Using Microsoft Dynamics GP Source Documents to identify GL entries

Originally Posted 9/6/2012

Today I want to talk about identifying journal entries in Microsoft Dynamics GP that come from a particular source. An example of this would be entries that come from your CPA. Whether the entries are received after a month end financial statement review, end-of-the-year review or after an annual audit you may want to track that these entries come from your CPA rather than your internal team.

The easiest way to accomplish this in Microsoft Dynamics GP is to create a new source document. Every journal entry in the general ledger is assigned a source document to identify where this entry originated. For example, if this entry came from payables management module and was an invoice the source document would PMTRX. So let’s create a source document called CPA to identify all transactions that we receive from our CPA.

To do this will open up the source document maintenance window, this can be found on the administration view, set up, and posting. Once you open the source document maintenance window simply enter in the ID, in this case CPA and enter in a description.

While you are entering in a general ledger journal entry in the financial series you can now perform a lookup on the source document and find your new source document ID called CPA. Once you have entries in the system, both posted and unposted you can use inquires and tools such as smartlist to look up these entries.

This particular feature is good for both CPA entries and any other kind of entry you want to track. But please note that transactions that come from other modules will already be defaulted with their particular source document. So for example source documents would not be a good place to track projects. You would not want to change the payables transaction entry from PMTRX to a project ID as this would create confusion as to the original source of this entry.  So only use this feature for GL transactions that you are entering.

This is another simple little feature that can save you oodles of time.

Author: Belinda Allen

Belinda Allen (Microsoft MVP) is both a Microsoft Certified Professional for Dynamics GP (MCP) and a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). She is also the co-founder of Smith & Allen Consulting, Inc. (www.saci.com), a business management software consulting firm for over 24 years. Belinda began implementing ERP systems so long ago that Windows was not an operating system, but an application. Larger businesses used old Main Frames with monitors that were Green and Black and smaller business did accounting by hand. Having seen the evolution that has taken place over the years from pieces of paper to analytics, Belinda still gets excited every time she helps a business improve. Belinda is also well known for her Blog www.BelindaTheGPcsi.com. Her blog is about sharing really useful information about the product quickly and succinctly. She has earned the nickname GP CSI because she excels at reviewing GP problems and figuring what went wrong and why. With followers all over the Globe she is able to share knowledge and achieve her mission: “To Improve the Lives and Business Success of my Followers.” In her time off, Belinda enjoys sailing, woodturning, crochet/knitting, sewing/quilting, reading and playing the ukulele (Belinda often participates in Ukulele Jams in NYC.) View all posts by Belinda Allen