Dimensions in Microsoft

Dynamics NAV
Dimensions provide a way to add to an accounting entry, or transaction,
information that acts as a marker, so that NAV can group entries with
similar characteristics for reporting purposes and easily retrieve these
groups for analysis. The term dimension describes the way the analysis
occurs. For example, a two dimensional analysis could be sales by
territory. By using more dimensions, a more complex picture can be
drawn; for example, sales by territory by sales campaign per salesperson.

Dimensions can have an unlimited number of values, or sub-units of that

dimension. This can be particularly useful for financial statements, and
has the added effect of permitting a very simple Chart of Accounts, while
providing robust reporting functionality for virtually any form of
departmentalization or sub-groupings that you could imagine.

For example, if you set up a dimension called Department, you can use
this dimension and a dimension value when posting an entry to see
which items have been sold by which departments. As you add more
dimensions and dimension values, you increase the granularity (or
complexity) of the picture you wish to paint. Thus, a single sales
transaction with multiple dimension criteria could account for where the
sale was posted to, to whom it was sold, where it was sold, who sold it,
and so on.

You can also use dimensions to support your business reporting rules, as a
means of influencing how a dimension is used and posted. As the NAV
documentation explains, this might be useful if certain departments are
not allowed to use particular accounts or sell to particular customers.

Dimension types in NAV include:

Global: dimensions available globally for use throughout NAV.
Shortcut: dimensions that a user can enter, along with their values,
directly onto lines in journals, and sales and purchase documents.
Budget: dimensions can be defined (up to four) for budgets. These can
be used to set filters on a budget and to add dimension information to
budget entries.

How to Setup Dimensions:

To set up dimensions, you must define which dimension and dimension
values you want to use in your company. Youll also want to define which
will be global across the company, and which will be shortcut dimensions
(both defined in our prior post). With dimension functionality you can
support your firms business and accounting rules by defining, for
example, which dimension combinations are allowed in a journal or
document. In this manner you can limit and define that, say, a certain
item cannot be sold in a certain area, or so that certain expense types
may only be posted by certain employees. You can also define default
dimensions for account types like customer accounts or individual
accounts.

Then, on a journal line, as you enter information about an entry (such as

an account number, or a customer number, etc.) you can also add
dimension information in the same way (provided youve set up your
shortcut dimensions as fields) directly on your journal lines. When you
post an entry, all the dimension information gets posted with it.

Finally, you can also use dimensions as filters to slice and dice your data
in ways meaningful to you. You can then filter on all G/L entries using the
two dimensions you have defined as global. You can use your budget
dimensions to filter budgets. You can display items for only the dimension
values you request to see.
Filters can contain a dimension value plus qualifiers like Equal to or
Different From plus the typical Boolean operators like And, Or, Less
Than, and so on.