What is the differnce between document date,work date and posting date
Hi Bavani,
Document date is the date of the document you are creating/posting - this date is stored and used to calculate due dates on orders for example
Posting date is the date that a posted document uses to post to the ledgers e.g. general ledger
Work date is the default date for the user and is normally set to today’s date. You would use this at month end for example to set the date to a date in the previous month until you’re ready to close.
Hope this makes it clearer.
You actually get a good explaination from the NAV 2009 help text:
Posting Date Field
Here you can enter the date on which the sales header should be posted.
The posting date will be copied to all G/L, customer and item entries when posting.
Document Date Field
This field shows the date on which you create the sales document.
Note that the program uses this date when calculating the amount that the customer owes according to the information in the Payment Terms window. This date is also used to calculate finance charges according to the grace period and other information in the Finance Charge Terms window. You must therefore ensure that the date in this field corresponds to the date on the sales invoice sent to the customer so that the program will calculate the amount that the customer owes as well as any finance charges correctly.
The program will suggest the work date, but you can change this date as necessary.
As you can read here, then the Posting Date is the date all your posted entries are getting and the date printed on invoices etc., where as the Document Date is the date on which you created the invoice. Normally these dates will be the same, unless you have entered a Work Date.
Typically you will be using the Work Date around month end. In that way you can set the Work Date as the last day in the month, even though you have actually passed the first in the next month, and in this way you can easily give your month end posts the work date, just by entering W in the date field.
And that’s actually different from what you would be doing on invoices. Many companies are often a bit behind with their invoices. So maybe they are a few days into the new month, before they get the time to post the remaining invoices for the last month. And since they don’t want the invoices to show up to show up in the “right month”, then they are changing the posting date. But as a customer I would not accept the payment terms to be calculated on an old date, expecially not if my payment terms was “Current Month + 30 days” (a very often seen term here in Denmark), so in that way you would be entering the actual creation date in the Document Date field to get the payment terms calculate “correctly”.
Still not very clear… Can u give examples and explain it
I need to answer that question with a question?
Have you ever worked with Navision? I mean not as a consultant or developer, but really worked with the system as an end-user? Actually it doesn’t matter if it has been with Navision, just any ERP system.
If yes, then you would know exactly, based on the examples above, what you need the different dates for.
If no, then you should consider asking your accounting department if you can try participating in one of their month ends. You would learn a lot, which basically any NAV consultant should do. You need to know the lingo and how the daily work in an accounting department is…
I’m sorry, that I cannot give you any better examples, as I can really not think of other examles, but I also think that it’s explained very good by both me and Dave above, so you should really be able to understand the purpose, if you understand the nature of the accounting departments.
Hi Masters,
Mr. Dave wrote “
“Document date is the date of the document you are creating “
Mr. Erik wrote
“This field shows the date on which you create the sales document.
But one thing how to on which date I created the sales order or Purchase order.
Because the date is changing when the user change the posting date on sales order or purchase order
for item ship or Item receive .
So where can I store creation of document date.
Please let me know.
It shouldn’t. You sure you haven’t any customization here?
Hi Lally,
I see that my statement can be misunderstood. What I meant was that this is the date which is automatically inserted when the document is created. But you’re right that if you manually update the Posting Date, then the Document Date is also updated with this date. So the basic rule is that if you manually update the Posting Date, then you must also manually update Document Date, if you want these two dates to be different. But normally, except for the examples I described above (regarding month-end invoices and the special Payment Terms), then you would not need to change the Document Date. In fact I know many companies who simply hide this field, as they don’t have these special Payment Terms with “Current Month + x days”.
In that case, then you “could” change the field triggers on the Posting Date field, which updates the Document Date field, so that it will remain the creating date.
Thanks Mr Erik, For the valuable information about query. Erik wrote : This date is also used to calculate finance charges according to the grace period and other information in the Finance Charge Terms window. You must therefore ensure that the date in this field corresponds to the date on the sales invoice sent to the customer so that the program will calculate the amount that the customer owes as well as any finance charges correctly If i change the date manually is there any effect in finance charge memos, due date … Please let me know . Thanks and regards
Yes
Here is a tip, actually change the document date, does the due date alter? Change it again, does it change again? It has taken longer for you to write your post and for me to reply that for you to actually do this [:D]