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Cost Accounting in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

Cost Accounting in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

Long live Cost Accounting in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations: this could reduce the number of daily used financial dimensions.

Cost Accounting gives managerial insights less pain

As a consultant and trainer with the AX-family for the last 20 years, I often challenge the use of financial dimensions. Does it really make sense to have 8-12-20 financial dimensions for up-front daily accounting?

“Depends” is my favourite term, and quite often precisely that answer drives customers, students and everybody else up the wall. But it really does – depend!

Perhaps we should think twice before adding extra financial dimensions to an account structure and thus to the burden of the daily financial workers, as well as the performance of D365FO itself.

If the primary purpose of a financial dimension is to drive cost and profitability analysis, the new tools in Cost Accounting would get the job done – and probably be much better at it. It has such a rich toolset, not available anywhere else in D365FO.

As a result of using Cost Accounting functionality, the daily accounting and reporting chores could be greatly simplified, statutory reporting easier. Controllers, auditors and indeed D365FO performance would not struggle with quite the same challenges from dimension validation set-up and daily check during posting, or the millions of extra transactions resulting from allocation terms and rules.

For some companies, the allocation for costing purposes would better be done in Cost Accounting, the perhaps fast growing module/functionality in D365FO. It has a much richer set of tools than the fairly basic allocation terms and rules in General Ledger; including statistical information, advanced fixed and variable allocation mix

Cost accounting lets you collect data from various sources, such as the general ledger, sub-ledgers, budgets, and statistical information. You can then analyze, summarize, and evaluate cost data, so that management can make the best possible decisions for price updates, budgets, cost control, and so on.

Note the “statistical information” – allows for some nice tricks when analyzing cost!

Even the German-speaking markets – very often requiring cost accounting functionality – can reap the benefits of a totally integrated solution, including fully traceable transactions and analysis flow. This is so much better than handling Cost Accounting in Excel spreadsheets. True, Excel gets the job done; but how about audit trails back to the ERP transactions, real-time updates, security, and multi-user insights?

Perhaps best of all, the Cost Accounting functionality in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations does not post any new transactions back to GL (or any other module for that sake). Of course, it sources data from across the board: But it has its’ own data-mart! No matter how hard you play your Cost Accounting, no harm is ever done to your financial transactions. No new transactions are written back – it stays in the Cost Accounting data mart.

Learn how to use Cost Accounting in D365FO

During our 2-day course Cost Accounting in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, we detail the prerequisites, configuration, operation, and reporting regarding Cost Accounting in D365FO.

You will learn, how cost accounting lets you collect data from various sources, such as the general ledger, sub-ledgers, budgets, and statistical information.
Then how to use the information to analyze, summarize, and evaluate cost data, so that management can make the best possible decisions for price updates, budgets, cost control, and so on.

During this 2-day class, you will work hands-on with our practice labs with guidelines for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

To learn more about this course, please click Cost Accounting in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

1 Comment

  1. Finn Nielsen-Friis

    Updated

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