Configure account structures/advanced rules

In planning for the Account Structures there are some prerequisites that need to be configured first and considerations to be made:

Chart of Accounts – This is typically the main ledger account that is used across AX

• Most US companies will follow standard numbering, where the first digit will denote the following with the remaining digits (5 or 6) used for further detail within that area
  • 1 – Asset Accounts
  • 2 – Liability Accounts
  • 3 – Equity Accounts
  • 4 – Revenue Accounts
  • 5 – Cost of Sales/Cost of Goods Sold
  • 6 – Expenses
  • 7 – Other Revenue/Expenses
• While the above is standard, some companies have different rules surrounding accounts beginning with 6, 7 and 8 and 9’s
• Companies using non-financial (statistical) accounts may use accounts beginning with 9’s or in the unique sequence within the 9’s.
• Financial Dimensions
  • Need to define what aspect the company would like to track in the GL, examples of these are:
    • Division
    • Store
    • Department
    • Cost Center
    • Project
    • Contract
    • Employee
    • Fixed Asset
  • Company should decide what order these dimensions should be listed when looking at the results of transactions, this will be important down the line.
    • Immediately following the main account, should be the dimensions that are always tracked in that area of the chart of accounts
    • Typically the Balance Sheet will have areas that may not need any additional dimensions, versus parts of the Income Statement where more dimensions are applicable and tracked in the ledger
    • Think about which dimension combinations are valid, an example would be that the Division – CHVY is only sold out of particular stores, which in turn have only specific departments
    • In looking at the optional Dimensions, that not all transactions will have (Project, Employee, Equipment ID) think about which order you would like to see these in and what other related optional information might be available on certain types of accounts

​​Configuration

• Configure Account Structures

  (GL >> Setup >> Chart of Accounts >> Configure Account Structures)

  

  Balance Sheet

  In my example, when looking at the Balance sheet accounts, the only element that was consistent across all of the accounts was the Main Account, so my configure account structure is just that.

  Advanced Rules – can be created to apply additional rules to certain accounts based on what additional information needs to be tracked based on user defined criteria. A range of Ledger accounts can only have one ‘Advanced Rule’, but many ‘Advanced Rule Structures’ can be applied.

  Advanced Rule Structures can be created and shared amongst many advanced rule where the same criteria applies. An Advanced Rule Structure can restrict the user selections to valid combinations that are built into the Advanced Rule Structure, or it can add additional criteria that is meant to be tracked.

  For instance, Inventory, which is a Balance Sheet Account, in addition to the main Account, I would like to track the Division-Store-Department, which is a departure from the configure account structures which is built solely on the main account.

   

  For this, I would create an Advanced Rule that covers the Inventory Ledger Accounts:

  

  The Advanced Rule Structure, 1_DIV-STR-DPT, has been added to the Advanced Rule

  

  This Advanced Rule Structure, restricts the Division/Store/Department combination that are valid for this range of accounts that it is applied to. The Green checkboxes are denoting where Blanks are allowed for that dimension. The absence of a green checkbox means that the dimension is required and a value must be selected. This is an example of what I would consider to be a ‘dimension restriction’ Advanced Rule Structure, which can be used in many Advanced Rules regardless of whether it is for the Balance Sheet or the Income Statement and serves the purpose of adding the additional dimensions to the main account it is being assigned to but restricting selection. For instance, in the above snapshot, the only valid Store, when selecting Division CIDE is RAL, and the only valid departments under the CIDE-RAL combination are ER;EX;FN;HR;IT;SF; SS.

  Now with wanting to track additional dimensions in addition to the base ones, like Project, Equipment ID, Contract, Employee, etc., you may want to consider adding it as an additional Advanced Rule Structure assigned to an existing Advanced Rule, as each Advanced Rule can be assigned multiple Advanced Rule Structures.

  In the case of the WIP accounts, in addition to the DIV-STR-DPT Advanced Rule, I would also like to track the Project/Service Call number for the transaction.

  

  The 9_PRJ Advanced Rule Structure is built as follows:

  

  The order that the Advanced Rule Structure appear in the Advanced Rule window is very important as it controls the order of the dimensions when looking at account strings in AX voucher windows.

  

  If you would like to add multiple dimensions to an Advanced Rule Structure, it is recommended to build out the different combinations, in order to keep the consistency of viewing the dimensions in a particular order across the reporting.

  

  Similar to the dimension restriction Advanced Rule Structure, there will only be so many dimensions combinations that will need to be built. It is best practice to keep the number of Advanced Rule Structures that restrict Dimension selection low as possible and reuse when possible, to limit the amount of updates needed if the restrictions change.

  Income Statement

  Now for the Income Statement, there are a few more dimensions that are consistently tracked, so we will put all of these common dimensions in the configure account structures:

  

  Based on this configuration, it is expected that each transaction can be assigned a Division, Store and Department.

  

  4_DIV-STR-DPT-CC

  

  By building out the valid dimension combinations while cumbersome, provides the added benefit of restricting a user’s selections when keying in a journal entry, so they can only select from valid dimensions:

  

  9_EQP_PRJ

  

  Based on the above Advanced Rules Structures that are applied to the ledger account 410100, the posted transactions can be viewed from the Posted transactions window:

  

  In comparison, on an Inventory account different dimensions are being tracked (Main Account, Division, Store, Department and Equipment ID)

  

  Also, when transactions do not meet the criteria of the advanced rule that is applied to the account, there indicators in the system to show that there will be issues with posting because the combinations used do not pass validation against the Advanced Structure.

  

  The system will stop transactions in workflow if the Dimensions do not pass validation against the Account Structure:

  

  Things to Note

  • For instance, when looking at Project Revenue Account, you may want to see Division-Store-Department-Project Number -Employee
  • Highly recommended to have client, start building out a spreadsheet by GL account about what elements they would like to see on each Ledger account
    • This will help you see which elements are consistent across the Balance Sheet accounts and which are consistent against the P&L accounts
    • On you Advance Rule, if you do not put a filter criteria, the selected Advanced Rule Structure gets applied to all accounts
    • The ordering of the Advanced Rule Structures on the Advanced Rule window is the order that that the rules are applied, and is not affected by the sort by clicking on the column header, the order that the rules are applied seem to be in the order of the record id which is not visible.
    • Not every account or account range needs to be accounted for by an Advanced Rule, it will only be affected by the configure account structure
      • In the case of Balance Sheet accounts, if only the main account needs to be tracked, no advanced rule is needed
      • Will probably need all of the P&L accounts accounted for by at least a dimension restriction Advanced Rule Structure or else erroneous combinations could be entered