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Report📘 Introduction:
When businesses incur costs or revenues that span multiple periods, deferrals ensure accurate financial reporting by spreading these amounts over time. Business Central offers a powerful tool called Deferral Templates to automate this allocation. In this blog, we'll walk you through setting up deferral templates to streamline your periodic postings.
✅ What Are Deferral Templates?
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Predefined schedules to defer revenue or expenses.
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Used for items, resources, or G/L accounts.
Steps to Set Up a Deferral Template:
Navigate to Deferral Templates
Use the Search icon > Enter Deferral Templates > Select the link.
Click New to create a new template.
Fill in the Template Fields:
Calculation Method (Straight-Line, Equal Per Period, Days Per Period, or User-Defined).
🔹 Straight-Line
Amounts are distributed based on the length of each accounting period.
Longer months receive more deferral amount, shorter ones receive less.
Best for: Realistic monthly expense allocation based on actual period length.
🔹 Equal Per Period
Amounts are evenly divided across all periods.
Period length is ignored; each gets the same value.
Best for: Simplified or flat-fee monthly contracts.
🔹 Days Per Period
Distribution is based on the number of days in each period.
More precise than Straight-Line.
Best for: Scenarios where exact daily costing is important.
🔹 User-Defined
No automatic calculation.
You enter the amount manually for each period on the deferral schedule.
Best for: Full manual control or highly irregular deferral needs.
Start Date Options (Posting Date, Beginning/End of Period, etc.).
🔹Posting Date: Starts deferral on the transaction's posting date.
🔹Beginning of Period: Moves start to the first day of that accounting period.
🔹End of Period: Begins deferral at the end of the posting period.
🔹Beginning of Next Period: Skips current and starts with the next period.
🔹Beginning of Next Calendar Year: Delays deferral to January 1st of the next year.
Period Description Format: To keep deferral postings clear and meaningful, use dynamic placeholders in the Period Desc. field. These tags auto-convert to readable labels during posting.
Placeholder Codes:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
%1 | Day number (e.g., 02) |
%2 | Week number (e.g., 06) |
%3 | Month number (e.g., 02) |
%4 | Month name (e.g., February) |
%5 | Accounting period name |
%6 | Fiscal year (e.g., 2022) |
Example:
If your Period Desc. is:
Deferred entry - Week %2 of %6
And the posting date is 15/07/2023, then:
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%2= Week number → 28 -
%6= Fiscal year → 2023
🔽 The resulting label will be:
➡️ "Deferred entry - Week 28 of 2023"
In the next part of this blog series, we’ll dive into how to attach deferral templates to G/L accounts, items, and resources, so they can be automatically applied whenever used in general, sales, or purchase journals. This ensures a seamless and error-free deferral process, helping you maintain accuracy and save time during data entry. Stay tuned!
Thanks For Reading...!!
Regards,
Khushbu Rajvi
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