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FINANCIAL TAGS IN DYNAMICS 365 FINANCE & OPERATIONS

 

 

In version 10.0.32, Microsoft introduced financial tags, and subsequent releases have expanded their implementation across additional journals with new features and functionalities. In this article, I will explain the basics of financial tags with examples, how to use tags in transactions, how to correct tag values after posting, and how to retrieve posted data from deactivated financial tags.

Financial tags are user-defined fields that can be used in transactions to provide additional reporting capabilities and tracking. You can create up to 20 user-defined tags. Unlike financial dimensions, financial tags are not part of the account structure and do not require validation.

 

 Financial Tags Setup and Usage:                                                                                                  

 

  • Setup financial tags delimiter
  • Create financial tags and tag values
  • Activate financial tags
  • Recording of transactions
  • Analyse the transactions
  • Edit or change financial tags on posted transactions
  • Retrieve posted data from deactivated financial tags

To set up financial tags, you must enable the “Financial tags” feature from Feature Management. As of September 13, 2023, this is a mandatory feature.

Navigation: Workspaces> Feature management

 Setup financial tags delimiter

In General Ledger parameters, define the delimiter. It is crucial to choose the delimiter carefully because it must not be used in any tag values entered on transactions. For example, if you define a underscore ( _ ) as the delimiter, the vendor’s name entered as the tag value cannot contain a underscore. The delimiter can be changed until a transaction with a tag value is posted. After posting, the delimiter cannot be changed. The delimiter may be required to segregate multiple tag values entered in a single column. Without a delimiter, financial tags cannot be saved.

Navigation: General ledger> Ledger setup> General ledger parameters

Create tags and tag values

In General Ledger, you can create tags and select the value type for each financial tag. In my case, I have taken some examples where-

  • We want to capture our non-budgeted expense
  • We want to capture worker wise travel expenses
  • We want to include invoice number in our posted voucher transactions

For that I have created three new financial tags, Purpose, Worker and Invoice number.

  • Purpose: Custom list (e.g., “non-budgeted expense”)
  • Worker: List (values from workers created in the system)
  • Invoice number: Text (text that will be entered at the time of recording of transaction)

 

Navigation: General ledger> Chart of accounts> Financial tags> Financial tags

Activate financial tags

After creating the financial tags, activate them by clicking the activate button to change their status from inactive to active. Once activated, the tags are ready for use in transactions.

Navigation: General ledger> Chart of accounts> Financial tags> Financial tags

 

In the 10.0.37 release, the following journals and transactions added support for tags:

  • General journal
  • Global general journal
  • Allocation journal
  • Fixed asset journal
  • All asset leasing journals
  • Periodic journal
  • Reporting currency adjustment journal
  • Customer payment journal
  • Vendor payment journal
  • Invoice journal (vendor)
  • Global invoice journal (vendor)
  • Invoice register
  • Sales order documents (Sales order, packing slip and customer invoice)
  • Purchase order documents (Purchase order, product receipt and vendor invoice)

Here, you can select the financial tag at line level as well and you can also see that system has segregated the tag values through delimiter in this transaction.

I will record one more transaction to capture worker wise travel expenses.

Navigation: General ledger> Journal entries> General journals

Analyse the transactions

Now, after posting the transaction I will analyse the transactions. It can be done through main account transactions, voucher transactions and trial balance. We can easily filter the transaction through financial tags and analyse the data as per our requirements.

Navigation: General ledger> Enquiries and reports> Voucher transactions

Edit or change financial tags on posted transactions

If you found that you have entered wrong financial tag or want to change the financial tag on posted transaction, click on edit voucher in voucher transactions page and edit internal voucher data. Here you can select the desired values that you want to use on posted transactions.

Navigation: General ledger> Enquiries and reports> Voucher transactions

Retrieve posted data from deactivated financial tags

Now in my use case, somehow, we decided to discontinue the existing financial tag, and wanted to deactivate that tag “Purpose”. But later we found some requirement to have that data which was posted in the deactivated tag values without activating that financial tag. So, in that case, what we can do is, we will click on voucher transactions and on top right of that we will click on three dots and will click on show inactive financial tags. By doing this you can easily find that old tag values in your posted transactions.

Navigation: General ledger> Enquiries and reports> Voucher transactions

In conclusion, financial tags enhance the depth of financial reporting. Financial tags provide flexibility to capture transactional details without altering your financial dimensions or chart of accounts. Depending on your requirements, business needs, and industry type, financial tags can significantly improve reporting capabilities for better financial analysis.

There is more to cover on financial tags, such as “Financial tag rules,” available in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance version 10.0.42. Financial tag rules provide a powerful way to enter default values or automatically populate values in financial tags. I will try to explain this with examples in my next article.

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Your feedback and suggestions are always appreciated