This segment will be spotlighting the account schedule feature in Business Central. For complex reporting, ad-hoc reports and custom reports, account schedules provide the end-user with a highly flexible way to generate reports for most business purposes.
By default, a few schedules are set up by Microsoft for typical reporting purposes. Taking the income statement (M-INCOME) as an example, we can actually see that each line of the report is completely adjustable to the specific reporting needs of the end-users.
Within the accounts schedule you are able to adjust not only the visualization of the report by bolding, italicizing or underlining line items; but we can also change the amounts that are connected to each line in the totaling tab.
In a single runnable report, we can have the following totaling types enabled. Posting groups enable a selection of accounts to be totaled into a single line item. In this way, we can de-clutter reports to focus on what is important for a particular report. With formulas, we can have sums, and percentage values for a particular line. Shifting gears, we can additionally track cost items, cash-flow and all of these across separate periods for comparative reporting. Once we have created the line items that we are comfortable reporting on in our account schedule, we can finally print our report right from the account schedule page.
From the printing page, Microsoft has additional functionality. Within the dimension filter we can select to report from a nearly unlimited number of dimensions. Multiple dimensions can be selected, and reported on at the same time, and within each dimension selected, multiple options can be selected. As an example, I have selected an income statement filtered by two dimensions.
The Unit Location Filter, and the department filter have been selected to produce a report showing the impact of Cronus Canada Inc’s sales activity across these two regions. Carefully setting up dimensions during initial configuration will be the key to have rapid access to different looks at your business.
For advice on the best ways to set up dimensions, please reach out to one of our Business Central specialists to discuss your implementation needs.