How to Add a Financial Dimension in AX 2012

This blog is going to look at the new way of maintaining Financial Dimensions in AX 2012. Financial Dimensions are a cornerstone of Dynamic AX 2012's ability to provide accurate analysis reports, summaries and key performance indicators (KPIs). Financial dimensions are not new to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, but AX 2102 now supports an unlimited number, and their setup and maintenance has been greatly simplified.

Actually the 'Financial' part of the name is a bit misleading, because financial dimensions are attached to every inventory transaction: production order and inventory transactions inherit their financial dimensions from the settings on the item master; purchase order line transactions inherit their financial dimensions from either the item or the vendor on the purchase order; and sales order line transactions inherit their financial dimensions from the item and/or the customer. You can even record financial dimensions on sales forecasts as an aid to forecast vs. sales analysis. Of course, financial dimensions are attached to every GL posting too. These codes attached to every inventory transaction are the key to effective summary and exception reporting of inventory holding and usage.

As stated above, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 now supports an unlimited number of financial dimensions - earlier versions supported three financial dimensions as standard, and additional dimensions (up to a maximum of 10) had to be purchased. In this respect Dynamics AX lagged a bit behind its sibling Dynamics NAV, but the new AX 2012 release leap-frogs ahead in functionality and provides a really impressive ability to define these important analysis codes in a very powerful but simple way

We’ll now take a look at how new financial dimension can be created and deployed.

We’ll use the example of creating a new financial dimension like ‘Product Group; which will be used to analyse inventory and sales.

First create the new code. Go to General Ledger > Setup > Financial dimensions > Financial dimensions and create a new financial dimension like:

 

When you create a new Financial dimension you’ll notice that the ‘Use values from’ can be set to <Custom dimension> as above, but also there is a long list of existing fields which may be used:

If you use an existing field, then you won’t have to create any values for your new financial dimension - the system will use the values already present in the database. It’s also worth noting that you cannot use any spaces, numbers, or symbols in the Dimension name field.

As above, if you’re going to use ‘Custom values’ for your new financial dimension the next step is to define the valid values which may be entered. Go to General ledger > Setup > Financial dimensions > Financial dimensions > Financial dimension values:

Using the previously created financial dimension, click on the ‘Financial dimension values’ button. Enter the values you want to use.

Now we just need to check which chart of accounts our current company is using. Go to General ledger > Setup > Ledger: 

Note the chart of account name, as you need this in the next step.

Now we are going to add our new financial dimension to chart of accounts. Go to General ledger > Setup > Chart of accounts > Chart of accounts:

Select the Chart of accounts shown in the ledger form.

Select the P&L Account structure.

Click on the Configure account structure button and the system opens the ‘Configure account structures’ form:

The form is showing the current set of financial dimensions. To add your new one click on the Edit button:

Click on ‘Add segment’:

 

Select your new ‘Financial dimension’:

 

Almost there! Click ‘Activate’ and ‘Yes’:

Close the forms.

Finally, check items and sales order and purchase orders and customers and vendors: