In this blog, we will go over the functionality available for performing collection activities when the same customer owes money to more than one of your companies (i.e. legal entities).  

Setup

1. Setup Organization Hierarchy for Centralized Payments.  A new (and under-utilized) feature of Dynamics AX is Organizational Hierarchies.  For multi-company collection activities, we need to set up an Organizational Hierarchy with Purpose = Centralized Payments.  All of your legal entities which will participate in the multi-company collection activities must be included in this hierarchy.

Go to Organization Administration > Organizations > Organization Hierarchies.  Click New to create new hierarchy, assign a purpose of Centralized Payments and select Allowed Organization Types = Legal Entities.  Click View > Edit > Insert to add the appropriate legal entities.  In our scenario, the included legal entities are USMF, DEMF and USRT.

When you are finished, Save and Publish the hierarchy.

2. Map Customer Accounts Across Legal Entities.  In our scenario, we have one customer who is set up as a customer account in each of our three legal entities.  You will note that the customer has a different number in each the company.  Not a problem.

Regardless of their customer number, however, each of these customers must be attached to the same Party ID in the same Address Book ID in the Global Address Book.  If your multi-company customers are not set up this way, don’t worry.  The customers don’t have to be deleted and re-created – there is a process to Merge Records in the Global Address Book (see a separate blog on Merging Customer Accounts in Global Address Book).

3. Confirm Consistent Currency Codes.  To use Centralized Payments, all the Centralized Payment legal entities must use the same Currency Code.  For example, if one company uses Currency Code = USD, all legal entities must use Currency Code = USD.  Go to General Ledger > Currencies > Currencies.  Note that not all the customer accounts have to use the same Currency Code, but the code naming schema must be the same across all legal entity.

4. Confirm Consistent Customer Posting Profile IDs.  As with Currency Codes, all the Centralized Payment legal entities must use the same Customer Posting Profile IDs.  Go to Accounts Receivable  > Setup > Customer Posting Profiles.

5. Confirm Consistent Methods of Payment IDs.  Same as Currency Codes and Posting Profile IDs – all the Centralized Payment legal entities must use the same Method of Payment ID.   Also, make sure that all the instances of the customer via Centralized Payments have the same Method of Payment, regardless of the legal entity.   Go to Accounts Receivable > Payment Setup > Methods of Payment.

Performing the Customer Collection Activities

OK, now that the customer in each of the companies has been associated with the same Party ID in the Global Address Book, the last step is to create the Customer Aging Snapshot for all the Centralized Payment legal entities.  Go to Credit and Collections > Periodic > Age Customer Balances.  In Dynamics AX 2012, the path is Accounts Receivable > Periodic > Customer Aging Snapshot.

Expand the Company Range and select all the Centralized Payment legal entities that you want to include and run the process.

That’s it.  When you go to the Collections Workbench, you will see the open invoices for this customer across all the Centralized Payment legal entities. 

You can de-select one or more of the companies if you want to display the open invoices just for a specific legal entity.

About the Author

Diann Spencer, Western Computer’s Dynamics AX Finance Consultant, has been involved in many successful implementations of Dynamics AX in small, midmarket, and large companies across a variety of industries. Diann has over a decade of financial experience and she is a Certified Public Accountant.