Purchase Accruals
The Purchase Accruals extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central automates the recognition of expenses at the time of receipt—eliminating the need for manual accruals at month-end. This ensures your profit and loss statement and balance sheet remain accurate and up to date throughout the month.
Accruals are traditionally performed manually during the month-end close, delaying financial visibility and increasing the risk of missed or inaccurate entries. By automating the accrual of non-inventory purchases, this extension delivers real-time financial insights and reduces the operational workload for your finance team.
Business Value
Many organisations receive services and goods that are not treated as inventory throughout the month. Out of the box, Business Central only supports expected cost posting for items of type Inventory. As a result, expenses for other purchases are not reflected in your financials until the purchase invoice is posted.
The Purchase Accruals extension closes this gap by enabling automatic accruals for various purchase types, ensuring your financial statements always reflect current liabilities and expenses—even before the invoice is received.
A common challenge at month-end is accurately accounting for goods and services that have genuinely been received but for which an invoice has not yet arrived. This extension addresses this directly by allowing finance teams to identify and accrue for all receipts within the period—giving a true and complete picture of liabilities and expenses before the books are closed.
Feature Details
Purchase Accruals
The extension supports accruals for the following scenarios:
- All non-inventory line types, including G/L Account, Fixed Asset, Resource, Charge Item, and Item (where the Type is Service or Non-Inventory).
- Items valued using the Standard Cost method by accruing for the variance between the expected and standard costs. Business Central posts expected costs using standard costs, which may not reflect the purchase price.
- All project-related purchases, creating Project Ledger Entries to support WIP calculations for received-but-not-invoiced items.
- Sub-contracting receipts relating to production orders.
- Purchase Return Shipments when goods have been shipped back but the corresponding purchase credit memo has not yet been received.
The extension follows Business Central's principle that inventory is valued at the invoiced amount. When the purchase receipt is invoiced, the accrual is automatically reversed on the invoice date, and standard Business Central processes take over. If a receipt or return shipment is undone, the accrual is also reversed accordingly.
Receipt Registration for Non-Inventory Purchases
For non-inventory purchases (G/L Account, Resource, Fixed Asset, Service and Non-Inventory items), standard Business Central posting is often not possible mid-period because it requires the purchase order to be fully reviewed and released for invoicing. The Receipt Registration feature solves this by allowing warehouse or operational staff to record what has physically arrived—independently of the invoicing cycle.
A registration captures the quantity received against each non-inventory purchase order line and stamps it with the user and date/time. Registrations queue up and can be reviewed before being formally posted as purchase receipts in bulk or individually by a finance team member. This gives organisations a reliable, auditable record of what has been received in a given period, which can then be used as the basis for posting receipts and generating the corresponding accrual entries at month-end.
See Receipt Registration for full details.
Purchase Quote to Order Conversion
The extension adds a batch process that converts released and approved purchase quotes into purchase orders in a single step. The process:
- Only converts quotes that have been through the approval workflow and have been approved.
- Automatically releases the resulting purchase order.
- Sends the purchase order document by email to the vendor, provided the vendor has an email address or a custom report selection configured for purchase orders.
- Copies (CCs) the email to the user who originally created the purchase quote, ensuring the requestor is kept informed (only when the vendor email is sent).
This removes the need for manual one-by-one conversion and ensures that approved quotes are acted upon promptly, with all relevant parties notified automatically.
See Purchase Quote to Order for full details.
Additional Features
- Specify the posting date when undoing a purchase receipt or return shipment.
- Optionally post to interim accounts instead of expensing at the time of receipt, allowing you to delay expense recognition until invoicing—while still reflecting current liabilities accurately.