[Deb Peters]

As stated before, we are in the early stages of setting up our NAV reporting structure.  ?I am interested in how companies set up the “Customer Posting Group”  I’m being told by our consultant to just use one.   That seems like wasting a possibly useful field when opening screens and doing searches in NAV, even if you point them all to the same general ledger accounts.

Any examples would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Deb

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Deb Peters, Controller
Midwest Rubber Service & Supply Co
Plymouth MN
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[Lewis Rosenberg]

?I think it mostly depends on how you want to organize your financials.  You can create different customer posting groups for different customer types or for domestic vs. foreign customers, etc.  The posting groups will drive which GL Accounts are used for transactions for the different customer groups that you define.

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Lewis Rosenberg
IT Manager
Mars Fishcare
Chalfont PA

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[David Wiser]

One thing to consider is how you are going to need to report or filter for your customers.  As Lewis stated, you can use the Customer Posting Group (CPG) to differentiate between domestic and foreign customers.  You can also use it to differentiate between the type of customer (retail, club, wholesale, etc.).  So it is good for filtering your customer list.

Another alternative is the use of dimensions.  This is where a lot of companies go to differentiate their customers.  The benefit of using dimensions, is that the dimension is tagged to the sales transaction, so you can get sales and profitability by customer dimension.  The CPG is not tagged to transactions so it makes reporting a little more difficult.  This may be the reason your consultant suggested using just one CPG.  Did they also suggest using a dimension on the customer card?  Dimensions would be better for reporting.

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Dave Wiser
Controller
Beckwith & Kuffel
Seattle WA
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[Deb Peters]

?Thanks, to all.  Yes we are using Dimensions to break out customers.

Channel Type
Industry Group
Industry Sector
etc

I have General Business Posting Group planned to be Domestic, Export, Intercompany, & Employee as I understand these are used for both Customers & Vendors and we need these separated on financials.

I had just understood these posting groups were good for easy filtering by users so I didn’t want to waste an opportunity to use the field, even if I keep all G/L accounts the same.

Thanks for the ideas.
Deb

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Deb Peters, Controller
Midwest Rubber Service & Supply Co
Plymouth MN
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[Ian Ray]

Another example would be external vs. intercompany specific (customer/vendor) posting groups. This could be used when you want to transact with other companies that are also owned by the same parent company and want to account for these transactions differently than a regular customer or vendor.

I would recommend looking at general vs. specific posting groups to get a better understanding of how you would want to set these up for your particular needs. I recommend this overall approach as you may have inventory, customer, vendor posting groups that all should be set up to accomplish a particular business function.

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Ian Ray
Cypress Grove
Arcata CA
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[Deb Peters]

?Ian,

Thank you for your reply.   Rather than Customer Posting Goup I was thinking using the General Business posting group to distinguish intercompany vs external..

For that I was considering Export, Domestic, & Intercompany as I thought those would apply to both Customers & Vendors.

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Deb Peters, Controller
Midwest Rubber Service & Supply Co
Plymouth MN
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[Ian Ray]

Hi Deb,

You can and should do that. But, additionally, the usual case is also to specify accounts receivable posting with the customer posting group for categories like foreign, domestic, and intercompany. There are several other accounts that can be specified, but these accounts are usually are the same for all the customer posting groups (not always, of course).

If the recommendation you are receiving is to have one customer posting group, it may just be that your chart of accounts currently has one account to post accounts receivable. However, once you understand that you can set this up differently, the case is often one of revising the chart of accounts to fit what you’d like to have rather than what you already have.

If your current setup is already what you’d prefer, then one customer posting group will suffice. I have also seen setups where all the accounts specified in customer posting groups are the same, but are coded differently (i.e. coded DOMESTIC, IC, FOREIGN) for reporting and/or future revisions to the chart of accounts. I would even recommend this route as it can’t hurt to go ahead and code all your customers for what they are even if you’re not using different accounts yet.

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Ian Ray
Cypress Grove
Arcata CA
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[Chris Frazier]

I would caution against using the Customer Posting Group as a reporting mechanism; dimensions will serve you much better.

• A single customer can belong to multiple dimensions (not the case with Customer Posting Groups)
• Built-In reporting tools are geared around dimensions.
• Dimensions permeate the entire application.  I don’t think you’re going to find the Customer Posting Group referenced on the GL Entries or Item Ledger Entries, but if you used dimensions, they would be.

It’s usually best to only use the Customer Posting Group to direct your AR postings to their proper GL accounts, and not try to infer additional meaning.  If you use only one GL Account for AR (which it sounds like), then one posting group should be sufficient.

cf

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Chris Frazier
Business Analyst Manager
Audiology Management Group
Stockton MO
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[Ian Ray]

I agree with to not rely on customer posting group for reporting. Dimensions are always going to be more useful for reporting. I tend to look at dimensions as “tags” instead of “folders” to borrow from generic computerized filing methods. That is, you can tag things any way you want, but they can only belong to one folder (ignoring the concept of file links, of course).

However, you’ll find customer posting group is a default filter in some built-in reports. For example, the Customer/Item Sales report uses customer posting group as a default filter. If you limit your use of customer posting groups just because there is no difference in the AR account (or payment discount, interest, etc.), you will be limiting a filter used by built-in reports. For the same reason, I would also support your thought of using customer posting group as a filter in customer list.

It is debatable if this is good design, but NAV’s base software does use specific posting groups as filters. While it would be unwise to rely on such a grouping, I can’t think of any harm in making use of it.

Edit: I should add no harm unless they are repurposed. That is, if you set up specific posting groups in a way that couldn’t specify accounts, that would end up being harmful when you eventually wanted to use them for accounts.

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Ian Ray
Cypress Grove
Arcata CA
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