I agree with everything Steve has said. We also have had clients request that the department is not auto-filled during account entry. We have seen this be a concern with clients with dozens of departments.

Bruce is correct, most client like that Adagio tries to help find the department, but there is a small group that would prefer to do the thinking themselves. It is similar to the implied decimal setting, users who want it enabled vs disabled feel strongly about it.

As Steve mentioned above, it is about trying to minimize the errors. If you are entering multiple invoices with multiple distributions you might not notice that one line is posted to the wrong account when looking at the batch listings.

Hi Bruce,

You can get the behaviour you want by changing the Validate GL options in the Payables Company Profile (Batch options tab).

Everyone: Is this an option by User or by Company? Is this only in Payables or Payables and PO or in all modules?

Andrew,

If you're response to Bruce is for this

you're incorrect.

Even when the Validate Ledger Account Option in Company Profile>Batch Options tab is set to Account-Department, it does not warn of the invalid account department pair if the account is there by default from the vendor master file with a blank department UNLESS you tab through the field. If you use the mouse (as Bruce said) to go directly to the amount field and type your dollar value and then click okay on the detail window, it saves the detail line without validating. Although this issue would only exist with an old vendor record or if the default GL account was edited by GV-RW since I was unable to populate a vendor record with a GL account and a blank department even if the profile option to validate was set to None.

And as far as the original post goes, I agree with Steve that some clients don't want the first available department to populate automatically when typing the account code and tabbing, even if it's highlighted and can be typed over. The selecting of an account-department pair from the finder is different in that you had to select that pair. When typing it and tabbing you didn't make a conscious choice to select that department.

Should people pay more attention? Yes. But that's not realistic in some high volume cases. The option to have it so the department starts out as blank on a tab would "force" them as you said to enter the department.

However, would implementing that option mean that selecting from the finder would make you select an account and then a department? Or would you still be able to select a pair?

I would say it should be a company profile option and AP and PO would need it most. Although I could see it being a consistency issue if other modules didn't have it as an option.

Hi Andrew:

The "Validate ledger account" setting in the Company Profile applies only to batch entry. Even if "None" is selected (to not do any checking of GL accounts), the "Acct/Dept" default on the Vendor master profile is always verified to exist in the GL chart of accounts.

I would say that it would be by Company and could be useful in most modules, especially modules where there is a lot of batch entry focused around GL account numbers (AP, AR, GL).

Hi Dan,

The validation shouldn't change regardless whether you tab through the entry or use the mouse to click on the amount. Sounds like a bug.

I thought that we allowed entering just an account for distributions or default vendor accounts, but apparently not. I guess this didn't make the R&D cut, although it has certainly been discussed.

Interesting side note on this issue. I noticed today that, in sample data, when choosing the error account in the Edit>Banks screen in AP 9.3A (180201) it allows me to enter the expense account and when I tab to the department field it's blank and forces me to choose a department. So it doesn't default to the first available department like the invoice or check entry windows do. And the sample data has the validate option set to Account-Dept.

I checked the invoice and check entry again just to be sure this behaviour didn't change in the service pack. I knew it couldn't have been fixed that fast.

So the behaviour Steve and we are looking for already exists in that window. I didn't check any other set up fields in company profile defaults or the like. Just thought I'd point this out in case it means anything to R&D.

Thanks Dan.

It's been added to the R&D list.