Accounting source explorer

The Accounting source explorer page in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is an inquiry and analysis tool that helps accounting and finance professionals investigate the detailed source information behind general ledger accounting entries. You can find the Accounting source explorer under General ledger > Inquiries and reports > Accounting source explorer.

The Accounting source explorer page shows source information. Unlike financial statements that present summarized balances (such as the trial balance), the Accounting source explorer enables you to:

• View detailed transactional postings
• Trace result balances back to originating documents
• Analyze accounting distributions
• Evaluate financial transaction activity by financial dimension

The Accounting source explorer page always shows the same total amount per ledger account as General ledger shows (for example, in a trial balance). As in a trial balance, you can display segments in separate columns. Just select the appropriate financial dimension set.

For all documents that use the source document framework, the Accounting source explorer page shows additional information, based on accounting distributions and, if applicable, project accounting distributions. This information includes the Monetary amount type, Project, Activity, Category, and Line property values. Here are some examples of the analysis that you can do:

• Variances between purchase orders and vendor invoices, because each variance is represented by a monetary amount type, such as charge variance
• Billable versus nonbillable hours and expenses per project, business unit, and main account

For source documents that use the source document reference identities concept, the Accounting source explorer page shows even more details, such as the Customer, Vendor, Worker, Product, Quantity, Unit text, and Description values. Here are some examples of the analysis that you can do:

• Hotel expenses per business unit and hotel brand for a fiscal period, based on expense reports
• Discounts per vendor, product, department

For these documents, you can also go to the actual source document from the Accounting source explorer page.

Working with filters

The Accounting source explorer page relies on filter parameters to limit the volume of retrieved transaction data. Therefore, the page is blank when you open it by going directly to General ledger > Inquiries and report > Accounting source explorer.

Select Advanced filtering in the Action pane to open the filter options. When the feature Accounting source explorer updated advanced filtering is enabled in Feature management, more convenient date range selections are available, including different types of date intervals. Additionally, an advanced filter is available that can filter fields such as ledger account and dimensions. These fields are shown on the Select parameters dialog. When this feature isn't enabled, the Inquiry page opens where the standard query is available.

Performance considerations

To ensure accurate results and improve performance:

• Define appropriate date ranges. Note: start and end dates must be within the same fiscal year.
• Specify financial dimensions as needed.
• Limit data retrieval to fewer than 1 million transactions.

Apply filters to reduce unnecessary data loading and ensure that transaction analysis focuses on relevant accounting activity.

Starting in Dynamics 365 Finance version 10.0.46, you can enable a background process called Accounting source explorer preprocessor through Process automations to improve the loading performance when using the Accounting source explorer page. This process automates the generation of Accounting source explorer data in the background for quicker selection on subsequent Accounting source explorer page runs. In System administration > Setup > Process automations, select Initialize process automations if you don't see the Accounting source explorer preprocessor on the Background processes tab.

You can also generate these records as needed after opening the Accounting source explorer page. This method is the default functionality. For performance reasons, use the background process.

Advanced file export

Starting in Dynamics 365 Finance version 10.0.45, you can enable the Accounting source explorer advanced file export feature in Feature management. After you enable this feature, under the export menu, there's a Multiledger export option. Selecting this option presents a dialog to select multiple companies for export for a given fiscal period. To select the set of companies to export to Excel, select a Fiscal calendar, Fiscal year, and Period name. Then select each Ledger name that you want to export to Excel. Each legal entity (ledger name) exports to a separate Excel sheet in the same Excel file.

You don't need to use the advanced filtering to load data into the page before using the Multiledger export feature. Select Export > Multiledger export to begin the process of exporting data from multiple companies.

Performance considerations for Advanced file export

• Select only the ledgers you need. Reducing the number of selected ledgers decreases the required processing time and improves loading times.
• Define appropriate date ranges. By default, select a fiscal calendar, followed by a fiscal year defined in the selected calendar, and finally a period within the selected fiscal year. If you use the manual date range setting, limit date selections to a fiscal period or a smaller range. Large date ranges significantly affect performance.
• Each sheet has a limit of 1,048,576 records. By default, any records beyond this limit aren't included.