Quick Journal Oddity

We had a client come up with an odd issue with quick journals, and my colleague Nathan Hayden spent some time researching the issue with Microsoft.  As it turns out, it is a quality report (with a low possibility of being resolved due to the low number of customers reporting the issue).

But, first, for those of you that are not familiar with quick journals...

A quick journal allows you to set up a self-balancing journal entry template.  So you enter all lines of the jounral entry except one, and the journal entry automatically balances to the specified offset account.  The templates are set up using Microsoft Dynamics GP-Tools-Setup-Financial-Quick Journal.  Entries are then enterered using Transactions-Financial-Quick Journal.

I have found over the years that most users prefer using recurring batches in Financial instead, especially now that you can choose to "Clear Recurring Amounts" when you set up the recurring batch, Transactions-Financial-Batches.  But some users do still prefer quick journals, which is how we ran across the issue.

The symptom that the client was reporting was that there were batches being left in the general ledger with no transactions.  The batch ID was the same as the quick journal ID, and the batch could not be selected in the Batch Entry window for deletion.  What we found is that this was caused by overriding the journal entry number in the Quick Journal Entry window before posting. Very odd.

Here are the details of the quality report:
4444 Empty Quick Journal Batch left behind in Fin. Series Post

Description: 1
1. Go to Setup--financial--quick journals.

2. Setup 2 new quick journals. Test1 and Test2 will work.

3. Go to Transactions--Financial--Quick journal

4. Using TEST1, enter 1 transaction (example: Journal ID 800) and click on the post button to post.

5. Using TEST1, enter another transaction (journal ID 801) and save it.

6. Using TEST2, enter another transaction (Journal ID 802) and save it.

7. Check Financial Series Post. Should see 2 batches (TEST1 and TEST2) with 1 transaction each.

8. Go back to quick journal. Select journal 801 from the lookup. Do not save it again and do not post it.

9. With 801 selected, manually type in 802 and click on the post button to post it.

10. Close the window and go back to Financial Series Post. You should see batch TEST1 with 1 transaction and TEST2 with 0 transactions.

Expected results, the batch should not be there if there are no transactions in it. Seems to only get left behind if the journal ID number is manually overridden and posted from the screen.

If you are experiencing this issue, contact support so you can be added to the quality report :)  Fortunately, it does not impact data integrity and you can delete the batch from the SY00500 table (always make a backup first, and then run SELECT * FROM SY00500 to locate the batch's dex_row_ID, and then run DELETE SY00500 WHERE DEX_ROW_ID=insert ID here).

Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a supervising consultant with BKD Technologies, providing training, support, and project management services to new and existing Microsoft Dynamics customers. This blog represents her views only, not those of her employer.