How to Post a Simple Vendor Bill in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016

Today we’re going to book a normal bill from a vendor that does not include inventory. We are not going to receive inventory in, or a fixed asset or anything like that. We just want to hit the GL. I actually have a bill for some office supplies that I need to put in the system. I want to do that the simple way.

There are two ways in NAV to do this; the first way which is using a Purchase Invoice. So I just get into my Purchase Invoices, create a new one, the vendor is CoolWood Technologies, and so here in the lines I’m actually going to pick ‘GL Account’.

I could have picked Item but then I receive an entry or fixed asset - I generate acquisition cost, but GL account will just hit straight to the GL. I just look up the GL account I want, which is going to be Office Supplies, like so. I put in the quantity, you know the Measure just being Each, it was $344 and that’s it.

Now I can put in the invoice number from the vendor, like so, and obviously I want to put in the due date - when this is due. It’s going to be due 12/31/16. I could have set up the payment terms to reflect the due date as well. And then I just go ahead and post this and now the CoolWood Technologies, if I go to that vendor, let’s see, I’ll just look for it here. And look at the Ledger Entries and now I can see that I have this invoice for $344.

Now I actually did this with header and lines but my personal preference is going with Journal because it’s much quicker. I just go into Purchase Journal and I’m going to add to this Journal. Just delete this that I have in here.

That’s fine. Let’s see… and I’m just going to create a new batch for my transaction here because this one was in the way. I’ll go into batches later. Now I get into the Purchase Journal and I actually just have to go in here and set up the posting date, what document type it is, document number, the account type I can pick here in this case I’m going to do Vendor.  

Account Number - I’ll look for my CoolWood like so. I just type in here Office Supplies, skip these and put in the amount. Now I put in the amount in negative here because I’m doing a journal and journals work in debits and credits.

When I do a transaction like this, on my left hand side I have the vendor which is going to be a credit and then it’s going to debit the balancing account here which is right here, it’s going to be a GL account - Office Supplies.

Now, I’m missing putting in the vendor invoice number here. I can’t put that anywhere, but I can show that field by just going into Choose Columns, and it is the External Document Number. I’m going to move that up to be right after the Balancing Account Number, like so.

So if I close out this and open it up again, like so, I have my External Document Number. I can put in the invoice number and you might have probably noticed that there is also one other field missing and that is the Due Date.

I’m going to add that too right here, and this just shows the flexibility of NAV. Also I really don’t use these three fields here - the General Posting Type etc, etc. They are rarely used so I can just take them out. These are the same. And here I could actually just apply but I am never going to apply really in the Purchase Journal so I’ll leave that out.

That is more the Payment Journal and so to clean up my journal I would probably want it to look like this. Simple. Ok and I got my Due Date and that was 12/31/16 - we had really good terms with this vendor. And that’s it, so that’s all I need to key in for that. I didn’t have to do the Header and Lines. This is much simpler - I can do many in one batch. And then I just go ahead and Post. Yes, successfully posted.

And if I go into my vendor again -  CoolWood Technologies right here - and take a look at the Ledger Entries, I can see that now I have both of them in here; that one was through an invoice and that one is through the journal.

The cool thing about going through a journal is that I can actually reverse this. It’s not as easy to do that if I go through an invoice, so again journal kind of beats going through an invoice. And that was it for posting a simple office supply bill.