It doesn’t take much time after working with Business Central (BC) to realize that dates play a crucial role in posting transactions and analyzing results. As a result, an understanding of how to enter dates, date ranges, and date formulas, will help you be more efficient.
Entering Dates
Obviously, entering a date such as “02/15/24” is always possible, but there are many shortcuts which allow you to avoid entering the full date with separators. Here are just a few:
- You don’t have to include the “/” separator in the dates. Entering 021524 will result in “02/15/24”. If fact, you really only need to enter 0215 to also get that date, as the system will assume the current year. Furthermore, if you just enter 15, you will also get that date as the system will assume the current month and year.
- “T” – Enter the letter T in a date field and tab out. The system will enter today’s date.
- “W” – Enter the letter W to get the current work date.
- Dates within the current week can be inserted by entering the day code associated with the day. Note that the resulting date is within the current week. The day codes are as follows:
- M – Monday
- Tu – Tuesday
- We – Wednesday
- Th – Thursday
- F – Friday
- Sa – Saturday
- Su – Sunday
Entering Date Ranges
When filtering on dates for various tables like the General Ledger Entries, entering a range of dates is often used. To get a range of dates, use two periods (“..”) between the beginning and ending dates to get the range. For example, entering 020124..021524 in a date filter will give you all the transactions from 2/1/24 through 2/15/24. In fact, using the information we talked about earlier, just by entering 1..15 in a date field will also give you that range, as the system assumes the current month and year.
You can also omit the beginning or ending date on a range to keep the range open ended. For example, if you enter ..021524, the system will return data from the beginning of time through the specified ending date. Note that this can also be accomplished by entering <=021524.The same is true with omitting the ending date. Entering 020124.. will result in date starting on 2/1/24 through the end of time. This can also be accomplished by entering >=020124.
Entering Date Formulas
Date formulas are used in Business Central to allow the system to calculate a date. A primary area where date formulas are used is on the Payment terms page. When calculating the due date for invoices, BC will use the document date and a date formula to calculate the due date. Date formulas utilize a factor and a time period indicator. The factor is usually a number or the letter C (more on this in a moment). The time period indicators are noted below:
- D – Day
- W – Week
- M – Month
- Q – Quarter
- Y – Year
Working together, you can enter 10D to get a date 10 days from the starting date. So, if the document date was 2/1/24 and the due date formula was 10D, the due date would be 2/11/24 or 10 days later. So, what does C do? C stands for “current”. Preceding the time period indicator with a C will give you the ending date for the current period indicated. So, if the document date for an invoice was 2/10/24 and the date formula for the due date was CM, the due date would be returned as 2/29/24 which is the ending date of the current period.
You can really have some fun when using date formulas to calculate due dates because you can string multiple combinations together. For example, say your payment terms for a customer are that all invoices posted in a current month are due the 20th day of the following month. You can enter the due date formula as CM+20D. This will take the due date out to the end of the current month and then add another 20 days. Depending on your company’s needs, these date formula strings can get pretty involved.
Summary
Understanding how Business Central works with entering dates, ranges, and date formulas can really speed up your processing of transactions and analysis of data. Try out the various options and see how this can make you more efficient. Lastly, please note that the date formats used above assume the standard US format of month/date/year. Other countries/versions may format dates as day/month/year. Be sure to check your country settings in Business Central for the proper format.
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