Tip of the Month for: May 2012

Date Validation Options

Two new date validation features were added to Answers 4.2 giving you some control over dates that users enter into the system for posting dates that ultimately end up affecting General Ledger.  This includes areas such as the A/P Purchase Journal and Disbursements Journal, A/R Cash Posting, Order Processing Invoice Dates, etc.  There are many dates in the system and some will eventually flow into G/L on journal entries while others will not such as a sales order date or purchase order date.  The goal of these new features is to place some control over the dates entered that affect G/L so that you don't have users accidentally back-dating or future-dating entries into G/L periods that you are not expecting.  Typically they do not intend to date something way back in time or way forward in time, but more often, they are just typos.

The first new setting can optionally prevent entering dates that would post into prior fiscal years.  The default for this is "Yes", meaning that a date cannot be entered that would cause a G/L journal entry to be made in a fiscal year that is already closed.  This option can be viewed or changed by going to System Management-->Answers Software Maintenance-->Answers Configuration.  Click on the General Ledger tab, then click on option # 3.

The second new setting can optionally prevent entering dates that would post into the future beyond a specified number of days.  The default is 0, however there may be situations where you want to allow users to future-date transactions for a reasonable period of time.  For example, suppose you are going to be out of the office and want to go ahead and run payroll checks for next week.  In this case, it might be useful to allow future-dating by a week or two (7-14 days).  Other users may even want to date an entry for the last day of the month, so some users even have set this to 30 or 31 days to allow them to date entries that far head, but that still keeps someone from accidentally entering a month or year wrong and getting something way out into the future.  This option can be viewed or changed by going to System Management-->Answers Software Maintenance-->Answers Configuration.  Click on the General Ledger tab, then click on option # 4.