Using Posting Date Ranges and Inventory Periods

We are often asked to look into entries that were posted on an unexpected date, usually related to an inventory related transaction. Or a user may reach out to you with the “Posting Date is not within your range of allowable posting dates …” message.

We will summarize a few things to be aware of related to Posting Dates and Inventory Period dates. Since Business Central (NAV, Navision) does not have a ‘hard’ monthly close, the allowable posting date range is controlled through setup. These date setups can be on User Setup, General Ledger Setup and/or Inventory Periods (if used).

We will discuss a couple of examples of how dates are used.

A General Journal entry not involving inventory

During posting of a typical General Journal (not involving Inventory), the system will first look to see if the user is setup and has an allowable posting date range in the User Setup.  However, if both ‘Posting To’ and ‘Posting From’ fields are blank, then the routine looks to the General Ledger Setup to ensure the posting date on the journal is within the open period per these Posting Date range setups.

You will notice we said both – if the ‘From Date’ is blank but the ‘To Date’ is populated, that means forever in the past to the end date. Same in the case of a blank ‘To Date’ and a populated ’From Date’ allows for posting forever into the future. We saw this mistake once where an entry was accidentally posted to 2061 instead of 2016 due to a blank end date. They posted a reversing entry to fix it, but that entry will always be there in the ledger, looking odd, until we get to 2061 that is.

Inventory related transactions (including item charges)

It can get tricky if the transaction involves Inventory Items. The system has a great function called Adjust Cost-Item Entries, that can run automatically (Inventory Setup) or on a job queue. This function adjusts the cost of inventory even if it has already been used or sold. For example, a raw material is received at $1 and used in a production order and a finished good is produced and then sold. The invoice from the vendor arrives later at $1.10 and posted. The Adjust Cost routine will carry the additional $.10 of cost through all entries for that item (Received Inventory, Production Consumption and Output, and then Sales Invoice related item ledger and value entries ). It does this by creating new Value Entries under the original Item Ledger Entry.

By default, the system wants to post the adjusting entries on the same date as the original entry that needs adjusting. This would be ideal, however that might not be possible as that period may be closed. In this case, the system uses the earliest open date in the General Ledger Setup posting date range. If Inventory Periods are used, the earliest open Inventory Period will be compared to the General Ledger Setup dates and the latter of the two will be used as the Posting Date for the adjustment entries.

Adjusting dates for User Setup and General Ledger Setup is a balancing act, especially over month end where you usually want the operations group to be working on the current period and the finance team to be working in both periods until the prior period is closed.

Running the Inventory Valuation report with an ‘As of Date’ can also be frustrating if the posting date setups allow for transactions across periods. You may see a zero quantity but a monetary value as of a particular date, but if you run through into the next period a day or so later, these discrepancies will flush out. I see this often if there is output and consumption for the same order spread across periods.

If using Inventory Periods, we recommended you keep the Inventory Period and General Ledger Setup in sync in terms of posting dates to avoid Posting Dates issues, when inventory is involved.

We hope this blog was of use to you. Check back for upcoming topics including I went live now what? and how to drive process change during an ERP implementation.

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