When you work with capacity load lines in Business Central, two fields control how the system shows your allocated capacity: Include Load from Journals and Include Load from Orders. By switching these on and off, you can see the load that comes from your planning worksheet separately from the load that comes from actual orders.
This matters when you plan capacity for the future. You can run a full plan for a new scenario, look only at the load from journals, and see how much capacity you need for the next four years without mixing in your current orders.
Both fields are included in the export to Excel. That means you can build a demand forecast, run the full MRP, export the lines including load from journals, filter on a specific journal, and see exactly how much capacity you need on each work center with a given product mix.
How the load fields reflect allocated capacity
The fields Include Load from Journals and Include Load from Orders both reflect the allocated capacity, but from different sources. In a typical scenario, your work center might have 45,000 minutes allocated for the period you are looking at, based on the current capacity. When you include the load from journals, the system adds almost 5,000 minutes more on top of that.
If you switch to view only the planning capacity or the load from journals, you see those roughly 5,000 minutes on their own. This lets you separate what is already committed through orders from what the planning worksheet has generated.
Why the planning worksheet adds capacity load
The reason the load from journals appears is that running the planning worksheet creates planning routing lines. When you have a line in the planning worksheet for an item, Business Central calculates the routing lines for that item. Those routing lines require setup time and run time, and that is what allocates the capacity.
So the extra minutes you see are not arbitrary. They come from the routing calculations behind every planned production line.
Using the load fields for long-term capacity planning
Because you can calculate capacity from the journals without including the orders, these fields are useful for long-term planning. If you are running a full plan for a new scenario, you can look at the load from journals alone to figure out how much capacity you will need, whether that is for next year or the next four years.
You can also combine both views and see the load from orders and the load from journals together when you need the full picture.
Exporting capacity load to Excel for budgeting
The load fields carry over into the export to Excel, which makes them practical for budgeting. If you want to know how much capacity you need next year with a given product mix, the workflow is straightforward:
- Create a demand forecast for the products you expect to make.
- Run the full MRP.
- Export the lines including load from journals.
- Filter on the specific journal you want to analyse.
The result shows how much capacity you need on all your work centers for that specific product mix, which gives you a solid foundation for your capacity budget.
Q&A
What do the Include Load from Journals and Include Load from Orders fields show?
Both fields reflect the allocated capacity on your capacity load lines, but from different sources. Include Load from Orders shows the capacity committed through actual orders, while Include Load from Journals shows the capacity generated by the planning worksheet. You can view them separately or together.
Why does running the planning worksheet add capacity load?
Running the planning worksheet creates planning routing lines. Business Central calculates the routing for each planned item, and those routing lines require setup time and run time. That is what allocates the additional capacity you see under load from journals.
How can I calculate future capacity needs without including current orders?
Run a full plan for your scenario and view only the load from journals. This lets you see how much capacity you need based on planned demand, for next year or several years ahead, without mixing in your existing orders.
How do I use the capacity load fields for a capacity budget in Excel?
Create a demand forecast for your expected product mix, run the full MRP, then export the lines including load from journals. Filter on the specific journal, and the export shows how much capacity you need on each work center for that product mix.