Periodic Journals/Recurring Journal Entries in Dynamic 365 Finance
In any ERP, any accounting user might want to set up periodic journals on a monthly/quarterly/year basis for recording the costs of any services, like AMC charges, rents, subscription fees, etc. It can get tedious to manually create such entries every single time indefinitely. This can lead to errors and unnecessary time consumption if the entries are very long and made to multiple business partners.
Dynamic 365 Finance offers an easy way out through the use of periodic journals. Periodic journals help the user create entries periodically in the system. With periodic journals, users can:
- Create any entry periodically, no matter how large, at the click of a few buttons.
- Use any existing journal entry as a template for a periodic journal entry.
- Stop periodic journals after a certain period at their convenience.
The process of configuring and using periodic entries is very simple.
Setup
1. First, configure a journal name with the Journal type as ‘Periodic’ as shown below:
2. Then go to General Journal -> Journal Entries -> Periodic Journals
Here, we define the template for the periodic journal entry to be created in future.
Create a new entry.
3. Select the date on which you want the periodic journal entry to be created.
4. Select the GL accounts and their amounts. You can create a single line journal entry with an offset account or you can create a multi-line entry with as many GL accounts as required.
5. Select the Unit. Unit stands for the period of the journal entry – days, months or years.
6. Enter the number of units. This is the frequency of recurrence of the journal entry.
For e.g., if you select Unit as months and enter the number of units as 3, then the periodic journal entry will be set to repeat every 3 months from the beginning date.
Working
1. Open a General Journal entry.
2. Create a new entry.
3. On the top, click on Period Journal.
4. There are 2 options – Retrieve Journal and Save Journal.
Retrieve journal is used for retrieving a periodic journal that we have just setup.
Save journal is used if you want to save any existing journal entry as a template for a future periodic journal entry.
5. We use Retrieve Journal to retrieve the template we have created above.
6. In the ‘To Date’, enter the date of recurrence, i.e., the date for which the entry repeats for the period.
In the Periodic Journal number, select the Periodic Journal which was created earlier.
In the last field, there are 2 options – Copy or Move.
Copy will fetch the periodic journal data into the journal entry and update it for use in the next period.
Move will also fetch the journal data but will block the periodic journal from being used in future. Use the move option if you know that the periodic journal is not going to be used anymore.
7. The system will load the data as shown below:-
8. As you may notice, the date field is as per the date selected in the Retrieve Periodic Journal, while all the other details like the GL account and amounts are fetched exactly as per the template.
9. Once you post this journal entry, the journal date in the periodic journal template will be updated to the next period, in this case, to 1st of December.
10. In order to check if the date has been updated or not, simply go to the Periodic Journal once more and check the date.
As you may have noticed, the date got updated to the next period of recurrence. So when you retrieve this journal for the next time, it will fetch the journal based on this date.
This can go on as many times until you select the option to Move instead of Copy. After that, the periodic journal will stop updating and won’t be able to be used again.
Through this process, the user can fetch the journal entries periodically instead of creating them manually every time. While the fetching of the data is automatic, the user will have to make sure to run the periodic journals as per their dates. There is an option to automatically generate the entries in the system through Power Automate but that is a separate Add-on to be setup and configured. The standard process is just as good enough to reduce the hassle for making entries manually every period.
