Lesser known, but very effective additional functionality regarding dimensions

Dimensions are an integral part of the financial and controlling processes performed by users in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. While most are familiar with dimensions and use them, assigning them to specific transactions, their additional capabilities are not always used. This is because Business Central provides functionalities that extend several additional features, less known but very effective additional functionalities for dimensions that extend their effectiveness, including: a default dimension for an account type, such as suppliers or buyers, as well as default priorities and combinations of dimensions.

Dimensioning is the process of assigning information to records, which is one method of analyzing sales and purchase accounts by dividing them into smaller units. For example, you can create K/G accounts for individual countries from which sales transactions originate, or for different groups of buyers.In each record, you can enter additional information that allows you to easily search and group data in order to analyze records with similar characteristics and posted to the same (or similar) K/G accounts.

The first functionality discussed is Default configuration of dimensions to groups of customers, suppliers and other accounts. With this functionality, we can assign a dimension to records in the entire table, using the dimensions page. You need to select the appropriate dimension you want to assign to the table and select "Account type default dimension" in the header.

A page opens where the user can assign, for example, a default dimension to all records in a given table. In the given situation, the AREA dimension will be assigned to table number 18 with the Purchaser label, i.e. every purchaser in the company will be assigned a default AREA dimension with the value "40". If the business situation happens that every buyer should always have a given default dimension, thanks to this function, there is no need to go through the records of each buyer individually and assign it.

It is also worth noting that from here in the field "Accounting for value", there are four options to choose from:

1. blank - means no posting restrictions, and the indicated default dimension will carry over to the related documents.

2. mandatory code - for this account the value of the dimension is required during posting, but any value of the dimension is acceptable.

3. same code - the dimension for this account must always have the same dimension value code as the one selected in the field.

4. no code - dimension value codes cannot be used with this account.

This also makes it easy for the user to set, for example, a mandatory dimension for all records in a given table.

The second functionality, is Default dimension priorities. Different types of accounts, such as, buyer account and inventory account may have different default priorities, as a result, they may not have more than one proposed default dimension, for example, on the document on which they are used. To avoid conflict, the system proposes the use of the described function On the "Default dimension priorities" page, we can give priority to the tables(group) and source code. Source codes are used to determine the moment of writing in the system and calculate the basic element of the audit operation. They are assigned to transactions and logs.

When prioritizing dimensions as below, if a buyer and a stock are entered on the sales document, having the already mentioned default dimension AREA (but with a different value), according to the priority, the default dimension assigned to the buyer will be used in posting (if no manual editing takes place).

When the user configures two tables with the same priority for the same source code, Business Central always selects the table with the lowest table ID.

The last functionality discussed is Combinations of dimensions. Dimension combinations are designed to prevent the combination of specific dimensions in a document header, document line, journal, sheet or K/G budget entry. It also allows you to set conditions that must be met for such blocking to take place. For example, a blockage could be that a certain project team is not allowed to post transactions with dimensions for certain types of expenses, or that certain inventory cannot be sold in certain areas within a combination of dimensions.

After going to the "Dimension combinations" page, the user can see a matrix where the selected combinations should be configured.

After selecting a combination of dimensions, there are several options to choose from:

1. unlimited - the output option specifying that the selected combination of dimensions has no restrictions. All dimension values are allowed.

2. restricted - specifies that the selected dimension combination has restrictions depending on the entered dimension values. You need to define the restrictions on the "Combination of dimension values" page.

8 Blocked - which means that such a combination is not allowed, which will not allow you to post a document with the combination.

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In summary, the functionalities described above can further significantly increase the efficiency of working with dimensions in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. We encourage you to use them and follow our blog to learn about other equally interesting possibilities!