Journal Entry Reversal and Other Journal Entry Functionality in Business Central 2020 Wave 2

As if Journal Entries weren’t exciting enough! I know it’s sometimes the little things, but for those of us who live and breathe journal entries (or even if you only make a few each month) this is exciting news.  Regardless of how often you utilize journal entries, I think we can all be excited about the new Journal Entries Enhancements in Business Central 2020 Wave 2!

Copy Journals Function

Let’s face it—we all make mistakes.  We’ve always been able to reverse a posted journal entry in Business Central, but the reversal is automatically posted on the same day the original journal entry was posted.  If you’re familiar at all with what ‘closing a month’ means, there is an obvious issue.  Often times it’s not until we are analyzing the prior month’s completed financials that we find a mistake and need to reverse a journal entry that was posted in a period that is now closed.

Business Central has come out with two new features in the 2020 Wave 2 Release that help make journal entry reversal a much easier process.

1. Posted General Journals Page- This page is similar to the General Ledger Entries page in that it allows the user to view journal entries that have been posted. However, it will only allow you to see entries posted using a General Journal. But, it is where we can find the new functionality of Copy Journals.
2. Copy Journals action- This action allows the user to copy an entire G/L register or selected lines of a posted journal entry from the new Posted General Journals page to an unposted journal.  The user can set parameters on the copy journal function such as choosing to Reverse Sign in the case of a reversing entry, or Replace Posting Date if the original posting period is closed.

Once the journal entry has been copied, a notification will pop up that allows the user to navigate to the populated general journal entry for review and posting.

In order to enable this copy journal functionality, there is a small piece of setup that needs to be selected on the General Journal batch screen.

By selecting the box for Copy to Posted Jnl. Lines, this awesome new feature can be utilized to allow for more options around correcting journal entries.  Unless there is a specific reason a company or user might not want to allow this function, I would recommend selecting the check box to allow for the new functionality.

Reverse Date Calculation

Another new exciting feature with Business Central 2020 Wave 2 is available on Recurring General Journals.  Previously, an entry with a type of Reversing Variable or Reversing Fixed would automatically reverse on the next day from posting, so a reversing journal entry on 9/30 would reverse on 10/1.  Business Central now allows the user to specify a calculation date for the reversal of an entry.  This is accessible by adding the column field called Reverse Date Calculation on the Recurring General Journals page.

In the example above, a Reverse Date Calculation of 15D has been specified to calculate the reversal on the 15^th day of the next month.  More date formulas can be found in Microsoft’s documentation here, though I have only tested a few of these with the Reverse Date Calculation feature so far.  As you can see in a Preview Posting screenshot below, the recurring journal posts a reversal on the 15^th of the next month, as specified in the field.

These new features with the 2020 Wave 2 Release of Business Central allow for much more flexibility around journal entry posting and journal entry correction.  Microsoft has also added functionality to validation in General Journals, and I reviewed this on a short video.  I’m excited for the release of these features and am excited to see what Microsoft adds in the future for us accounting-minded people!