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How to: Work with Account Schedules

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Use account schedules to get insight into the financial data stored in your chart of accounts. Account schedules analyze figures in G/L accounts, and compare general ledger entries with general ledger budget entries. The results display in charts on your Home page, such as the Cash Flow chart.

Dynamics NAV provides a few sample account schedules that you can use right away, or you can set up your own rows and columns to specify the figures to compare. For example, you can create account schedules to calculate profit margins on dimensions like departments or customer groups. You can create as many customized financial statements as you want.

Setting up account schedules requires an understanding of the financial data in the chart of accounts. For example, you can view general ledger entries as percentages of budget entries. This requires that budgets are created. For more information, see How to: Create Budgets.

Account Categories and Account Schedules

You can use account categories to change the layout of your financial statements. After you set up your account categories in the G/L Account Categories window, and you choose the Generate Account Schedules action, the underlying account schedules for the core financial reports are updated. The next time you run one of these reports, such as the balance statement, new totals and subentries are added, based on your changes. For more information, see The General Ledger and the Chart of Accounts.

To create new account schedules

You use account schedules to analyze figures in general ledger accounts or to compare general ledger entries with general ledger budget entries. For example, you can view the general ledger entries as percentages of the budget entries.

  1. Choose the Search for Page or Report icon, enter Account Schedules, and then choose the related link.

  2. In the Account Schedule Names window, choose the New action to create a new account schedule name.

  3. Fill in the fields as necessary. Choose a field to read a short description of the field or link to more information.

  4. Choose the Edit Account Schedule action.

  5. In the Account Schedule window, fill in the fields as necessary.

    When you have created a new account schedule and set up the rows, you must set up columns. You can either set them up manually or assign a predefined column layout to your account schedule.

  6. Choose the Edit Column Layout Setup action.

  7. In the Column Layout window, fill in the fields as necessary.

Note

If you did not assign a default column layout to the account schedule, you must set the columns up manually.

To create a column that calculates percentages

Sometimes you may want to include a column in an account schedule to calculate percentages of a total. For example, if you have a number of rows that break down sales by dimension, you may want a column to indicate the percentage of total sales that each row represents.

  1. Choose the Search for Page or Report icon, enter Account Schedules, and then choose the related link.
  2. In the Account Schedule Names window, select an account schedule.
  3. Choose the Edit Account Schedule action to set up an account schedule row to calculate the total on which the percentages will be based.
  4. Insert a line immediately above the first row for which you want to display a percentage.
  5. Fill in the fields on the line as follows: In the Totaling Type field, enter Set Base for Percent. In the Totaling field, enter a formula for the total that the percentage will be based on. For example, if row 11 contains the total sales, enter 11.
  6. Choose the Edit Column Layout Setup action to set up a column.
  7. Fill in the fields on the line as follows: In the Column Type field, select Formula. In the Formula field, enter a formula for the amount that you want to calculate a percentage for, followed by %. For example, if column number N contains the net change, enter N%.
  8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 for each group of rows that you want to break down by percentage.

To set up account schedules with overviews

You can use an account schedule to create a statement comparing general ledger figures and general leger budget figures.

  1. Choose the Search for Page or Report icon, enter Account Schedules, and then choose the related link.

  2. In the Account Schedule Names window, select an account schedule.

  3. Choose the Edit Account Schedule action

  4. In the Account Schedule window, in the Name field, select the default account schedule name.

  5. Choose the Insert Accounts action.

  6. Select the accounts that you want to include in your statement, and then choose the OK button.

    The accounts are now inserted into your account schedule. If you want you can also change the column layout.

  7. Choose the Overview action.

  8. On the Dimension Filters FastTab, set the budget filter to the desired filter name.

  9. Choose the OK button.

Now you can copy and paste your budget statement into a spreadsheet.

See Also

Dynamics 365 Business Central
Business Intelligence
Finance
Setting Up Finance
The General Ledger and the Chart of Accounts
Working with Dynamics NAV