Building Your Business Intelligence with Financial Dimensions
Posted on: March 20, 2015 | By: Jarrod Kraemer | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365
One of the great aspects of Microsoft Dynamics AX is that is has tons of advanced functionality right out of the box. We strive to take advantage of these features because they really make a difference in what you get out of your implementation (especially considering they do not require development). One of those features that every company must utilize are the financial dimensions. Properly setting up these dimensions allows your company to start building important business intelligence as soon as you make your first financial transaction. Trust us, your folks in accounting will be very thankful!
Financial Dimensions in AX are essentially subdivisions of your account structure. The account structure consists of your main account, followed by the financial dimensions of your choice. AX actually allows you to create as many financial dimensions as you want!
What is the advantage of having unlimited financial dimensions? Let’s take this example: A common financial dimension to utilize is ‘Department’ (Note: You can call these dimensions whatever you want, but AX has default names). Each department in your firm would have its own unique number i.e. Sales – 001, Finance – 002, HR – 003, and so on and so forth. Let’s say Fred in your Sales department just made a nice sale of $10,000 worth of widgets. When posting the transaction in the journal, you have the ability to add the Sales department to the account description. This allows your company to track the activity of your Sales department. Going a step further, you can track the activity of your Sales department by region by adding a ‘Location’ financial dimension after the financial dimension, Department. After the location dimension, you can add another dimension to track which type of products you are selling. You can keep adding dimensions until you are comfortable that every penny that goes through your company will be accounted for and analyzed!
This is just one example of the many functionalities that can be achieved with the feature of financial dimensions. It is very easy to set up, and will automatically start building business intelligence with each transaction posted.
For additional information please feel free to reach out to us at info@loganconsulting.com or (312) 345-8817.
All the best!
Logan Consulting
www.loganconsulting.com