Did you ever wonder what happened with the setup pages in the Departments suite of the Role Tailored Client ?

When you are used working with the Classic Client and you want to setup Sales & Marketing in a Dynamics NAV 2009 database, you usually use one of these:

And when you prefer to work with the Role Tailored Client, these are nowere to be found:

Although, when you open the MenuSuite designer for the departments suite they are clearly present:

What's going on ? Is this a bug ? Do I not have enough rights in the Role Tailored Client ? Why is this happening ?

Well, as you will probably not know, when you open the properties of a folder in the MenuSuite designer of the Departments Suite you see this:

Does something strikes you as interesting here ?

See the checkbox after Departments Page …. ?

Click on it…. è

Now, close & save the MenuSuite and then restart the Role Tailred Client and lets have a look:

Voila, the Setup folder and it's items are now visible in the Role Tailored Client !

One of the great features of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 is that you can customize the Navigation Pane. Big deal, you might say. Customizing the Navigation Pane was already possible in NAV 4.0. Yes, but with customizing I don't mean moving menu's up and down or showing them or not. No, in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, you can really customize the Navigation Pane, also as a user. This means for example that you can decide yourself which items you want to show in your Navigation Pane.
How? Just go to the customize button on the top right of your application and choose Customize Navigation Pane. This will result in the following customization window:

Obviously with the Add button you go and chose what you want to add in the Navigation Pane. But what struck me is that it doesn't appear to be possible to add any of the journals.
In the screen-print below you can see that in the General Ledger group there are no General Journals, but the same also goes for the group Jobs, where you won't find Job Journals to add or Inventory where you won't find any of the item journals. And so on.

Why? Well to be honest, I don't know. Is this done intentionally by Microsoft or have they just forgotten to add journals? It could also be that there is a technical reason that I'm not aware of.
Anyway, this doesn't mean that it's completely impossible to add journals yourself to the Navigation Pane without having to do some development.

There is a simple workaround:

Let's say I want to add the Job Journal to my Home menu.
By going to Customize Navigation Pane, I select Departments on the left hand of the customization window. Next, in the right Column I will expand Jobs.

By choosing Job Journals and clicking on the Copy To button, I can choose the menu where I want to copy the Job Journals to.

Only thing left is to move the Job Journals up to the place I prefer. And as you can see below, the Job Journals have been added to my Home menu.

So I think you agree that this is a simple workaround to add journals to a menu. However, if there is someone who knows why it's not possible to select journals directly to add in a menu, please let me know J.

Have you ever had this problem ?

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is running, but is also behind your taskbar, so you can not move it, ony maximize or minimize ?

I have had this problem many times because I have to change my resolution whenever I have to deliver a training or presentation or when I display on multipe monitors. When I go back to my default resolution, some of my applications disappear behind the Windows taskbar. The question is now: How to get them back ?

Well, there's a simple solution:

Right click on the application in the taskbar and select Move: (as an alternative you could instead use your keyboard: Alt-Space-M for English or Alt-Space-R for Dutch)

In this screenshot the text is in Dutch, and my taskbar is at the top of my desktop, instead of at the bottom J

Then press the arrows (Up/Down/Left/right) and now you can move your application, and voila, problem solved.

A few days ago I got a support call which drew my attention to a specific fact when using Warehouse Management Systems (WMS).

Most of you probably know that for a customer, you can decide whether partial shipping is allowed or not. This is done using the field Shipping Advice on the customer card. If you select Complete, NAV will not allow you to do a partial shipment from the sales order.

But what happens if you use WMS?

In the following scenario, we use a customer with Shipping Advice Complete.
Accordingly, when creating a sales order for this customer, the Shipping Advice on the sales header will also be Complete.

The customer orders 2 different items, stored in the same WMS warehouse. For one or the other reason, the user changed the Outbound Warehouse Handling Time on line level for one of the items (exceptionally they need more time for handling this item in the warehouse). As a result, the Planned Shipment Date is different for each item.

In the warehouse, the warehouse manager uses the planned shipment date to create warehouse shipments (in that way, all the items that are to be shipped on a specific date are grouped in 1 warehouse shipment).

In our scenario, we will create a warehouse shipment with a planned shipment date of 25/01/08. This is done using the filter function on the warehouse shipment:

As a consequence, only 1 of the items of our sales order will appear on the warehouse shipment.

Note that we already have a difference between warehouse and sales for what the shipping advice is concerned.
And this will continue because as you will see, it is no problem to create a warehouse pick and to register it.

