Posting Setup

For postings from maintool to reach the general ledger correctly, several posting setups in Business Central must be aligned with each other. This article explains which setups are relevant and how they interact. It also describes the order in which you carry out the setup.

Prerequisites

• A chart of accounts exists in Business Central. It is the basic requirement for posting groups.
• The account assignment has been agreed with your accounting department or your Business Central partner.
• maintool is installed.

Overview: The four relevant posting setups

Four setups are relevant for postings from collana maintool. Two of them are part of standard Business Central, two are specific to maintool:

The standard General Posting Setup in Business Central does not include a dimension posting matrix. This is why collana maintool adds the Work Order Dimension Setup. It lets you control which cost center is used for which posting.

Basics: Posting groups

Posting groups map master data such as customers, vendors, items and resources to G/L accounts. When you post, the values go to the accounts specified for the respective combination of posting groups.

• General business posting group: Assigned to customers and vendors. It distinguishes, for example, between domestic, EU and non-European transactions. For a domestic supplier, you would use the general business posting group Domestic, for example.
  

• General product posting group: Assigned to items and resources. It represents different product types, such as spare parts, services and external services. This allows you, for example, to separate spare part consumption from regular raw material consumption and post it to a separate expense account.

  • The general product posting group for spare parts does not exist in an empty standard Business Central system.

  

• Inventory posting group: Selected directly on the item. Together with the location, it determines the inventory account to which the stock value is posted. Inventory posting groups also help you organize items by posting group in reports.
  

• Work order posting group (maintool): Specified on the order.
  Examples of work order posting groups:

  • Maintenance (expense orders) for maintenance and cost postings
  • Investment for investment orders, such as new construction, whose costs are posted to different accounts

  

In more complex structures, maintenance alone may require several different work order posting groups.

A work order posting group can override the customer's general business posting group if a general business posting group is specified on the work order posting group. This allows you, for example, to handle a service that is recharged to a customer as an invoicing transaction, regardless of the posting group specified on the customer. This setting applies to every order with the corresponding code.

Recommended setup order

Carry out the setup in the following order:

1. Check that the chart of accounts with all required accounts exists.
2. Create the general business posting groups and assign them to customers and vendors.
3. Create the general product posting groups and assign them to items and resources.
4. Set up the General Posting Setup
5. Create the work order posting groups.
6. Set up the Work Order Posting Setup.
7. Set up the Work Order Dimension Setup.
8. For items: Also set up the inventory posting groups and the Inventory Posting Setup.

General Posting Setup

The General Posting Setup fully corresponds to standard Business Central. The account assignment is determined by the combination of general business posting group and general product posting group. For a domestic supplier, for example, this results in the combinations Domestic + Spare parts and Domestic + Services.

Purchase accounts

• In the purchase area, you specify a purchase account and a credit memo account, among others.
• The purchase account is mandatory. Business Central first posts to this account and then reclassifies the amount.
• The purchase account and the credit memo account are often identical. This way, a credit memo or cancellation relieves exactly the account that was previously debited. Agree the specific account assignment with your accounting department.

Line for postings via the item journal

You can build up spare part inventory via purchase orders, the physical inventory journal or the item journal. When posting via the item journal, no general business posting group is specified in the standard. You therefore need an additional line:

• General business posting group: empty
• General product posting group: the general product posting group of the items to be posted
• This line must contain, among others, the accounts for inventory adjustment and inventory consumption.

What is not posted via the General Posting Setup

Not every account needs to be entered in the General Posting Setup. For example, inventory consumption on maintool orders is controlled via the Work Order Posting Setup and is therefore not subject to the standard General Posting Setup.

VAT

The VAT business posting group basically works on the same principle.

Useful functions

• The more business and product posting groups you use, the more lines the General Posting Setup contains. If different combinations post to the same G/L accounts, you can copy the accounts from an existing line.
• Use the Blocked field to prevent a line that is no longer needed from being used for new postings.
• With the View All Accounts on Lookup setting on a line, you see all G/L accounts in the lookup, not only the pre-filtered ones.

Work Order Posting Setup

The Work Order Posting Setup basically works like the standard General Posting Setup. However, instead of the general business posting group, it uses the work order posting group combined with the general product posting group.

Spare parts on maintenance orders

• For spare parts, specify the inventory consumption account. If, for example, a spare part worth 100 euros is withdrawn, the inventory account is credited and the amount is posted to the consumption account.
• The external services expense account can be left empty in this line.
• For non-inventory items, the expense can be posted to the same account or to a separately set up account.

External services

For service items marked as external service or external resource, the expense is posted to the external services expense account. The balancing entry is posted to the purchase account, as with a regular purchase.

