Wednesday, July 31, 2013

GL Balance Migration - Net Change -vs- Debit/Credit

Yesterday I was discussing prior month GL balances with a client who went live in May. They were looking back at a specific account's activity for January, February, and March, and they were confused by what they saw. For the sake of argument, let's say that they saw a $100 credit for January, a $50 debit for February, and a $200 credit for March. So they were concerned as to why each month would only have credit or debit activity and not both. Of course, it was the end of a long day and I wasn't very quick on the uptake :) Normally, when I migrate GL period activity for the purposes of GL history migration, I try to bring in both debit and credit activity for the period. This way, all three columns of the trial balance match the prior system- Debits, Credits, and Net Change for the period. But in this case, someone else had done the migration and the fact that the prior system didn't easily produce period activity in a downloadable format, only the net change for each period was loaded. Looking at it from a client's point of view, someone who is new to the system, it reinforced for me that migrating both debits and credits may make things clearer when looking back months or years from now. And generally, this takes no additional time in the migration assuming the data is available. What do you all think? Curious to know how you all handle it?
Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a supervising consultant with BKD Technologies, providing training, support, and project management services to new and existing Microsoft Dynamics customers. This blog represents her views only, not those of her employer.


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