But when the warehouse pick is registered and the warehouse manager wants to post the warehouse shipment, NAV will check the shipping advice and complain about the complete shipping advice.

What is the solution? First of all, we have to question the fact if it is the intention to make a partial shipment for this customer. We probably haven't set up the customer with shipping advice Complete for no reason.

But let's suppose that we want to do this partial shipment, what do we have to do then?

First step is to go back to the sales order and to reopen it.
Next, we will have to change the Shipping Advice on the sales header to Partial.

When doing this, NAV will ask us if we want to change the shipping advice in the related warehouse documents also.

After choosing Yes, we can go back to the warehouse shipment and post it.

Note that we cannot change the shipping advice on the warehouse shipment. The field doesn't even exits there. The only way to work around it is as described above.

In Dynamics NAV 2009 the shortcuts have changed. They are not the same anymore as they were in previous versions. For an end user that is used to work with the 'old' shortcuts this might be confusing and difficult to learn.

A nice trick or workaround is the CTRL-F10 shortcut. When you use this one in the Role Tailored client then the Action groups get a number assigned. That way you can use te keyboard and the numbers to click on the actions, instead of using the mouse and so do it faster.

Example:

Open the Customer List in the RTC:

Now, press CTRL-F10 and see what happens:

Numbers appear below the Action Groups. Now press for example on 2 using the keyboard:

You will see that each action in the action group gets a number assigned. Now you can use that number as the shortcut to that Action. For example if you now press on 4, the Customer Statistics window will open:

Nice, is'nt ?

Summary:

The CTRL-F10 shortcut will turn on or off key tips in the Action pane. When you press the key tip number, that action gets carried out (first key selects a group and shows key tips within that group).

That the old-fashioned VAT No. is history in Belgium and replaced by the Enterprise No. is probably well spread by now. But how this Enterprise No. should be mentionned is less familiar to most people.

For companies who already had a VAT No. (xxx.xxx.xxx) the Enterprise No. is composed as follows: 0xxx.xxx.xxx. If your customer or vendor is located in Belgium (and you fill in the country code as BE) NAV will check whether this number is correct by performing the MOD 97 test and it will prohibit you from filling in the VAT No.. For customers or vendors from abroad NAV will only allow you to fill in the VAT No. and not the Enterprise No..

However, there is more to it than that. The Enterprise No. should be proceeded by:

• BTW 0xxx.xxx.xxx or TVA 0xxx.xxx.xxx- for companies who only operate in Belgium
• BTW BE 0xxx.xxx.xxx or TVA BE 0xxx.xxx.xxx – for companies who also operate outside Belgium in the EU

For companies of the type 'vennootschap' the Enterprise No. should also be followed by RPR ('rechtspersonenregister') and the location of the legal court ('arrondissementsrechtbank') to which the company belongs:

• BTW BE 0xxx.xxx.xxx RPR Brussel

Why is it so important to fill this in correctly in NAV 5.0 SP1? If you forget to mention BTW / TVA (depending in which language you are using NAV) that customer will not appear on your yearly VAT listing!

You can always find more information about our wonderfull Belgian Enterprise No. on the following website: www.ondernemingsnummers.be

Two always know more than one. So we put our heads together, trying to figure out how these new WIP methods in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 actually work. This is what we found out…

Actually it is fairly simple. First of all you have to make the following decision: Do I recognize completed job tasks during the project? And if so, do I recognize the costs or the sales prices?

	WIP –METHOD
No	Completed contract
Yes – cost	Cost Value or Cost of Sales
Yes – price	Sales Value or Percentage of Completion

So the question that was bothering us, what is then the difference between Cost Value and Cost of Sales and between Sales Value or Percentage of Completion. Let's explain with the following example:

STEP 1: CREATE JOB

This is a job divided over several tasks, where each task contains one or more planning lines. The job is sold to the customer for a fixed price (the job planning lines of type schedule are not equal to those of type contract).

STEP 2: REGISTER JOB USAGE & INVOICE THE CUSTOMER

Through the job journal we register the hours performed by Davy on 01/01/08 (job task 1000) and on 02/01/08 (job task 1001). We also register the items used on 02/01/08 (job task 1001), but the cost of these items has increased since the planning to € 800,00 per item. On 31/01/08 we send the customer an invoice, but only for the performed hours of Davy. This results in the following job overview.

STEP 3: CALCULATE WIP

Try out the different WIP Methods on the Job card for the calculation of the WIP Amounts. 

