What dimensions can be used in your Business Central solution to transform the way you work?

If you work in the finance or accounting side of your business, you will know that being able to easily maintain and keep up-to-date financial records is crucial to both the structure and operational well-being of any business. Being able to assess and report are vital to ensuring all departments are operating efficiently – regular bookkeeping in addition to interpreting the information revealed in reports can provide businesses with opportunities to grow and remain in control of their financial health now and in the future. 

Business Central has a comprehensive set of business intelligence functionalities to enable businesses to easily manage, track and review business data. This can be achieved through the creation of reports by the user and the ability to easily share vital documents and data with other stakeholders in the business. Any business using Business Central can take this data to the next level by recording data inputs within accounts or documents through the use of dimensions. 

Before we delve into talking into dimensions let’s define them. 

Dimensions are values that categorize entries so you can track and analyze them on documents, such as sales orders. Dimensions can, for example, indicate the project or department an entry came from. 

What types of dimensions can be used in Business Central? 

Global Dimensions 

You will find that you are able to access these via fields on journal and document lines, account schedules, batch operations, reports as well as through general ledger entries. Furthermore, you can take this further by using them as extra fields on purchase and sales documents, in general ledger lookups as well as in account fields to denote distinct projects, salespeople and much more. In addition to this, it is also worth considering that only the two global dimensions can be outlined, meaning that they should be values that will be used on a regular basis across the business. 

Shortcut Dimensions 

You will find that you can add these to your journal, sales as well as purchase lines in addition to master data. 

It goes without saying but dimensions are definitely needed if using Business Central, however it is important to understand them and how to use them properly, otherwise you may lose out on key elements for optimal production. 

If you make mistakes on entries by adding wrong dimensions, changes can be completed through the General Ledger registration and General Ledger submission sites. Furthermore, you can also edit previously added entries by changing the dimension value and by adding new dimensions or removing them if needed. 

Next Steps? 

If you are a business that is currently using Business Central and not making use of dimensions and would like to then please give our Business Central specialists a call now to discuss your specific dimensions requirements so we can provide you with tailored Business Central consultancy and support to get you up & running. 

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