Resources

• Resources posted on orders do not require accounts for external services, inventory or inventory adjustments.
• You can optionally transfer resource costs to the general ledger via the Work Order Management Setup (Posting Resource Costs to G/L). This is useful if you use cost accounting, because cost accounting only evaluates G/L entries.
• To do this, specify an account for resource costs and a balancing account.

Detail consumption account

• The detail consumption account additionally posts the costs of each component used on an order to the G/L entries, including the component number. This applies to spare parts and resources.
• This posting is used exclusively for cost accounting and has no effect on the order result.
• The detail costs are posted to one account and balanced on the same or a second balancing account. Depending on the setting, the debit is posted with a cost center and the credit without a cost center.
• If you do not need these additional G/L entries, you can deactivate the function in the Work Order Management Setup (Posting Detail Costs to G/L).

Rounding and other expenses

• A work order rounding account is provided for rounding differences.
• You can also specify G/L accounts in the order lines. Other expenses are posted via these accounts and then balanced against the corresponding balancing account.

Orders with capitalization

For orders with the Capitalization toggle turned on, typically investment orders such as new construction, a different posting logic applies:

• An account number must be specified on the order. Without an account number, no posting to the order is possible.
• All expenses are posted to the account specified on the order. The accounts from the setup are ignored in this case.
• In addition, the accounts in the setup for capitalized overhead and capitalized own work are relevant:
  • Spare parts are included in the asset value via capitalized overhead.
  • Own resource services are recorded as capitalized own work on the asset under construction.
  • There is no capitalized own work for external services.

Work Order Dimension Setup (cost centers)

Based on the combination of work order posting group and general product posting group, the Work Order Dimension Setup defines which cost center is posted to. Depending on the Capitalization toggle, the matching line for capitalized or non-capitalized orders is used.

For each posting line, you have the following options:

• Work order value entry: The cost center is taken from the work order value entry into the resulting G/L entry. This is the case, for example, for a spare part on a maintenance order.
• Default code (fixed cost center)
• No code: Inventory and balance sheet accounts usually have no cost center. For capitalized investment orders, for example, the asset under construction account and other balance sheet accounts are posted without a cost center.

Recommendation: Only set up the posting cases you need

In the Work Order Dimension Setup, only set up the columns and posting cases you actually need. This way, missing accounts or unintended changes to general product posting groups become visible at the latest when posting. Otherwise, they can go unnoticed and lead to incorrect account assignments.

Why the cost center should not be specified on the item

In standard Business Central, the dimension is taken from the respective transaction. For purchases, for example, it comes from the purchase order or invoice, and for sales from the sales document. In maintool, it comes from the order. A cost center on the item would be the same for all uses. This is unsuitable if the same item is used in different areas, such as a light bulb in administration and in production.

Inventory Posting Setup

The Inventory Posting Setup is required in almost all maintool scenarios that involve items or spare parts. It determines which location, combined with which inventory posting group, posts to which inventory account.

• Purchases increase the inventory account, and consumption decreases it again.
• The setup applies per location, for example to a main warehouse and other locations. You can define a separate account assignment for each location. However, customers usually use the same account assignment for all locations.
• You also need a line for postings without a location, that is, a line with an empty location code.

How to set up inventory posting

1. Open the Inventory Posting Setup page.
2. Create a line for each required combination of location (including an empty location) and inventory posting group.
3. Specify the Inventory Account in each line.
4. Optional: If you use expected cost posting, also specify the Inventory Account (Interim) (see the section "Expected cost posting and interim accounts").

Other accounts on this page come from the Business Central manufacturing module, such as accounts for WIP, material variances and capacity. They are not relevant for spare part postings in maintool.

Expected cost posting and interim accounts (optional)

Expected cost posting is optional and not required for all companies.

• At the time of receipt, the final item costs are not yet known. The costs specified on the purchase order are therefore first posted to an interim account.
• When the invoice is received, the interim account is balanced and the actual amount is posted to the regular inventory account.
• If only the quantity of a receipt has been posted, the inventory value in the general ledger does not change unless expected cost posting is turned on.
• In the maintool setup, the interim accounts are only displayed after turning on the Show All Dimension Postings or Show All Accounts toggle.

Common errors and error messages

Errors in the posting setup mainly occur during initial system setup and go-live, when individual posting cases have been forgotten. Depending on the complexity, the setup can be considerably more extensive and span one to two screen pages. This increases the risk of overlooking individual posting cases.

• Once the setup is complete, the configuration usually changes only rarely.
• Important: If the account assignment changes, update it in both the standard General Posting Setup and the Work Order Posting Setup.
• You can track changes to posting groups via the change log.

Further information

• Microsoft Learn: Set up posting groups
• Microsoft Learn: Set up or change the chart of accounts
• Microsoft Learn: Understanding the general ledger and the chart of accounts
• Microsoft Learn: Understand the chart of accounts