WIP Method	Cost value	Sales value	Cost of sales	Percentage of completion	Completed contract
Total WIP Sales Amount	0,00	2.488,63	0,00	4.167,19	-1.328,00
Total WIP Cost Amount	2.122,27	0,00	1.626,25	0,00	2.144,50
Recog. Sales Amount	1.328,00	3.816,63	1.328,00	5.495,19	0,00
Recog. Costs Amount	22,23	2.144,50	518,25	2.144,50	0,00

Cost Value vs Cost of Sales

Both WIP methods will recognize the revenue of the job at the moment of invoice to the customer. Both WIP methods will do this based on the costs related to the job. So in both cases we will get the same basic formula to calculate the WIP Cost Amount:

Total WIP Cost Amount = cost of consumption – cost of invoice

Notes:

• you can compare the cost of consumption with the batch-job 'Calculate Job WIP Value' in NAV 4.0 and the cost of invoice with the batch-job 'Calculate Job Recognition' in NAV 4.0

• cost of consumption and cost of invoice are no NAV-fields, but used to explain the calculation

However, the way in which these costs of consumption and costs of invoice are calculated are slightly different.

Cost Value

The cost of consumption is initially represented by Usage (Total Cost). However this cost is corrected to represent the part of the agreed sales price versus the planned sales price.

Cost of consumption = Usage (Total Cost) * ( Contract (Total Price) / Schedule (Total Price) )

The cost of the invoice should be interpreted as the planned cost of the job, the costs that you would normally make with all consumptions and is initially represented by Schedule (Total Cost). However this cost is corrected to represent the part of the invoiced sales price versus the sales price of planned consumption.

Cost of invoice = Schedule (Total Cost) * ( Contract (Invoiced Price) / Schedule (Total Price) )

→ Total WIP Cost Amount = [ Usage (Total Cost) * ( Contract (Total Price) / Schedule (Total Price) ) ] - [ Schedule (Total Cost) * ( Contract (Invoiced Price) / Schedule (Total Price) ) ]

Example:

Cost of consumption = (297,00 + 1.847,50) * ( (664 + 7.291,60 + 332,00) / (498,00 + 5.686,60 + 166,00) ) =2.798,595

Cost of invoice = (297,00 + 2.838,24 + 99,00) * ( (664,00 + 664,00) / (498,00 + 5.686,60 + 166,00) ) = 676,3252

Total WIP Cost Amount = 2.798,595 – 676,3252 = 2.122,27

Cost of sales

The cost of consumption is simply represented by Usage (Total Cost). The actual consumption is placed onto the balance accounts, without a correction.

Cost of consumption = Usage (Total Cost)

To recognize the invoiced job costs, we look at the initially planned costs, represented by Schedule (Total Cost). This is the same as for the WIP method Cost Value. However, a different correction of this cost is taken into the result. A percentage is calculated, based on the invoiced sales price versus the sales price of planned invoicing.

Cost of invoice = Schedule (Total Cost) * ( Contract (Invoiced Price) / Contract (Total Price) )

→ Total WIP Cost Amount = Usage (Total Cost) - [ Schedule (Total Cost) * ( Contract (Invoiced Price) / Contract (Total Price) ) ]

Example:

Cost of consumption = 297,00 + 1.847,50 = 2.144,50

Cost of invoice = (297,00 + 2.838,24 + 99,00) * ( (664,00 + 664,00) / (664,00 + 7.291,60 + 332,00) ) = 518,2527

Total WIP Cost Amount = 2.144,50 – 518,2527 = 1.626,25

Conclusion

Use Cost of Sales in a time & material project. Use Cost Value in a fixed price project.

If scheduled prices are equal to contracted and invoiced prices, then the Cost of Sales and the Cost Value will calculate the same Total WIP Cost Amounts.

Sales Value vs Percentage of Completion

Both WIP methods will recognize the revenue of the job at the moment of invoice to the customer. Both WIP methods will do this based on the sales prices related to the job. So in both cases we will get the same basic formula to calculate the WIP Cost Amount:

Total WIP Sales Amount = expected sales price – price of invoice

Notes:

• you can compare the expected sales price with the batch-job 'Calculate Job WIP Value' in NAV 4.0 and the price of invoice with the batch-job 'Calculate Job Recognition' in NAV 4.0
• expected sales price and price of invoice are no NAV-fields, but used to explain the calculation

In both cases, the price of invoice is easy to retrieve, since it is represented by Contract (Invoiced Price). No corrections are necessary here.

