D365 F&O's Feature for Editing Internal Voucher Descriptions
July 25, 2023
Descriptions on voucher transactions in D365 F&O are a handy tool to help remember why a journal entry was made. But have you ever forgotten to add a description or posted the transaction and realized the description is not as helpful as you once thought? Have you ever had to research a transaction days, weeks, or even months after the original transaction date and wanted to update that description? Thanks to a feature in D365 F&O, you can now update internal voucher descriptions after the transaction has been posted.
Introduced in the 10.0.29 release in October 2022, the "Allow edits to internal data on general ledger vouchers" feature allows for users within specific security roles to be able to edit internal voucher descriptions. As of the 10.0.32 release in March 2023, this feature is enabled by default, but can be disabled. When the feature is enabled, users with proper security can add and update internal voucher descriptions as needed to clarify, add more detail, or leave an additional note after researching the transactions. I like to think of updating the description after spending the time to research why it was created as leaving a post-it note to my future self. Taking a few seconds to update the description now, could save me and my company time in the future when we need to review the same transaction.
How to Edit Voucher Descriptions
No matter the method of getting to a voucher transaction, users can edit the voucher description of posted transactions with proper security.
Users can select Edit internal voucher data within the Edit voucher option on the action pane.
Edit a Single Voucher Description
If only one voucher line is selected, user can enter a new description in the New description field. There is also an area available to enter a reason why the voucher description was edited. The Reason for edit field is not necessary for updating the voucher description. Once the new description and reason for edit is updated, the user can simply select Ok to update the description.
Mass Edit Voucher Descriptions
More commonly, when more than one line of a voucher needs to be updated, there is an option to bulk update voucher descrptions. After selecting multiple lines from the voucher transactions screen, select Edit internal voucher data. Within the edit form, select all records you wish to update at once then select Bulk update selected records. A form will open where a description can be added. Once added, select Update to change the description on all selected vouchers.
Audit Trail
The questions that came to my mind when I first saw this feature was how do I know if the description was changed, who changed it, and how can I see what it was. This feature provides a full audit trail of these changes and answers to my questions above.
Users can select Audit trail of voucher edits within the Edit voucher option on the action pane. The Audit trail will open a list of changes to the voucher, listing created date and time, reason for edit, and created by. Created date and time will identify when the change was made and created by will identify who made the change.
Clicking into the hyperlinked Created date and time will open the record, allowing users to see what the description was and what it was changed to.
Clicking into the hyperlinked Created date and time will open the record, allowing users to see what the description was and what it was changed to.
Security Required
Maintain access is assigned to the out-of-the-box Accounting manager and Accounting supervisor security roles in D365 F&O. For those organizations with custom security, the following duty can be assigned to a custom role to grant this access.
Duty: Maintain editing of descriptive information on vouchers
For the developers, the AOT name of the duty is: LedgerVoucherTransAuditLogMaintain
This security duty only contains access to edit voucher descriptions, but does not grant access to view voucher transactions. When combined with the proper security, users should be able to see voucher transactions and edit descriptions.
View Access
View access is assigned to the out-of-the-box Accounting manager and Accounting supervisor security roles in D365 F&O. For those organizations with custom security, the following duty can be assigned to a custom role to grant this access.
Duty: View ledger voucher transaction audit logs
For the developers, the AOT name of the duty is: LedgerVoucherTransAuditLogInquiry
This security duty only contains access to view the history of voucher description edits, but does not grant access to maintain description changes or view voucher transactions. When combined with the proper security, users should be able to see voucher transactions and view the history of edited descriptions.
Have questions about the functionality or want to discuss how to incorporate into your custom security? Send me a message and I will be in touch!
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