In this article by Mohamed Aamer, author of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Financial Management, we will cover that the core foundation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is financial management; it is vital to comprehend the financial characteristics in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 from a practical perspective engaged with the application mechanism. It is important to cover the following topics:

• Understanding financial management aspects in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3
• Covering the business rational, basic setups, and configuration
• Real-life business requirements and its solution
• Hints of implementation tips and tricks in addition to the key consideration points during analysis, design, deployment, and operation

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Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Financial Management book covers the main characteristics general ledger and its integration between other subledgers (Accounts payable, Accounts receivable, fixed assets, cash and bank management, and inventory). It also covers the core features of main accounts, the categorization accounts, and its controls, along with the opening balance process and concept, and the closing procedure.

It then discusses subledgers functionality (Accounts payable, Accounts receivable, fixed assets, cash and bank management, cash flow management, and inventory) in more details by walking through the master data, controls, and transactions and its effects on the general ledger.

It explores financial reporting that is one of the basic implementation corner stone. The main principles for reporting are reliability of business information and the ability to get the right information at the right time for the right person. Reports that analyze ERP data in an expressive way represent the output of the ERP implementation; it is considered as the cream of the implementation—the next level of value that solution stakeholders should target for. This ultimate outcome results from building all reports based on a single point of information.

Planning reporting needs for ERP

The Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation teamwork should challenge the management's reporting needs in the analysis phase of the implementation with a particular focus on exploring the data required to build reports. These data requirements should then be cross-checked with the real data entry activities that end users will execute to ensure that business users will get vital information from the reports. The reporting levels are as follows:

• Operational management
• Middle management
• Top management

Understanding information technology value chain

The model of a management information system is most applicable to the Information Technology (IT) manager or Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a business. Business owners likely don't care as much about the specifics as long as these aspects of the solution deliver the required results. The following are the basic layers of the value chain:

• Database management
• Business processes
• Business Intelligence
• Frontend

Understanding Microsoft Dynamics AX information source blocks

This section explores the information sources that eventually determine the strategic value of Business Intelligence (BI) reporting and analytics. These are divided into three blocks.

• Detailed transactions block
• Business Intelligence block
• Executive decisions block

Discovering Microsoft Dynamics AX reporting

The reporting options offered by Microsoft Dynamics AX are:

• Inquiry forms
• SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) reports
• The original transaction
• The Original document function
• Audit trail

Reporting currency

Companies report their transactions in a specific currency that is known as accounting currency or local currency. It is normal to post transactions in a different currency, and this amount of money is translated to the home currency using the current exchange rate.

Autoreports

The Autoreport wizard is a user-friendly tool. The end user can easily generate a report starting from every form in Microsoft Dynamics AX. This wizard helps the user to create a report based on the information in the form and save the report.

Summary

In this article, we covered financial reporting from planning to consideration of reporting levels. We covered important points that affect reporting quality by considering the reporting value chain, which consists of infrastructure, database management, business processes, business intelligence, and the frontend. We also discussed the information source blocks, which consist of the detailed transactions block, business intelligence block, and executive decisions block.

Then we learned about the reporting possibilities in Microsoft Dynamics AX such as inquiry forms and SSRS reports, and autoreport capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3.

Resources for Article:

Further resources on this subject:

• Customization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM [Article]
• Getting Started with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Marketing [Article]
• SOP Module Setup in Microsoft Dynamics GP [Article]