Price of invoice = Contract (Invoiced Price)

However, the way in which the price of consumption is calculated is slightly different.

Sales Value

The expected sales price is initially represented by the Contract (Total Price). However, a correction is made based on the expected price of actual consumption versus the prices of planned consumption.

Expected sales price = Contract (Total Price) * ( (Usage (Total Price) / Schedule (Total Price) )

→ Total WIP Sales Amount = [ Contract (Total Price) * ( ( Usage (Total Price) / Schedule (Total Price) ) ] – Contract (Invoiced Price)

Example:

Expected sales price = (664,00 + 7.291,60 + 332,00) * ( (498,00 + 2.426,60) / (498,00 + 5.686,60 + 166,00) ) = 3.816,634

Price of invoice = 664,00 + 664,00 = 1.328,00

Total WIP Sales Amount = 3.816,634 – 1.328,00 = 2.488,63

Percentage of completion

The expected sales price is initially represented by the Contract (Total Price). This is the same as for the WIP method Sales Value. However a different correction of this price is taken into the result. The correction is based on the cost of actual consumption versus the cost of planned consumption.

Expected sales price = Contract (Total Price) * ( (Usage (Total Cost) / Schedule (Total Cost) )

→ Total WIP Sales Amount = [ Contract (Total Price) * ( Usage(Total Cost) / Schedule (Total Cost) ) ] – Contract (Invoiced Price)

Example:

Expected sales price = (664,00 + 7.291,60 + 332,00) * ( (297,00 + 1.847,50) / (297,00 + 2.838,24 + 99,00) ) = 5.495,188

Price of invoice = 664,00 + 664,00 = 1.328,00

Total WIP Sales Amount = 5.495,188 – 1.328,00 = 4.167,19

Conclusion

Sales Value and Percentage of Completion calculate the same Total WIP Sales Amounts, unless the price or cost of the usage should change since the planning.

If you want to take into account changes in sales prices, then use Sales Value.

If you want to take into account changes in costs, then use Percentage of Completion.

Completed Contract

This last method will not recognize the revenue of the job untill the job is completed. Both realized costs and realized sales prises are taken into balance as the job progresses.

→ Total WIP Sales Amount = Contract (Invoice Price)

→ Total WIP Cost Amount = Usage (Total Cost) 

Example:

Total WIP Sales Amount = 664,00 + 664,00 = 1.328,00

Total WIP Cost Amount = 297,00 + 1.847,50 = 2.144,50

STEP 4: HOW THE WIP-TOTAL FIELD INFLUENCES YOUR WIP AMOUNTS !

Now let's take a look how the field 'WIP-Total' on the job task lines. So set the field on 'Total' for each job task line and recalculate the WIP amounts for each WIP method.

WIP Method	Cost value	Sales value	Cost of sales	Percentage of completion	Completed contract
Total WIP Sales Amount	0,00	2.447,49	0,00	4.082,33	-1.328,00
Total WIP Cost Amount	2.037,53	0,00	1.589,04	0,00	2.144,50
Recog. Sales Amount	1.328,00	3.775,49	1.328,00	5.410,33	0,00
Recog. Costs Amount	106,97	2.144,50	555,46	2.144,50	0,00

You will notice that the calculated amounts are slightly different, while the WIP methods and the used formulas are not different than in the previous step. However, the WIP methods are now applied per job task line instead of for the entire project.

Total WIP Cost Amount = ∑ Total WIP Cost Amount / job task line

Total WIP Sales Amount = ∑ Total WIP Sales Amount / job task line

Example - Cost Value

Job Task No. 1000 Total WIP Cost Amount = ( 297,00*(664,00/498,00) ) – ( 297,00*(664,00/498,00) ) = 0,00

Job Task No. 1001 Total WIP Cost Amount = ( 1.847,50*(7.291,60/5.686,60) ) – ( 2.838,24*(664,00/5.686,60) ) = 2.037,53

Job Task No. 1002 Total WIP Cost Amount = ( 0,00*(332,00/166,00) ) – ( 99,00*(0,00/166,00) ) = 0,00

Total WIP Cost Amount = 0,00 + 2.037,53 + 0,00 = 2.037,53

Conclusion

You can combine or separate job task lines for WIP calculation by setting the WIP-Total to Total.

You can exclude job task lines for WIP calculation by setting the WIP-Total to Closed.

