Small and medium business | Business Central, N...

Business Central: Chart of Accounts change

(3) Share

Report

Posted on by CU19061214-0

I am busy with a project to change the Chart of Accounts from a 5 digit number to 6 digits in business central. From the initial investigations, I leant that this was possible and that making the change manually would correctly align the historic balances in the account, however further investigation contradicted this. What is the best way for me to accomplish this?

Categories:

Dynamics 365 Business Central

I have the same question (0)

All responses (5)

Answers (0)

Sort by

Martin Dráb 239,805 Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Moved from Integration, Dataverse, and general topics forum to Small and medium business | Business Central, NAV, RMS forum.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Teagen Boll 3,232 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like (1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

There's nothing stopping you from making that change but it can be tedious and time consuming. For example here is my GL Account 11110 with 5 digits:

I changed it to a 6 digit value (111010):

And my historical entries were updated:

So not impossible but just time consuming.

Best,

Teagen Boll

Work: Catapult ERP

Social: LinkedIn

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Grigorios Mavrogeorgis 2,569 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi,

the rename is actually the right instinct — when you change the No. on a G/L Account, BC cascades it and the G/L Entries follow, so the historic balances do move with the account. That part you read first wasn't wrong. Where it bites is the Totaling on your heading and total accounts, plus the row definitions in your account schedules / financial reports — those are stored as text ranges like 10000..19999 and a rename won't touch them, they keep pointing at the old numbers. Same for anything hardcoded in setups you might have. So I'd bet that's the contradiction you hit, not the entries themselves.

For a whole COA I wouldn't do it by hand. A small codeunit that loops G/L Account and calls Rename is cleaner, but test on a sandbox copy first — rename locks a lot and is slow over big entry tables. After, fix the Totaling and the financial report rows manually.

Glad to help - follow up if anything is unclear.
► If this solved it, marking it verified helps others too.
Regards,
Grigorios Mavrogeorgis
Business Central Consultant & AL Developer
Work: Gmsoft Limited
Blog: insidebusinesscentral
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gregorymavrogeorgis

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Khushbu Rajvi. 22,814 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like (3)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Instead of renaming accounts manually, the best approach is to create a small codeunit that loops through the G/L Accounts and uses the standard Rename() method. Test it in a sandbox first, then review Totaling fields, Financial Report/Account Schedule rows.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Kamal Khakhkhar 3,434 on at

Like (2)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hii There as per @Khushbu Rajvi. Suggested you can create a codeunit and update the GL accounts , if its comman prefix or that kind of changes , but if its other changes you need to update it manually . along with it when you rename for rest of the base related mapping will update but for custom fields related code will not update so please check for that before apply any changes .

if you found answer mark this verified.

Thank You.

Kamal Khakhkhar.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No