Using Atlas to Upload Intercompany Journals to Dynamics AX 2012

Posted on: April 27, 2016 | By: Jarrod Kraemer | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365

Authored by: Rosey McAdams

Atlas by Globe Software is a great tool for uploading large amounts of data into Dynamics AX through an Excel spreadsheet. Once you have installed the Atlas software, Atlas offers several ready to use templates for uploading everything from AP Invoice Journals to Inventory Adjustment Journals that can be found on their website here. In this blog we will not only look at how to upload intercompany journals, but we will also look at how to use and modify Atlas templates.

Atlas is commonly used for uploading General Journals with several lines. Atlas has a number of predesigned templates for uploading general journals. One of our customers had a specific need for uploading intercompany general journals. This led us to head right to Globe Software’s website to find an intercompany General Journal template, where indeed we found a template for uploading Intercompany General Journals. To use the template, all you need to do is be signed into Atlas, click on the template’s link, choose your data source and voila, you are now in an Excel document that can be uploaded directly into AX.

*Important note: To be able to successfully post intercompany journals in AX that were uploaded via Atlas you must add code to AX to change the way the client interacts with AX. The code change is to have AX treat the connection with Atlas as client connection, rather than a business connector connection. The code can be found on the Globe Software website here.

This is what the Intercompany General Journal Upload template looks like:

Outlined in red above, you can see that there is a main company and an offset company for each journal line, meaning there will be a credit to an account in one company and a debit to an account in another company for the amount on each line. This template is great for companies that use single line journal entries, however, several of our customers use two lines for journal entries with the main account on one line and the offset account on the next line. However, there is not a prebuilt Atlas template for entering intercompany journals with the main account and company and offset account and company on separate lines.

To be able to upload in intercompany journal having separate lines for our main account and offset account and company we must modify the Atlas “General Journal no offset with separate debit credit amount” template. Let’s first take a look at what the template looks like without any modifications:

As you can see from the screen shot above, on this template, there is no column for company – which is necessary for our intercompany journal upload. We must modify our template to include a column for company, to do so follow the steps below:

1) Insert a column in the excel spreadsheet and label it company.

2) Now we will need to map this column to the company accounts field in AX. To do so, in the action pane click Upload under Atlas 6.0.

3) The upload screen will pop up on the right side of the excel workbook, click on the show inspector button.

4) Scroll down to the bottom of the inspector screen and click on “add more”

5) The journal lines screen will pop up, click on show all fields to get more options for mapping to AX

6) Scroll down until you find the field you want to map to and click in the empty box so that the field is now checked. In our case we want to choose company accounts to map to company.

7) We can now see that the field is available to map to in the inspector. Click on the target to choose where on the Excel workbook we want to map this new field to.

8) Drag down on the cells that are in the new column you added for company.

9) You are now able to enter companies in this column and are ready to upload your intercompany journal. To upload a journal click on the upload button again, click the run button, and Run Upload.

10) You may now navigate to the AX general journal and find the uploaded journal to post.

You should now be comfortable with finding and downloading Atlas upload templates from Globe Software’s website, modifying templates, and uploading journals via Atlas. For additional information or help with using Atlas to upload journals into AX please feel free to reach out to us at info@loganconsulting.com or (312) 345-8817. All the best!

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