Recently I discovered that you better create your accounting periods before you start depreciating your fixed assets. It could seriously affect the calculation of the depreciation amount, but how?

 

First of all, if you do not create an accounting period, then Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 will try to appoint your depreciation to the last existing accounting period, resulting in a depreciation over more than 360/365 days. This could be a problem if your depreciation book does not allow depreciation over more than 360/365 days. If you have already SP1 installed, you will be notified of this issue when you run the report Calculate depreciation by the following warning:

 

 

Even if your depreciation book allows depreciation over more than 360/365 days, a second problem occurs when you are using the depreciation method of declining balance with a switch to straight line. Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 SP1 will remain to depreciate according to the declining balance method.

 

Let's take a look at the following example, with a fixed asset that is setup as follows:

 

 

The expected depreciation:

Straight line : 1.000 * 0,2 = 200

Declining balance:            

Y1:    1.000 * 0,4 = 400

Y2:      600 * 0,4 = 240

Y3:     360 * 0,4 = 144 < 200 The switch is made from declining balance to straight line.

Y4:     160

 

If you haven't created the correct accounting periods, the following depreciation will calculated:

Y1: 400

Y2: 240

Y3: 144

Y4: 86,4

…

 

 

So make sure you have those accounting periods setup, before calculating your fixed asset depreciation!

 

 

 

I know how to use reminders in NAV quite well and this from a trainer, a consultant and a user point of view.

But there was always one field that drew my attention: "Use Header Level". There isn't much of information on this field in the official courseware, so I did some testing myself to see what this field exactly does. You can describe this field as follows:

If you check this field, NAV will use the Header Level for all reminder lines. The Header Level is defined as the highest level of the different reminder lines of that reminder.

For example, we have a reminder with 2 invoices on it. For one invoice, it is the first time that it appears on a reminder (Level 1), for the second invoice, it is the second time that it is reminded (Level 2). If you check in this case the field (Use Header Level), NAV will use Level 2 for both invoices. Otherwise it would use Level 1 for the first invoice and Level 2 for the second.

What does this means: basically this means that NAV will use this field to see whether interest should be calculated for the reminder lines. Suppose that in the above example, the field "Calculate Interest" is checked in the setup of Level 2, then NAV will also calculate interest for the invoice that only appears for the first time on the reminder.

I already made the above example on a NAV 4.0 SP3 version and it always worked flawlessly. Last week however, I also tried to make this example on a NAV 5.0 SP1 (BE version) and there it didn't work. First I thought I made a mistake somewhere, so I tried over and over again for several times, but it kept giving me the wrong results. Then I started to play around a little bit with the settings and I discovered what went wrong:

When you go to the batch job "Create Reminders" and on the Options tab page, you check the field "Use Header Level", NAV will not apply the settings of the highest level of the different reminder lines, but it will apply the settings of one level higher.

By making an example it will become clear:

Reminder Term: DOMESTIC
Levels: 3

First invoice which has already been reminded 1 time:

Second invoice that will be reminded for the first time in the second reminder of the first invoice. We will use the "Use Header Level" field:

In this example, the result should be that NAV will not calculate interest (in the setup, Level 2 has no "Calculate Intrest").
But if you create the reminder as shown above, the result is:

As you can see, NAV calculates interest for both invoices and because Level 3 is the only level where interest calculation is activated, we can conclude that level 3 is used instead of Level 2.

If you make the exact same example in 4.0, you will see that Level 2 is used (as it should be). I haven't tried it yet on a W1 version, but it doesn't seem to be something which has got to do with localization. I know that the field "Use Header Level" isn't used that much, but you never know…

Recently I found out a little trick about the Requisition Worksheet in Dynamics NAV.

For some reason the worksheet was not calculating for Items that were not setup with a SKU (Stock Keeping Unit). When we made SKU's for the items, then the calculation worked properly, but without a SKU it did not calculate anything. This seemed very strange and after a little research I found a workaround.

The workaround is to use the location code in the manufacturing setup. Even if not running manufacturing, this part of the manufacturing setup is available.

In the workaround, you have to decide a "replenishment location". This replenishment location is setup using the "Component at Location" field at the Manufacturing Setup. (Manufacturing | Setup | Manufacturing Setup | Planning Tab | Component at Location field)

Once a location is selected in MFG setup, when calculate plan is selected from the requisition worksheet the system will create a Purchase Order for items that are not setup with a SKU.

We were working on a Dynamics NAV 5.0 SP1 German version, but I think this workaround may also work in other and earlier versions of Dynamics NAV.