#NAVdevInfo 8: General Journal, you will not recognize it!

Those who know me know also how I love finance module. I am avoiding it so badly that I don’t remember opening General Journal in version 2018. Because, let’s face true, what could change in the most standard functionality since… ever? Seems that A LOT!!!!

Business Central General Journal opened for the first time

So what had changed? Not a functionality, do not worry – it still do for what it was designed – posting. But the view is totally different and much more ergonomic in my opinion.

First what had been changed is that we have, not only Batch Number in the header, but also Document No., Currency Code and Posting Date. No more changing the Posting Date on all lines. That is a great news for me! I hated that.

Little different is with the Document No.. If you will try to change it then you will go to lines which are for particular document – so number should be set before creating the lines. And there is a function which allows you to create a new document number. You only need to remember that in fact the number is created when the first line for the document will be added to the journal. So if there no lines added number will not be used.

As you can see there are actions to navigate between documents which is really nice.

Is that all?

Oh no! The biggest change is in the lines. There are only five fields which are required if you want to post the journal. Five? Yes – Five. And in fact you need to fill only two – Account No. and Credit or Debit Amount.

What if someone does not like it?

I already can hear finance people and consultants who are not happy – to less options, we do not have the Balance Account to fill on the same line, we want to have different types and all that kind of stuff which I pretend to understand.
Don’t worry. It is still there – you just need to use option on the Page and the World will back to normal. And one note – when next time you will open the General Journal it will remember which version you prefer either simple or full.

Technical Note

From code perspective, for both views, still only one page is used to show the data – General Journal. All is based on the Boolean global variable which is named IsSimplePage. This parameter you would see in the Visible attribute for fields.

The biggest “challenge” is to set and remember which option the user prefers. And for that OnInit there is a code which run function in the Codeunit GenJnlManagement. If you would check it, turns out that there is a new table which store all preferences – Journal User Preferences. As you can see it is external so I see potential to use it for some other things – not only for general journals.

There is also function which inserts a record first time to the table.