Unit-Amount Fields to Control Decimal Places

Some businesses find that Dynamics 365 Business Central (“BC”) posts additional, unexpected unit-price entries. A common cause is a mismatch between two settings on the General Ledger Setup page:

• Unit-Amount Decimal Places
• Unit-Amount Rounding Precision

These settings control how unit prices/costs are displayed and how they are calculated/rounded during posting.

Key Settings

1) Unit-Amount Decimal Places

Defines how many decimal places can be used for unit prices and unit costs.

• Default is typically 2:5
  • 2 decimals shown at a minimum
  • Up to 5 decimals can be used/stored for unit price/cost

Organizations may reduce this if they do not need additional decimal places.

2) Unit-Amount Rounding Precision

Defines how many decimal places are used when rounding unit price/cost values in entries.

Typically, it is a “1” in the last decimal place that matches the decimal places setting:

• If storing out to 5 decimals → rounding precision should be 0.00001
• If storing out to 3 decimals → rounding precision should be 0.001

These two settings must be coordinated.

Why Coordination Matters (Example)

Example scenario:

• Item is standard costed with a standard cost of 0.12345
• Unit-Amount Decimal Places is correctly set to 2:5
• Unit-Amount Rounding Precision is incorrectly set to 0.001

If you enter a positive adjustment:

1. The item journal line shows a unit cost of 0.123
2. The entry initially posts at 0.123
3. When Adjust Cost runs, BC adds an additional 0.00045 to align with the true standard cost (0.12345)

Result: additional entries you were not expecting.

Impacts of Mismatch

If the system rounds to fewer decimals than allowed (for example, 3 when 5 are allowed), it can cause issues across areas, including:

• Inventory costs
• Production costs
• Sales discounts

Keeping these fields aligned is crucial to using the needed decimal places consistently.

Important Caution About “Non-1” Rounding Precision Endings

Rounding precision may use endings such as 0.00005. Use care when the last digit is not “1.”

• If 0.00005 is used, unit prices/costs generated by the system will be multiples of 5
• This can create confusion if you are not expecting that behavior

Best Practice

Once set, these fields generally do not need to be changed. They are important for keeping unit costs and prices accurate.

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