What we’re going to do is we’re going to look at open payables, review and analyze them, enter a credit memo, look at the cash flow forecast that comes with Business Central, and share that with others in the organization. Then, we’re going to schedule vendors’ invoices for payment and run through an approval process. So, let’s get started.

Managing Accounts Payable

I’m logged in as David, an accounting clerk. One of his jobs is to manage accounts payable and create payments to vendors. One of the primary reports to use to manage accounts payable is the Aged Accounts Payable. Here’s the standard dialog box; let’s print that. Here’s the detailed version of the standard accounts payable report. Here, a person can look at all accounts that are due and analyze things that need to be paid and when they should be paid. Here, we can see the first vendor needs a payment, so let’s proceed with this.

Processing a Credit Memo

There is, however, one credit memo that needs to be processed against this particular vendor. Let’s open that up. David has already started entering this credit memo. You can see here that’s for fifteen hundred dollars. This is just an open credit memo, and what I want to do is apply it to some of the outstanding invoices. So, let’s go ahead and do that. These are the outstanding invoices I want to apply it to. This one right here. So, I’m going to select that, set the applies-to ID, and then I’m done.

Posting the Credit Memo

So, this credit memo has been entered, applied to a previous invoice in the system, and now I want to go ahead and post this. And now I’m done with this process. One thing I might want to do is look at my cash flow forecast. This is a function that’s built into Business Central, and it’s easy to use. Here’s one I’ve set up; let’s take a look at this. These are the parameters. I can look at the forecast itself. Here’s the available cash coming into my system. I can drill down and see what’s expected to come in. Here, I can see I’ve got receivables, the full list of receivables, and the current funds.

Creating a Payment Journal

Next, David will put together a payment journal. So, let’s do that. Here’s the payment journal already started. I’ve got two vendors on this. Here’s my second vendor. We just applied a credit memo for this vendor. Let’s apply the entries we want to pay on this and go up here. Here’s the invoice right here. I’m going to set the applies-to ID, hit OK. Now I’ve got these two payments here, and I want to create a check for this. But first, I want to get this approved. I’m going to notify some people about this. It’s easy to do; there’s a number of ways I can do this. I could run a report from this, but what I want to do is share this directly using Teams. I’m going to go up here to Teams and send it to my accounting manager. So, I’m going to send them a quick note in Teams with a link to my payment journal. Let’s go ahead and share that.

Approval Process

Let’s take a look at Alan. I’m logged in as Alan here. I want to look at my Teams, and I can see that I’ve got a chat from David. I’ve got a direct link to Business Central. I can look at it here. It’ll open up the payment journal. The advantage of this is that I can notify Alan quickly and directly in Teams. He can look directly at the payment journal. If he wants to drill down and look at the applied entries, he can easily do that here. I can just hit applies. I can see all the open invoices. I can see that this is applied to this invoice here. I’m okay with it.

Generating Reports

If Alan wanted to create a hard copy report, he could do that here. He could run the test report. Let’s take a look at this. This is a test report. It shows the payment journal and shows the summary-level information about it. So, Alan’s happy with this. He’s going to respond to David. So, David’s ready to make the payment to the two vendors on this payment journal. But first, he needs an approval on this. There’s an approval workflow required for this payment journal. So, I’m going to request approval. This workflow goes to Alan and then goes to the admin person. Let’s take a look at it.

Final Approval

I’m logged in as Alan again. I can look at my role center, and I can see that I’ve got one request to approve. I can open that up. We can open up the record and see the payment journal. I can see that this is the payment journal that David earlier told me about. So, I’m going to go ahead and approve this. Next, this approval workflow goes to the admin person, Jacob. Let’s take a look at that. Logged in as Jacob, I can see that I have one pending approval. I can open that up. I can approve it, reject it, or delegate it from here. I’m going to go ahead and approve this, and I’m done. I can look at the approvals here, and I can see that these two approvals from Alan and admin were done. I see the time and date that they were completed.

Creating Checks

So, this payment journal is ready to go. I’m going to create checks for this. So, let’s go ahead and do that. And this is one of the checks for the vendors on the payment journal. I’m using here a McCorma add-in product for Business Central that allows me to control the signatures on this. You can see the signatures right here. At the time I recorded this video, this add-in from McCorma has no charge associated with it. So, I’m going to go ahead and print that, and I’m done.

Posting the Journal

The next thing to do after having the journal approved and printing the checks is to post. So, I’m going to go here and post, and I’m done. That’s the entire process. I looked at open payables, entered a credit memo for one of the vendors, ran a cash flow forecast, scheduled the vendors that I wanted to pay, shared that information with Alan, and initiated a workflow where Alan and the admin person had to approve before the checks could be printed and the journal posted.