A regulatory feature update for UK Statistics on payment practices in Microsoft Dynamics AX

Starting from 6^st April 2017, businesses in UK in scope of reporting requirement must prepare and publish information about their payment practices and performance in relation to qualifying contracts, for each reporting period in the financial year. The information for each reporting period must reflect the policies and practices which have applied during that period, and the business's performance for that period.

The report must be published on a web-based service provided by or on behalf of the government within 30 days of the end of the reporting period.

In scope of report, there are some narrative descriptions of reporting practices as well as the following statistics:

- (1) The average number of days taken to make payments in the reporting period, from the date of receipt of invoice.

- (2) The percentage of payments made within the reporting period which were paid in 30 days or fewer, between 31 and 60 days, in 61 days or longer.

- (3) The percentage of payments due within the reporting period which were not paid within agreed terms.

The official guidance on the report preparation is made available through the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/business-payment-practices-and-performance-reporting-requirements

The legislation is made available through the following link: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/395/pdfs/uksi_20170395_en.pdf

The feature introduces a report which calculates and exports statistics on payment practices with the required details.

The report is exported in Excel format and has two tabs:

Payments_made – contains statistics of types (1) and (2) above and details per vendor account. In detailed view, it also contains details per payment made within a reporting period.

Payments_due – contains statistics of type (3) above and details per vendor account. In detailed view, it also contains details per invoice due within a reporting period.

Before generating the report, user should post invoices and payments and settle them properly. Not settled payments can't be exported in the Payments_made tab, since there is no information about invoice to be paid with this payment and number of days taken to make payments can't be calculated.

User has now a possibility to identify the date when purchase invoice was received and further use this date for calculating the number of days taken to make payments. Fill a new field in the following forms:

On the vendor invoice form – in the Vendor invoice header tab, group of fields Invoice dates, fill during an invoice posting. The Document receive date will be pre-defaulted from the Invoice date when user enters an Invoice date.

On the invoice journal lines – in the Invoice tab, group of fields Document, fill during a journal line creation.

On vendor transactions – in the General tab, fill after an invoice posting and before a full settlement.

Run the Statistics on payment practices report from Accounts payable > Reports > Statistics.

In the dialog Statistics on payment practices, fill in the fields:

After user runs the Statistics report on payment practices, the statistics calculated on the report should be used for preparing the full reporting on payment practices.

It's user's responsibility to prepare full reporting and publish it in accordance with official requirements.

For Dynamics AX 2012, two packages are released:

- First one contains the part where user can fill Invoice receipt date for vendor invoice.

- Second one contains the part with report, and also the framework for exporting into Excel through Open XML (for performace reasons).

Also, consider the following technical information for Dynamics AX:

If you faced error "Object 'COM' could not be created" when you try to create report, you need to set up rights for AX to open Excel report.

1. Open Start menu -> All programs -> Administrative tools -> Component Services.
2. Select Component services -> Computers -> My Computer -> DCOM Config -> Microsoft Excel Application. Right-click on it and open Properties.
3. Select Security tab.
4. For Launch and Activation Permissions select Customize and click Edit.
5. Add user under which the Application Object Service is running. Allow all permissions for it. Click OK.
6. For Access Permissions select Customize and click Edit.
7. Add user under which the Application Object Service is running. Allow all permissions for it. Click OK.
8. Select Identity tab.
9. Select The interactive user and click OK.

For Dynamics AX 2009 SP1,

Users from Eastern Europe who are installing this package, must run the script included, which either will be run automatically during package installation or will have to be run manually from Administration > Setup > System > Checklists > Upgrade checklist.

The script is moving the data from the "old" field Document receipt date to a new one shared with UK.

Exactly script is doing the following:

LEDGERJOURNALTRANS.RECEIPTDATE = RECEIPTDATE_W

PURCHPARMTABLE.PURCHRECEIPTDATE = PURCHRECEIPTDATE_W

VENDINVOICEINFOTABLE.PURCHRECEIPTDATE = PURCHRECEIPTDATE_W

VENDINVOICEJOUR.PURCHRECEIPTDATE = PURCHRECEIPTDATE_W

VENDTRANS.PURCHRECEIPTDATE = PURCHRECEIPTDATE_W

How to obtain the Microsoft Dynamics AX updates files

This update is available for manual download and installation from the Microsoft Download Center.

• Download update for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3
• Download update for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2
• Download update for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 (first part)
• Download update for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 (second part)
• Download update for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 SP1

Prerequisites

You must have one of the following products installed to apply this hotfix:

• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 SP1

Restart requirement

You must restart the Application Object Server (AOS) service after you apply the hotfix.

If you are encountering an issue downloading, installing this hotfix, or have other technical support questions, contact your partner or, if enrolled in a support plan directly with Microsoft, you can contact technical support for Microsoft Dynamics and create a new support request. To do this, visit the following Microsoft website:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/support/newstart.aspx

You can also contact technical support for Microsoft Dynamics by phone using these links for country specific phone numbers. To do this, visit one of the following Microsoft websites:

Partners

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/resources/support/supportinformation/Global+Support+Contacts

Customers

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/northamerica/help/help/contactus

In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Technical Support Professional for Microsoft Dynamics and related products determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The usual support costs will apply to any additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question.

Note This is a "FAST PUBLISH" article created directly from within the Microsoft support organization. The information contained here in is provided as-is in response to emerging issues. As a result of the speed in making it available, the materials may include typographical errors and may be revised at any time without notice. See Terms of Use for other considerations.