods.

item opening balance, If I tag Inventory Account and Adjustment account as same G/L Account, then my G/L balance and Inventory valuation will not be matched.

And also when i do consumption what will happen ?

Always inventory account will have credit balance.

Pls suggest.