My Business Central 12 Month Income Statement worked so well for of all of last year, that is until this week! When I run it now December of last year is overstated, why?
December is overstated
When you run a 12 Month Income Statement with columns for January through December, everything looks great until you get to December. For some reason, the amounts in December are overstated.
In drilling down, you find not only entries for December but also entries for January of the new year. Column Definitions are set to use Accounting Periods.
Accounting Periods are all defined correctly. How are January entries from the next year getting into the December column?
Ah, but there is something amiss in the Accounting Period list! (Catch that almost Dr. Suess-like rhyme?) I have learned the hard way that for the December numbers to report correctly, the first period of the next year must be defined.
Let’s get it fixed
To fix it for last year and all the future years, take these steps:
- Add an Accounting Period for January of the new year and mark it as New Fiscal Year.
- While in Accounting Periods, Create Year by selecting January of your new year as the starting date then select 12 periods to create. (Cool, another rhyme.)
You may be asking yourself why you would select 12 for number of periods in Create Year when you have already defined January of the year you are creating? My answer – don’t worry, it works!
Not only does this create your complete new year without duplicating January, but it also creates the first month of the next fiscal year. Create Year will follow this pattern moving forward and you shouldn’t have December Period reporting problems ever again. At least not from this cause!
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