Released Purchase Orders

Does anyone know if the reason why GL lines can be modified/inserted in Released Purchase Orders, but Items and Fixed Assets cannot.

Is there a technical reason, or more of a functional reason

Any ideas would be great

Andrew

Release function is intended to protect order/invoice from accidental editing, and nothing more - as Navision hasn’t explicit Save/Cancel buttons by design and every change is saved as focus moves away to next field. However, SOME fields remain editable even in Released status.

You may Reopen the doc again and edit whatever you want, said it is not posted yet.

But technically there is no reason why we could not block the GL entries as well?

I was more curious as to why the GL is treated differently from items and Fixed Assets. My colleague and I, both with well over 10 years experience cannot work out why this difference is, and always has been there.

Andrew

To say the truth I have been too lazy to check which fields and/or functionality --as capability to add/remove//edit lines of some type-- are locked by Released status [:P]

It is not documented anywhere, too. I do not see any serious reason, why some line types are “more equal than others” but something the designers had in mind coding so. Or it’s just some bug/side effect, than GL appears not to be blocked…

Although don’t know the reason why it is done this way, but for type Item and FA only it is checking. TestStatusOpen is the function used for this purpose.

IF Type IN [Type::Item,Type::“Fixed Asset”] THEN
PurchHeader.TESTFIELD(Status,PurchHeader.Status::Open);

Rounding of invoices for currency, this generates a new line automatically on a Purchase order, so am guessing that is why this has been left there. May be other functions which do the same.

Andrew

Both questions are more related to Business and Accounting practices/standards, pretty much like user requirements.

Does anyone know if the reason why GL lines can be modified/inserted in Released Purchase Orders, but Items and Fixed Assets cannot.

Since PO are going to send out to vendor, so there’s a necessary to keep a valid copy of the same details that vendor saw. For any reason vendor will come to ask again, and accountants to check what’s recorded on our side.
And for Purchasing Dept “released” PO, their job finished. Accountant got a right to assign this PO to goes with some GL adjustment (for closing, for all accounting reasons). However, accountant should not change the “item” lines, for the same reason above.

I was more curious as to why the GL is treated differently from items and Fixed Assets.

Again, accounting reasons, FA are treated as same as investment / assets to provide income.

FAs are not meant to be sold, but to be depreciated over the YEARS. Item’s costing is posted once it sold.

FA depreciation treated as Expenses, goes into Expenses. (business terms, it’s a fixed cost)
while Items are treated as Costs, goes into COGS. (business terms, it’s a variable cost)

FAs might be sold, but not considered as normal income. It can be other income, or counting against the replacement FA’s.
Items don’t have the same consideration, replacement for item means just write off the old one.

Finally FA goes into Balance Sheet as non-current Assets (long time, staying more than a year)
Item goes into B/L as current Assets- Inventory (short time for “current” , goods to be sold for “Inventory” )

It might be good for ITs took a 3-months course on accountings too.

Well… Even Navision programmer must have general accounting theory knowledge otherwise it is hard or in some cases practically impossible to work, not speaking about consultants/analysts/PMs [:)]

Most of Navision folks, at least those I have worked with, know accounting to the extent their daily job requires. After more than 20 years with different ERP systems I myself can easily work as chief accountant, if suddenly “pure IT” jobs, as you called them, happen to be out of demand. I had to learn not only accounting theory, but also tax legislation of several countries, and the latter changes constantly.

As result, there have been cases in my practice when I had to “teach” client’s accountants how the things must actually be done from accounting point of view - if I had followed their “requirements” for Navision implementation, the system would not comply with their country legal accounting requirements…