Microsoft Dynamic GP 2010 : Dynamics GP System - General Ledger Chart of Accounts, Master record IDs and names

1. General Ledger Chart of Accounts

The key building block of the Dynamics GP system is the General Ledger account. Prior to installing Dynamics GP, you will need to determine your Account Framework and Account Format.

Account framework

The account framework sets the maximums and sorting options that will be available for all your Dynamics GP companies.

Dynamics GP allows the following maximums for the account framework:

• Up to 10 account segments.

• Up to 66 characters, not including separators between segments.

• Maximum of 82 bytes. Bytes are calculated as the length of each segment plus 1 for each segment with an odd number of characters, or plus 2 for each segment with an even number of characters. For example, an account framework with 7 segments of 6 characters and 3 segments of 8 characters will have 86 bytes: ((6+2) * 7) + ((8+2) * 3) and thus will not be allowed.

In the past, there may have been space considerations that would justify limiting the account framework chosen when installing Dynamics GP. This is usually not the case anymore and even if a 10 segment General Ledger account will never be needed, a typical account framework is the following: maximum of 66 characters and 10 segments of six characters each.

The main reason to think about the account framework at this stage is if you foresee needing account segments longer than six characters. You will need to make sure that the account framework selected when you install Dynamics GP encompasses the maximum GL account length you will need. Changing the account framework after the Dynamics GP installation is possible, but not trivial and would require an additional tool or service to be purchased.

Account format

The General Ledger account format can be different for each Dynamics GP company, as long as it is within the account framework defined during the Dynamics GP installation.

General Ledger accounts can be alphanumeric and Dynamics GP will add a separator character of your choosing in-between the segments. While the separator can be different for each company, the most commonly used separator is a dash ( — ).

Even though Dynamics GP will allow for a very long GL account number and it may be tempting to track many details in the General Ledger, this is not recommended. Most Dynamics GP windows will only display approximately 25 characters without having to scroll to see the entire account. Best practice is to keep the account number to three or four segments and a total of no more than 15 or 20 characters, including the separators.

Here are examples of some common account formats:

At this stage of your implementation planning, you should decide on the account format for each Dynamics GP company planned and start putting together your General Ledger Chart of Accounts. If you are planning on multiple Dynamics GP companies and will need consolidated financial reports or other multi company reports based on GL account numbers, it is highly recommended that all the companies have the same account format and that the Chart of Accounts be as similar as possible.

Additional notes for the General Ledger Chart of Accounts in Dynamics GP:

• You do not need to create roll-up accounts in Dynamics GP. Any roll-ups needed for financial statements can be accomplished when setting up the financial statements. Roll-ups ups for inquiries can be created in Dynamics GP without having to explicitly define accounts for them. For example, if there are four individual accounts for travel expenses (Airline, Lodging, Car, and Other Travel), there is no need to create a fifth account called Travel.

• All General Ledger accounts should be predefined ahead of time. It is not enough to create a list of all natural accounts and a list of all possible values for each of your other segments. While Dynamics GP can create accounts on the fly, this is not recommended. Most users are typically not given the security to create GL accounts and there is a high potential for errors and inconsistencies when this is done.

• It is not recommended to have spaces in your GL account numbers. Spaces will make using the account numbers difficult for users and may also cause reporting issues, as reporting tools may interpret spaces differently. Instead of spaces use zeros.

• The General Ledger account name can have a maximum length of up to 50 characters and can be changed at any time.

When deciding on the Chart of Accounts, keep in mind the reporting requirements you have identified during your business requirements planning. Try to keep accounts that will be in the same groupings on the Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Statements together, leaving enough room for inserting accounts in the future.

The following table is a list of the minimum data required for General Ledger account setup:

2. Master record IDs and names

Dynamics GP has an ID and a name for each master record. Both are strings and all IDs within the same type of record must be unique, while names can be duplicated. IDs in Dynamics GP will always be in capitals. Special characters (anything other than letters or numbers) are allowed in IDs and while spaces or dashes are fine to use, other special characters should be discouraged. There is a much higher potential for application errors if special characters have not been properly excluded or coded around. It is also sometimes difficult to differentiate between some special characters when looking at an ID on the screen.

Some companies prefer to have IDs that are numeric only and use the next number available for any new record. Others decide to use IDs that are more descriptive and use mostly alpha characters. Both of these approaches are fine, however it is recommended that the numbering scheme for each type of record is consistent for all records created. The following are two important points to keep in mind when deciding on numbering schemes:

• Dynamics GP does not have the functionality to automatically suggest the next number available when only using numeric IDs. The user creating the new record will have to determine what the next ID number should be. (There is a third-party add-on that offers this functionality for the core Dynamics GP modules.)

• Just about every transaction entered and lookup used in Dynamics GP will require one or more ID to be entered by the user. While auto-complete and lookups help with this, it is typically more user friendly to use IDs that will be easily recognizable by the users.

There are many possible numbering schemes, consider some typical examples for a vendor called American Express:

We have seen all of the numbering schemes above implemented, probably the hardest for users to work with is the method of using only numbers in IDs.

To illustrate the use of these numbering schemes, the following screenshot shows an example of what users would see if they start typing AM in the Vendor ID field on a payables transaction when using the auto-complete feature:

All the IDs suggested previously will show in the auto-complete choices, except the numeric one. In addition, using a numbering scheme like AME001 may result in many others, such as AME002, AME003, and so on, for company names starting with American. On a list such as this, it would be impossible to tell what those IDs represented without memorizing them. So, the user would have to either click the<<More...>> option or the Lookup button to open the Vendors lookup window and see additional choices:

As you can see in the preceding screenshot taken from the Dynamics GP sample company (Fabrikam), many of the Vendor IDs are the first eight letters of the name and a four digit number. In most companies the likelihood of having ten thousand vendors having the same first eight letters is remote, so this is not a commonly seen numbering scheme for implementations we have worked with.

Whether you have decided to renumber and rename your vendors, customers, inventory items, or fixed assets, or just clean up the existing data, make sure that what you are planning will work with Dynamics GP. The following are field lengths for the most common Dynamics GP master record IDs and names:

Once created, master record IDs are not editable in the out-of-the-box Dynamics GP. The Professional Services Tools Library (PSTL), available as a separate purchase from Microsoft, contains many useful tools, including ones allowing modification of all the master record IDs listed previously as well as General Ledger accounts. There are also tools available in the PSTL to combine the following: Vendor IDs, Customer IDs, General Ledger accounts, Inventory Item IDs, and Inventory Site IDs.

Knowing tools are available to make changes in the future may take some of the pressure off the numbering scheme decisions upfront. However, they are still important decisions that should be well thought out, as making changes after the implementation can be costly and time consuming. Typically we do not see companies having the need to modify master records for the first year or two after the initial Dynamics GP implementation, unless there is a significant change in the business.