Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive ERP tool that allows you to view valuable data and insights from across your organization, from finance to sales and beyond. Just like other ERP systems, tracking accounts are at the heart of Dynamics 365 Business Central. However, depending on the structure of your organization, you may find yourself with thousands of accounts in Dynamics 365 Business Central at your organization. In order to pull meaningful insights from all of the information available it’s essential to narrow the focus and collate the data into reports that clearly show you what you need, rather than sifting through pages and pages of information.
Thankfully, this is where Microsoft’s Account Schedules comes in.
What are Account Schedules in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Essentially, an Account Schedule is a reporting tool that allows you to pull data from across your accounts into concise and relevant reports depending on your requirements. You can use account schedules to analyze data from G/L accounts and extract what you need from the chart of accounts in a way that is digestible and presentable.
An additional benefit of using Account Schedules is that it allows you to carry out calculations that cannot be done directly in the chart of accounts, such as calculating profit margins. You can also use the account schedule to compare data between account periods to track results and your organization’s performance over time.
How to Create a New Account Schedule in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Creating a new account schedule in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is quite straightforward:
- Click on the search icon when viewing your chart of accounts and enter ‘Account Schedules’.
- Once you are on the Account Schedules page, click ‘new’ and enter your chosen account schedule name.
- Fill in the fields as necessary to create a report that suits your requirements. You can select an existing layout in the ‘Default Column Layout’ field.
- Click ‘Edit Account Schedule’. Now, create a row for each element that you want to include in your report.
- Click ‘Overview’ to view your report.
Depending on your individual reporting requirements, you can customize the column layout, add columns that calculate percentages or add formulas to compare accounting periods. For more information on how to customize your reports using account schedules, take a look at this comprehensive guide from Microsoft.
Get More From Account Schedules with the Advanced Account Schedules App by EFOQUS
The Advanced Account Schedules App is designed to pull any number or value out of any module in Dynamics 365 Business directly into the account schedule so you can take your reports to the next level without juggling multiple data sources.
Learn more now>>
Despite the many benefits account schedules provides to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central users out-of-the-box, the report creation is widely limited by the fact that standard account schedules only allows users to pull numbers from G/L accounts. Dynamics 365 Business Central is filled with raw data that is crucial to your business success, but a lot of this data sits outside of the G/L accounts and is therefore unavailable when compiling reports using the in-built account schedules tool. This means that getting AR, AP, inventory, or warehousing numbers into financial reporting can be extremely challenging with Dynamics 365 Business Central without a value-add app such as Advanced Account Schedules.
Enhance Reporting Capabilities with the Advanced Account Schedules App
If you want to upgrade your reporting using the account schedules functionality in Dynamics 365 Business Central to break away from only using G/L accounts data, then the Advanced Account Schedules application by EFOQUS could be the perfect solution for you.
EFOQUS’s Advanced Account Schedules app allows you to overcome the limitations of the out-of-the-box account schedules functionality in Dynamics 365 Business Central. This app from EFOQUS allows you to access data from anywhere in Business Central, even data outside the G/L, so you can upgrade your reporting capabilities without having to juggle multiple data sources. On top of this, draft data is also available in Advanced Account Schedules, making it possible to pull quotes, orders, and information from journals into your reports.
How Does the Dynamic 365 Business Central Advanced Account Schedules App Work?
The Advanced Account Schedules app fully integrates with the existing account schedules functionality in Dynamics 365 Business Central. The EFOQUS app simply allows you to pull in additional data using ‘Indicators’.
You define each ‘Indicator’, which has a method, table, and filters associated with it. The Advanced Account Schedules app supports the following indicator methods:
- Lookup – Find any single value
- Sum – Pulls the sum of all records within a chosen filter
- Count – Counts all records within a chosen filter
- Min – The smallest value within a chosen filter
- Max – The largest value within a chosen filter
- Average – Calculate the mean value of all records within a chosen filter
- Custom – Allows a developer to create a custom indicator to suit your bespoke needs
There are a number of scenarios in which these indicators are very useful to your organization, for example, you could use the ‘Count’ indicator to pull a report to show the number of invoices that were issued in a given time period. Or, you could use the ‘Average’ indicator to report on the mean value of items sold.
Other examples of how indicators can be used within your organization include:
- Reporting on ageing and due balances from AR and AP
- Counting the number of customers across different regions
- The total sum of issued credit limits
- The number of outstanding quotes that have been issued
- The total value of open orders
- Draft entries in the Job Journal
Upgrade Account Schedules Reporting with the Advanced Account Schedules App Today!
If you are feeling the constraints of the limited reporting features in the out-of-the-box account schedules in Dynamics 365 Business Central and are looking to upgrade your reporting capabilities in Dynamics 365 Business Central, then the Advanced Account Schedules app by EFOQUS is here for you.
Download this helpful app today from the AppSource or get in touch with one of our Dynamics 365 Business Central experts to get your questions answered.