Introduction
You receive the message “The Posting Date is not within your range of allowed posting dates” when trying to post a Purchase Invoice in Business Central.
According to the user setup the “Posting Date” of the document I’m posting is within the allowed posting range so why won’t the system allow me to post it?
Background – Value Entries
To provide a little more detail I’m trying to post a Purchase Invoice that I’ve matched to a Posted Purchase Receipt and I’ve increased the Unit Cost on the Purchase Invoice as the price has changed since the goods were received. I’ve also sold the items on a Sales Invoice before I’ve tried posting the Purchase Invoice.
Therefore, if we look at the value entries of this item prior to attempting to post the Purchase Invoice they are as follows
We have a value entry for the Posted Purchase Receipt showing a date of 12/05/2017 and a “Cost Amount (Expected)” of £10.00 (this the amount I used when posting the Purchase Receipt)
We also have a value entry for the Sales Invoice showing a Posting date of 25/05/2017 and a “Cost Amount (Expected)” of £10.00.
Details of the Purchase Invoice
The Purchase Invoice I’m posting is dated 01/06/2017 and I’ve amended the Unit Cost from the original £10.00 that pulled through from the Posted Purchase Receipt to £12.00
Now when I try and post this transaction, I receive the message
Therefore, just to confirm the Posting Date of the Purchase Invoice is within my allowed posting dates below is a screen shot of the User Setup window showing my Allow Posting Dates
The dates are also within the General Ledger allowed posting dates as shown below
Therefore, at first glance its not apparent why the system isn’t allowing me to post this document? The Purchase Invoice posting date is 01/06/17 and this is within my range of allowed posting dates?
The Issue – Automatic Cost Adjustment and Adjust Cost Item Entries
When posting the Purchase Invoice, the system has detected that the cost has changed from the Posted Purchase Receipt, and as this has been sold on a Sales Invoice, the cost of goods sold need adjusting.
The system therefore tries to post an adjustment using the Posting Date of the entry its adjusting (in this case the Sale Entry on the 25/05/17), which is in May, and as this falls outside of my posting range I receive the error “The Posting Date is not within your range of allowed Posting Dates”.
** Please note there is a complex method for selecting the Posting Date if the Posting Date of the entry being adjusted also fell outside of the “Allowed Posting Dates” of the General Ledger and also if “Inventory Periods” are being used. More information on this can be found in this Microsoft document https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/dynamicsnav-2016/dn948192(v=nav.90)
** Its also worth noting I’m getting this message when posting the Purchase Invoice because the option “Automatic Cost Adjustment” is set to “Always” in Inventory Setup. This means the system checks for cost adjustments when you post the transaction. If this wasn’t set to “Always”, then depending on its setting its possible the document would post however when the “Adjust Cost Item Entries” batch job was subsequently run the error would occur.
See below for my Inventory Setup
Solution
There are two possible solutions to my issue here. The first is to change my “Allowed Posting Dates” in the “User Setup” to 25/05/2017 through to 30/06/2017. This will then include the posting date of the entry that will be adjusted.
Alternatively, I could change the “Allowed Posting Dates” in the General Ledger Setup to 01/06/2017 through to 30/06/2017. Then, as per the article I linked to, the system would use the date of 01/06/2017 for the adjustment entries, (i.e. the first open date in the General Ledger Setup) which does fall in my allowed periods to post to.
Therefore I’ll change my “Allowed Posting Dates” in the User Setup as per below
And now when I post the Purchase Invoice this is succecssful
If I now view the Value Entries you can see the adjustment entry created with a Posting Date of 25/05/17.
Conclusion
Although this is a simple example it shows why you may encounter this error when it seems the postings date configuration on the User Setup should allow a document to post.