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Item Sales History

The Item Sales History feature provides a way to accurately import and post your sales history.

note
  • The Item Sales History currently does not support items valued at standard cost.
  • You must post item history before you post opening transactions to prevent an impact on your inventory valuation.
  • You must simulate posting the item history and then posting the opening inventory in your sandbox environment before you do this in your production environment. This is important to ensure you are satisfied with the results. It is not possible to reverse the entries once they get posted.

Business Value​

When you start using Business Central, you want access to the same or better reports that you had before. Your reporting capabilities are enhanced when you have a history and can do comparative reporting. Importing the sales history is complex because Business Central will recalculate the costs when you post transactions. You want the cost of sales to be the same. To do this, you must import all your history (Purchases, Positive Adjustments, Sales, Transfers, etc.) with the correct costing and ensure that the FIFO applications, etc. happen as they did in your previous system. Achieving this is usually not practical due to the effort required.

Feature Details​

The Item Sales History feature allows you to import only your sales history with the sales and costs. With the transactions imported into the Item Sales History staging area, the app creates the necessary inventory increases and creates an item journal that you can post. The app also ensures that all G/L postings go through the same take on suspense account so that there is no impact on the general ledger.

All processing is done on the Item Sales History page, accessible from the Run Object page.

Import Sales History Data​

You import the item sales history using the Import Text File action.

The expected text file must be a tab-delimited text file, with or without headings. Here is an example:

Document No.    Location    Sell-to Customer No.    Item    Posting Date     Sales ex GST    Cost (Total)   Quantity in Base UOM
SIN313421   EAST    10000   1896-s  1/01/2020    494.55      355.33     15
SIN313421   EAST    10000   1900-s  1/01/2020    318.00      221.82     15
SIN313421   EAST    20000   1906-s  1/01/2020    164.85      120.45     5

You can optionally add up to eight dimensions after the Quantity in Base UOM.

  • The dimensions represent Shortcut Dimensions 1 to 8.
  • If you have fewer dimensions, you only need to include columns for the dimensions you have.
  • If you have dimension values for Shortcut Dimensions 2 and 4, you still need to include columns for 1 and 2.
note

You could alternatively use a configuration package to handle the import of this data. However, this is much slower and might not be practical.

Archive Setup​

This function copies all your posting setups to an archive table and changes the accounts to the take-on G/L Suspense account. You must complete this step before you can create the item journal.

caution

You cannot post any other transactions in Business Central except for item sales history once you have archived the setup.

Create Item Journal​

This function will create the item journal. The item journal includes:

  • All sales and returns from the sales history
  • Positive adjustments to increase the inventory so that your inventory does not go into negative.

The batch job has the following options:

FieldPurpose
Template CodeThe item journal template for the item journal. You usually specify ITEM here.
Batch NameThe item journal batch in which you want to create the item journal. We recommend creating a new batch for sales history. You must not specify any number series on this batch.
Default Document No.This is the document number used for increases and history records that do not have a document number.
Bin CodeThis is used for locations where bin is mandatory. You can specify any code here - the app will create the bin if it does not exist. You can remove this bin after you have posted your history.
Entries per TransactionSpecifies how often the program should commit changes while creating the journal. This setting is to prevent one error from rolling back the entire batch.
tip

As the sales history can consist of thousands of entries, scheduling this batch job using the job queue is recommended.

Post Item Journal Batch​

This function will post the item journal created in the previous step.

note

You cannot post the sales history journal from the item journal - you must use this option.

The batch job has the following options:

FieldPurpose
Template CodeThe item journal template where the app created the item journal.
Batch NameThe item journal batch where the app created the item journal.
Entries per TransactionSpecifies how often the program should commit changes while creating the journal. This setting is to prevent one error from rolling back the entire batch.
Is Sales History PostingThis specifies that the batch contains the sales history. This triggers the additional posting logic required to handle the item sales history.
tip

As the sales history can consist of thousands of entries, scheduling this batch job using the job queue is recommended.

Revert Setup​

This action will revert the posting setup after you have posted the item journal.

See Also​

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