Start Here

Something in Business Central not behaving? Work down this page. Most things are answered here already — and if they aren't, the last section tells you exactly what to send me so we can skip three rounds of questions.

The sixty-second checks

These four clear most of what reaches me. Try them before anything else.

1. Hard refresh the page. Hold Ctrl and press F5. A normal refresh reloads the cached copy; this one doesn't.
2. Check which company you are in. The name is at the top of the screen. Posting into the wrong entity is easier than it sounds.
3. Open it in a private window. If it works there, the problem is cache or a browser extension, not Business Central.
4. Try a different browser. If Edge fails and Chrome works, that alone narrows it down enormously.

Part 1 — Something on screen isn't working

A page won't load, a button does nothing, something has gone missing, or an error stops you posting. Start here if Business Central itself is misbehaving.

A field or column has disappeared

• Personalising your screen — almost always someone hid it, and it only affects you

A document has vanished from a list

Filters persist between sessions, so one you set weeks ago is probably still hiding it. Clear the whole filter pane, including anything you'd need to scroll to see. Also check you're on the right list — posted and unposted documents live in separate places. Fastest route is to search the document number directly.

A report or PDF won't open

Nine times out of ten it generated fine and the browser blocked it. Look for a blocked pop-up icon in the address bar, then check your Downloads folder. If neither works, try a different browser.

An error stops you posting

• “There is no Cust. Ledger Entry within the filter” — on a sales credit memo or invoice; almost always the Applies-to fields on the document, and you can fix it yourself
• “Debit Rounding Account is missing in Vendor Posting Group” — on a part-payment in foreign currency; two blank fields on the posting group, filled in once and it won't come back
• “This receipt has already been invoiced. Undo Receipt can be applied only to posted, but not invoiced receipts.” — when sending a defective item back; an invoiced GRN can't be undone, so the return goes through a Purchase Return Order instead
• “You cannot reverse G/L Entry No. … because the posting date is not within the allowed posting period.” — when reversing a payment from a month that's already closed; Reverse Transaction always posts on the original date, so post a reversal journal in the current month instead
• “Dimension value … is not allowed for G/L Account …” — the account only accepts certain values for that dimension; change it on the line to one the account allows, or ask whoever set up the account which ones are permitted
• “You must assign item charge … if you want to invoice it.” — on a freight or duty invoice; the Charge (Item) line isn't fully assigned yet, so open Item Charge Assignment and bring Rem. to Assign down to 0
• “The VAT Posting Setup does not exist. Identification fields and values: VAT Bus. Posting Group=…” — on an invoice or journal with SST or GST; there's no VAT Posting Setup line for those two codes, so add it or fix the card with the wrong group; if it says “Sales VAT Account is missing” instead, the line is there but its account is blank

Some posting errors shouldn't be worked around. Check the list near the bottom of this page before you change dates, logins or number series to get past one.

Getting data in and out of Excel

• Importing data from Excel — building the template and pasting payables or receivables in

If Export to Excel does nothing at all: allow pop-ups and downloads for the site, and check your Downloads folder. If Excel opens but stays empty, sign in to your work account from inside Excel. Note that Open in Excel gives a read-only snapshot while Edit in Excel writes changes back — people pick the wrong one constantly.

Working faster

• Keyboard shortcuts

Part 2 — The numbers don't look right

Nothing is broken, but the result isn't what you expected — or you're not sure of the right way to process something. This is where most month-end questions land.

Month-end and closing the period

• Extending your financial year — going from 12 periods to 15, and checking the year is still open first
• Closing the financial year and moving the profit to retained earnings — create next year, Close Year, then Close Income Statement and post the journal; Close Year can't be undone, but you can still post audit adjustments into the closed year and run Close Income Statement again
• Exchange Rate Adjustment: unrealised forex gain and loss — setting month-end rates and running the adjustment
• Bank reconciliation — bank charges, deposits in transit, unpresented cheques

Building your own reports

• A simple P&L by dimension using Analysis mode — pivot General Ledger Entries by department or customer group and open the result in Excel, with no report setup; newer versions only
• A P&L by department you can run every month, using Financial Reports — one column per department through Department Code Totaling on the column definition, plus how to add and maintain the rows; Global Dimension 1 and 2 only

Dimensions

• Restricting which departments can be posted to which accounts — for example MARKETING and SALES only on Travel and Entertainment; the filter goes on the accounts, and it needs setting on both sides or the rule only works one way
• Splitting a shared bill across departments without a journal — for example electricity 50/20/30; set up an Allocation Account once and pick it on the invoice line, and the cost is split when you post, so no reclass journal at month end; works on sales documents and general journals too

Payments and credit memos

• The invoice still shows a remaining amount after it was paid or credited — the payment or credit memo was posted without being applied, or Post Application was missed; apply it from the ledger entries, and how to unapply if it went to the wrong invoice

