Dynamics NAV - Embracing Change in Your Organization

Change can be difficult to embrace, especially when it feels like you have to learn your job all over again. It is important to remember that if your organization has chosen to move to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system, a significant amount of thought, money, and time has gone into this decision. The powers-that-be have decided that this is a necessary change to meet organizational goals.

"You can either embrace the change and thrive, or resist the change and get left behind." 

-my mom 😃

If you are accustomed to using basic accounting programs such as Quickbooks, Dynamics NAV may come across as unnecessarily complicated and the vast complexity of the product can be a bit intimidating at first. I assure you, once you get the hang of the system, your workflow will become more efficient, your data will be cleaner, and upgrades will be much more simple.

Inability to delete or modify posted data

With Dynamics NAV, one of the first things you will notice is that you cannot simply delete or modify documents that have already been posted. Remember, everything you do in NAV is live data being shared across the organization through a relational database. There are a lot of tables attached to the data you are working with and once that information is posted, it has been updated in all areas of the company. The best way to correct any mistakes is to use a Credit Memo to back out the transaction and then post the correct document.

Many people feel like they shouldn't have to be bothered by so many steps to do something so simple. The fact is, there are huge benefits for you, your department, and the organization as a whole.

• Ensures data integrity
• Keeps track of what was wrong and how it was fixed
• Conditions you to be more diligent before posting anything
• Promotes the improvement of internal procedures across the organization to ensure accuracy and efficiency

Depending on the version of Dynamics NAV you are on, there may be a simple way to back-out erroneous postings. We will discuss this and how these types of changes become included in version releases in a later post.

There are no SAVE buttons or UNDO feature

Another thing you will notice is that there are no save buttons or an undo feature. For instance, when registering a new customer or item, moving to the next field will automatically save that data into the database. If you make a mistake in a field, for instance, you are in a customer card for a current customer and you accidentally overwrite their name, as long as you are still on the field, you can press the Esc button on your keyboard and the previous data will repopulate. 

Usually, when there is a SAVE button, certain fields are required in order to move on. If you are lacking the required information, you will have to either find that information right away to continue or lose what you have already entered until you receive that information. Sometimes companies tend to use "placeholder" data so they can come back to it later. This is not a best practice as that information can be used on a transaction somewhere else in your organization. Remember, the name of the game is to maintain clean and accurate data. 

Please be mindful that just because you can skip the input of data on a card, does not mean you will be able to post transactions without it. You will receive an error if that information is missing. For instance, if you haven't set up a posting group for your vendor, you will receive an error when you go to post a purchase invoice because it doesn't know where to post the transaction. 

This will lead us to our next topic of Master Data. See you soon!.