Dynamics 365 Financial Reporting: Finding version number

In Dynamics 365, finding the Financial Reporting version is a bit more complicated than what we were usted to in AX 2012 and earlier versions. There is no longer a menu option in the Report Designer tool where you can see the version details.

So, in 365 you need to be an administrator and perform one of the following actions:

Option 1: Life Cycle Services (LCS) (easiest method)

The easiest (and fastest) approach to check the version is to go through LCS. Login to the environment via

LCS -> [YOUR PROJECT] -> [YOUR ENVIRONMENT] -> View detailed version information:

From the “Installed updates” overview, type the search term “FinancialReporting”. This vil reveal the information on the installed version:

Option 2: On-prem hosted environment

If you have an on-prem solution, you can open the Report Designer. Once open, right-click the Report Designer icon (1) from the taskbar, the right-click again on the “Management Reporter for…” name (2) and select “Properties” (3):

 

On the Properties form, select the “Details” tab and fin the version number:

Option 3: Azure hosted environment

In Azure hosted environments, you are best off by using Option 1 above. But if for some reason you cannot access the version number from LCS, I hav found that the MR-files have its own path on the server. I don’t know if this approach is valid on all Azure-hosted environments, but you could give it a go.

The solution is to open File Explorer and navigate to folder

E:\AppMUStab

There you will see what version and files are installed on the server:

Hopefylly Microsoft will make this approach more accessible in the future.

Enjoy.

 

 

AX 2012 & Management Reporter: Customer rebates customized report

While the customer rebate functionality in AX 2012 R3 is quite good and flexible, there is however one crucial thing missing: Reporting tool! This is if you are using the customer rebate functionality, not the Trade Allowance Management, which is somewhat different.

So, I have a customer which is going to use more or less all the customer rebate functionality in AX 2012 R3, and I need a solution for reporting on the rebates. I have previously made a simple transactions report by setting some filters on the standard “customer transactions” report in AX. This is fine, but doesn’t really look really good.

Instead of going for custom development, I decided to fiddle around in Management Reporter, using predefined posting definitions and attributes to generate this result based on monthly rebates:

Management Reporter Troubleshooting: Error “The operation could not be completed due to a failure on the server”

This error is most likely not as horrifying as it looks. In most cases, it will occur when a user tries to open Management Reporter where the Active Directory user profile is not complete.

The error might occur when:

• The user opens the Report Designer (manually or by clicking the Management Reporter link inside AX)
• Someone tries to add a user in Management Reporter, or
• Someone tries to change a user in Management Reporter

The most common solution is that the Active Directory user does not have a display name (Full name). To solve this, open Active Directory Users and Computers. This may be done from Windows search or by executing dsa.msc:

Dynamics AX 2012: View Price details with item margin estimation for sales order and purchase order lines

The new Price details overview introduced in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 version is a great improvement. We now have the ability to create a line on a sales order or purchase order, and straight away get an overview of how the rebate agreements (among others) are affecting the item margin estimation. This also includes all lines on historical sales orders, as well as for purchase orders. The Price details overview is not exclusive for rebate agreements, but also include information about trade agreements, royalties, retail discounts and more.

One significant note to make is that the Price details overview is not enabled by default in AX 2012 R3.

Price details for sales orders

Advanced Customer rebates series: Chain bonus calculation and processing

Scenario

In some cases, the end customer who buys the items may not be the appropriate receiver of a customer rebate. For example, if you have a rebate agreement with a customer chain, and the chain includes several shops, you want the customer chain to be eiligble for the rebates generated from the sales to the all (or some) shops related to that specific customer chain.

Confusing? Well, here’s an illustration that covers the process:

 

1. Apple store X buys items from your company
2. Based on the rebate agreements, rebates for the invoice is calculated to the customer chain
3. Rebates for Big Apple customer chain is generated and processed

Setup in AX

Management Reporter Advanced: Excel Series – Importing non financial data and perform calculation on report

One of the great features about Management Reporter is the ability to link to cells in external Excel workbooks. There are alot of possibilities that comes with this feature. In these special Excel Series, I am going to go though some concepts to bring you up to speed on how you can work with Management Reporter and Excel.

 Overview

This blog post will focus on importing non financial data for calculation in Management Reporter.

This example includes fetching salary from financial dimensions in AX, and combining them with number of employees per month to get an average head count.

Here is the report we will create:

Management Reporter Advanced: Excel Series – Importing rolling forecast periods from columns and rows

One of the great features about Management Reporter is the ability to link to cells in external Excel workbooks. There are alot of possibilities that comes with this feature. In these special Excel Series, I am going to go though some concepts to bring you up to speed on how you can work with Management Reporter and Excel.

Management Reporter Important Links

Microsoft Connect: Product suggestions for Microsoft Products. Add new suggestions and vote on existing suggestions for Microsoft to consider for new release/update.

Microsoft Blog – Dynamics Financial Reporting: Newest updates from the Microsoft Management Reporter Development team. New releases, tips and tricks.

Microsoft Dynamics AX Community: Forum where Microsoft professionals/advanced users solve your everyday problem.

Life Cycle Services: Use the Issue search on Microsoft Lifecucle Services to searc for known bugs, kbs, and other issues reported by users.

Management Reporter on Microsoft Technet: Documentation and links.

Management Reporter product site: Microsoft product site.

 

Management Reporter Torubleshooting: Link to Excel OLEDB error

Some customers get an error when linking to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets from Management Reporter:

“The ‘Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0’ provider is not registered on the local machine.”

The reason for the error is that Management Reporter uses Microsoft Office components to oull the data from the Excel spreadsheet into the report. The data is pulled on the Microsoft SQL server, where Microsoft Office is not installed, which throws the error.

To solve this problem, we don’t need to install Office on the SQL server. The solution is to download and install the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable file from the website listed below:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13255

The file is availabe both in 32-bit and 64-bit version: