Introduction to posting with Dimensions

Dimensions in Business Central let you tag transactions across vendors, customers, and items so you can filter and report on the data later. When you set up a dimension value such as a project code, assign it to your master data, and post documents, the dimension follows the transaction through purchase, inventory, and sales. This means you can see every general ledger account affected by a specific vendor, customer, or project in one filtered view.

You set up dimensions and define their values first. You then assign a dimension value to vendors, customers, and items. When you post purchase orders and sales orders, Business Central carries the dimension to the related entries automatically, including the sales order header where you can change it if needed.

You can attach several dimensions to each document. This creates a matrix of measurements you can use for statistics and analysis.

Setting up dimensions and dimension values

Start by setting up your dimensions. On each dimension, you define the values you want to use. For example, on a project dimension you create a new dimension value and give it a code, such as 20, with whatever name fits your purpose.

This dimension value is now ready to be reflected in your chart of accounts. Since it is brand new, nothing has been posted against it yet. If you go into the chart of accounts and filter the totals by the project dimension with code 20, and then filter on balances different from zero, you see nothing. No transactions exist on that dimension at this point.

Assigning dimensions to vendors, customers, and items

Next, add the dimension to your master data. Take vendor number 10,000 and add the project dimension to it. Once you do this, the project dimension becomes part of that vendor and will be applied whenever you post against the vendor.

You can do the same on a customer. You might set up a customer with a dimension value of 20 if, for instance, the dimension represents the country where the customer operates.

You can also set up a dimension on your items. The value does not have to match the one on the vendor or customer. From an item, such as a city bike, you navigate into the item menu and assign a specific project code to the item as well. In short, you can define dimensions on items, customers, vendors, and more.

How dimensions follow purchase orders through the system

To see how this works in practice, create a new purchase order for the vendor you just set up and buy the item you assigned a dimension to. Enter the vendor invoice number, receive the item, and post the invoice.

The item is now on inventory. Already at this point, the chart of accounts filtered on project code 20 shows a lot of postings. These are the entries on the project filter, covering all the accounts that relate to the vendor. If you want to know which accounts a vendor is using, this is exactly the scenario to use.

How dimensions follow sales orders

You can do the same on the sales side to see what happens there. Create a new sales order for the customer. When you enter the sales order header, the dimension defaults onto the header automatically. You can change it if you want to.

Sell the item from the relevant location, then post and ship the invoice. After this, you have entries on the sales side, on the cash accounts, on the vendor, and on the inventory for that item, all the way through the system. This is what the use of dimensions gives you.

Using dimensions for filtering and statistics

With dimensions in place, you can filter your data by many different dimensions, which makes them very useful for statistics. You can add multiple dimensions to each document, so you build a multidimensional matrix for measuring and analysing your business across vendors, customers, items, projects, locations, and any other dimension you define.

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