Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Advanced Rules in Account Structures

The flexibility of creating Account Structures (AS) with any number of Financial Dimension (FD) nodes is extremely beneficial when building a financial data model for a company.  When you build the model, you should always be thinking “what does the company want their financial statements to look like and what critical data elements do they want to monitor?”  Sometimes a client will require solutions more complex than just a combination of:

1. Main Account range
2. Department range
3. Specific Cost Centers

RSM has a client with an AS comprised of multiple FD requiring 1 of 2 specific FD to be entered (i.e. either/or but must have 1 of the 2).  The FD are ‘Project’ and ‘UnitNbr’.  We can meet the business requirement by leveraging Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Advanced Rules functionality.  The steps are as follows:

1. FD in the AS must be ‘Allow Blanks’ and ‘<all values> as below:

2. When the AS is selected, click the ‘Advanced rule’ button. (Unfortunately this button is not highlighted when you navigate to an AS that has an Advanced Rule )

3. Create the first Advanced Rule as below using arithmetic value ‘is less than 0’.  This incorporates all text values of the Project FD…

4. Create the second Advanced Rule as below using arithmetic value ‘is less than 0’.  This incorporates all text values of the UnitNbr FD…

So how does this relate to entering GL transactional data into AX and ultimately how does this approach benefit your client and their business?

See below where I didn’t enter either a Project or a UnitNbr for a Main Account in the range of the AS in a General Journal and it failed.  The entry did not pass the criteria of the Advanced Rule Structure:

If I enter either a Project or a UnitNbr it will pass:

If you are implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX and looking to build financial data models, RSM offers services for Dynamics AX including business process review and system design which will help you optimize a Dynamics AX system according to your needs.  If you would like more information on how RSM can help your organization, contact our professional at erp@mcgladrey.com or contact us at 855.437.7202.

By: Jeff Weber – Illinois Microsoft Dynamics AX partner

Jeff Weber