Formatting options for Dynamics 365 Business Central are pretty basic, but there are a few tricks you should know to get the most out of what you have.
This is an example showing the row setup, screen view, Excel export, and printed views with no formatting of any type assigned. It’s pretty ugly no matter which way you look at it.
Let’s make this look better by applying some basic formatting options. We’ll bold the total line, underline the line above the total, and italicize the second line. Looking better already, but there are a few things going on that need to be explained.
Underline – Can’t see it on the screen view, appears across the entire page including row descriptions in Excel export, and shows just under the numbers in the printed view.
Italic – Can’t see it on the screen view but can see it on both the Excel export and printed view.
We can improve on what’s going on with the underline with a few additional options. There is an option in the totaling type column for underline as well as an option for double underline. The screen shots below show the following differences. Notice they don’t make much of a difference at all on the screen view or Excel export versions and have the largest impact on the printed version. Also note that if you select a Totaling Type of Underline or Double Underline, the box for that formatting will also be checked by default.
B – Just the underline checkbox is checked. If you want the underline situated tightly to your numbers without extra space in the printed view, this is the way to do it.
C – The underline checkbox is checked, and the totaling type of underline is selected. This gives a wide double underline in the printed view only.
D – The totaling type of underline is selected. If you want a little bit of space below your numbers before the underline appears in the printed view, this is the way to do it.
E – The totaling type of double underline is selected.
Similar to what we see with the different underline options, the show option also has limited utility. Let’s choose No instead of Yes on the second line of our example and see what we get. As you can see, the show option only hides a line in the printed view. There is actually a show option that is also available in the column layout, but again, it only hides a column in the printed view.
There is one additional formatting option that only exists in the column layout – the rounding factor. Selecting this option will apply the rounding factor on all the report versions. You can round to a factor of 1, 1000 or 1000000.
One last option here that I haven’t put together an example for is the New Page option. Use this option if you need to insert a page break anywhere in your report. I’ve seen lots of companies use this to produce a two-page balance sheet. I’ve also seen companies build some pretty large multi-page account schedules in one named report and break each page by using this option. I think it is easier to maintain and update short simple reports if at all possible, so I recommend creating a few (or many!) separate account schedules instead of doing this. It’s just too easy to miss something, or at least spend a lot of time looking for, something you need to update in a large multi-page report kept in a single account schedule.
This posting is part of the Dynamics 365 Business Central Account Schedules 101 series. Find the entire list of lessons here.