Foreign currency

• Which exchange rate was used on this invoice or payment? — it's the rate on the Posting Date, from the Currency Exchange Rates table unless a spot rate was keyed on the document; how to show the auditor the exact rate used
• Foreign currency revaluation — why open documents need adjusting, and how Adjust Exchange Rate works
• Processing a foreign currency payment
• A gain or loss appears even though the payment exactly covered the invoice — why the rate you keyed on the journal line isn't the rate used when you apply

SST and GST

• Setting up Malaysia SST or Singapore GST, and finding the tax for your SST-02 or GST F5 return — Business Central calls it VAT; one posting group per tax code, one VAT Posting Setup line per combination with the rate and accounts, then filter VAT Entries by code and VAT Date

Purchase orders and receiving

• The full purchase cycle, order to invoice — three-way match, receiving in stages, and closing an undelivered balance so an auditor can follow it
• One PO, several deliveries, several invoices — the short version, using Get Receipt Lines so nothing gets double-invoiced
• Returning a defective item to the vendor for a replacement — Undo Receipt if the GRN isn't invoiced yet; if it is, a Purchase Return Order plus a new PO for the replacement, tied together by the vendor's RMA number
• Adding a freight or import duty bill to the cost of goods already received — the forwarder's invoice comes in weeks later; put it on a purchase invoice as a Charge (Item) line and assign it to the posted receipts with Get Receipt Lines, so it goes into inventory cost instead of freight expense; split By Amount, Weight or Volume

Everything is received and invoiced but the order is still open. The ordered quantity is still higher than the quantity received. Reduce it to what actually arrived — the first post above covers how to do that with the paperwork behind it.

Fixed assets

• The depreciation amount differs from my own calculation — the usual answer after a migration
• Depreciation keeps creating the same entries again — why running it twice before posting doubles your journal
• Disposing of a fixed asset
• Recording a trade-in — disposal and acquisition at the same time
• Budgeted assets — forecasting next year's depreciation before you buy
• Adding cost to an asset you already have
• Recording a leased asset under MFRS 16 (right-of-use asset and monthly interest) — no lease module or customisation needed; the ROU asset goes on a Fixed Asset card, the monthly rental invoice to Lease Liability, and the interest through a Recurring General Journal, with a free Excel calculator for the schedule

Intercompany

• Intercompany setup — partner codes and the prerequisites
• Posting an intercompany transaction

Emails and statements

• The statement went to the wrong email address — why Document Layouts beats the Customer Card

Fixing something already posted

• Reversing a posted document — journals and documents are cancelled differently, start here
• Reversing a customer or vendor payment posted wrongly — Reverse Transaction if the month is still open; if it's closed, a reversal journal in the current month applied to the original payment; and how to clear both bank entries in the bank reconciliation
• Correcting a wrong dimension value — using Correct Dimension rather than a reversing entry

Journal vouchers and audit requests

• Reprinting a General Journal after posting — forgot the Test Report, or the auditor wants the voucher for an adjustment; reprint it from the G/L Register
• The auditor asks which date the exchange rate is based on — Posting Date, not Document Date; check the rate on the posted invoice or in the ledger entries

Approvals

• Setting up a journal approval workflow — any one approver is enough, or all must approve; also why Send Approval Request won't work again on a batch that was already approved
• Posting an invoice or credit memo automatically once it is approved — purchase and sales documents only, not journals; one tick and one extra workflow response, and the final approver needs a full license, not Team Member

Document numbering

• Why a journal batch needs two number series — the gap-prevention design that confuses everyone
• Choosing which sales invoice number series a sales order converts to

Customers, vendors and recurring entries

• Netting a customer balance against a vendor balance — when the same party is both
• Recurring journals — monthly expenses, allocations by percentage

Please send these to me rather than working around them

These have workarounds that appear to succeed and quietly cause a problem someone has to unpick later.

"Posting date is not within your range of allowed posting dates." Check the posting date on the document first, because a mistyped year is the usual cause and you can fix that yourself. If the date really is correct, the period has been closed deliberately. Don't shift the date to get past it — that posts into the wrong period.

"You do not have permission to…" Send me a screenshot showing the full message; the object it names is what tells me which permission is missing. Please don't have a colleague post it under their login — it works, and it puts their name on your transaction.

Any number series error. Number series are shared across everyone in the company and break in ways that only surface the following week, usually at month end.

A receipt posted for the wrong quantity on a service or expense line. Undo Receipt only works on item lines. On anything else there is no one-click reversal, and the correction runs through a credit memo. Leave it with me before anything else is posted on top of it.

Still stuck?

Send me these five things in one message and I can usually answer without a call:

1. Which company — the entity name shown at the top of your screen
2. What you were doing — the page or document you were on
3. The exact message — word for word, or a screenshot
4. The document number, if there is one
5. Whether it worked before — first time trying, or it worked last week and stopped

Copy the block below into our usual WhatsApp conversation and fill in the blanks. Attach your screenshot with it.

BC issue

Company:
Doing:
Message:
Document no:
Worked before:

Not a client yet, or don't have my number? Use the contact form on this blog and I'll come back to you by email.