New Features and Enhancements in Accounting Fall 2021

The following new features have been introduced in the Fall 2021 release of FinancialForce Accounting.

Dependencies on other FinancialForce Packages

FinancialForce Accounting Fall 2021 requires the following FinancialForce packages to be installed in this order:

FinancialForce Foundations Fall 2021
FinancialForce Reporting Spring 2020

You must install these packages before installing or upgrading to FinancialForce Accounting Fall 2021.

Lightning Experience

For the Fall 2021 release, we have improved our user experience using Lightning Experience across Accounting. This is to ensure that Accounting is intuitive, consistent, configurable, and flexible.

Updated Permission Sets

To enable you to adopt the new Accounting Fall 2021 Lightning features easily, we have updated the following permission sets:

Accounting - Bank Statement - Import
Accounting - Bank Reconciliation - Commit
Accounting - Bank Reconciliation - Save Lines
Accounting - Bank Reconciliation - Save Lines and Update Headers
Accounting - Bank Reconciliation - Read Access
Accounting and Billing - Transaction Reconciliation

These provide access to the new Apex controllers, and are required in addition to any Accounting permissions.

For more information, see the FFA Technical Documentation Pack, available from the FinancialForce Community.

For more information about adding new permission sets to profiles, see “Assign Permission Sets to a Single User” and “Assign a Permission Set to Multiple Users” in the Salesforce Help.

Enhanced Product Areas for Fall 2021

For this release we have focused on these areas of Accounting:

Bank Reconciliation
Bank Statement
Cash Matching
Payable Credit Note
Payable Invoice
Transaction Reconciliation

In these areas, we have introduced the following:


Type	Description
Lightning record pages	Direct replacements for existing record pages.
Accounting Lightning components	Components that deliver specific functionality. These are included in the relevant default Lightning record pages.
Accounting Lightning actions	Actions that open new Lightning windows. These are included in the default object page layouts.

Enhanced Lightning Record Pages

To see the list of enhanced lightning record pages in this release of Accounting navigate to the feature name Assigning Lightning Record Pages and In-App Guidance in Feature console.

For more information see, Assigning Lightning Record Pages and In-App Guidance.

Bank Reconciliation

We have added the following Action Lightning actions on the Bank Reconciliation Record Page

Lightning Actions added in Fall 2021
Name	Description	Further Information
Accounting: Reconcile Manually	To perform manual reconciliation	Managing Bank Reconciliation Details
Accounting: Reconcile from Bank Statement	To perform automatic reconciliation through bank statement
Accounting: New Bank Reconciliation Charge	To add charges for the bank reconciliation
Accounting: Bank Statement	To view the relevant bank statement record page

Bank Statement

We have added the following Lightning actions on the Bank Statement Record Page

Action Components added in Fall 2021
Name	Description	Further Information
Accounting: Reconcile	To reconcile from bank statement	Displaying Transaction Details

Cash Matching

When cash matching in Lightning Experience, you can now choose whether to arrange the two lists of outstanding transactions vertically or horizontally. Use the and on the Outstanding tab to split the display vertically or horizontally.

For more information, see Cash Matching Home.

Payable Invoice Lightning Record Page

The following enhancements are now available on the Payable Invoice Lightning record page

The Payments Status default value in the summary bar on the Payable Invoice detail page is now Unpaid.
There is now a separate Matched Payments tab
The Notes and Attachments tab is now under the Related List.
The tax values for an expense line and product line are automatically populated from the Vendor account if these values are present there.
Directly populates the Dimension values set at the account level into the expense lines and product line
An exception is added for rounding two decimal places for the Japanese Yen.

A New Unsaved Changes window is displayed if there are unsaved changes in the expense lines and product lines for a payable invoice before you perform the following actions

Calculate Tax
Post
Convert to Credit Note

For more information, see Payable Invoice Line Items.

Payable Credit Note Lightning Record Page

The following enhancements are now available on the Payable Credit Note Lightning record page

The Payments Status default value in the summary bar on the Payable Credit Note detail page is now Unpaid.
There is now a separate Matched Payments tab
The Notes and Attachments tab is now under the Related List.
The tax values for an expense line and product line are automatically populated from the Vendor account where appropriate
Directly populates the Dimension values set at the account level into the expense lines and product line
An exception is added for rounding two decimal places for the Japanese Yen.

A New Unsaved Changes window is displayed if there are unsaved changes in the expense lines and product lines for a payable credit note before you perform the following actions

Calculate Tax
Post

For more information, see Payable Credit Note Line Items.

New Lightning Record Pages

We have introduced the following Lightning record pages

Transaction Reconciliation

Transaction Reconciliation

We have added the following Lightning Actions on the new Transaction Reconciliation Record Page

Action Components added in Fall 2021
Name	Description	Further Information
Accounting: Select Transactions To Reconcile	To reconcile the transactions	Displaying Transaction Details
Accounting: Unreconcile	To perform automatic reconciliation through bank statement	Displaying Transaction Details

Feature Console

The following new features are added:

Lightning Page and In-App Assignment.
Reconciliation Process.

Lightning Page and In-App Assignment

Steps Included

Assign Accounts Payable Lightning record pages as org defaults.
Assign Accounts Receivable Lightning record pages as org defaults.
Assign Cash and Banking Lightning record pages as org defaults.
Assign General Ledger Lightning record pages as org defaults.
Assign Setup Lightning record pages as org defaults.
Assign Standard Objects Lightning record pages as org defaults.
Update Page Layouts
Activate Lightning In-app Walkthroughs.

Reconciliation Process

Steps Included

Assign Lightning record pages and actions for reconciliation processes.
Update page layouts for the reconciliation processes.

FinancialForce In-App Guidance

FinancialForce In-App Guidance uses Salesforce user engagement features to deliver FinancialForce content, such as tutorials, learning paths, and walkthroughs directly from our products.

As Salesforce delivers further user engagement features, FinancialForce will leverage their capabilities in order to make the adoption and use of our products a far simpler experience for our customers.

This functionality enables you or your administrator to activate in-app guidance to object record pages and object home pages. The following categories of in-app guidance are available:

Docked Prompts: these enable administrators to display FinancialForce video tutorials in your org.
Floating Prompts: these enable users to view and launch updated features, and provide links to FinancialForce Learning Paths that are hosted on the FinancialForce Community.
Walkthroughs: provide a step-by-step, guided experience on a single page or across multiple pages by stringing together a series of floating, targeted, and docked prompts.

Note:

Users must have access to the FinancialForce Community to access the Learning Paths.

To find out more about FinancialForce In-App Guidance, see the FinancialForce In-App Guidance Quick Start Guide - Fall 2021.

To find out more about Salesforce User Engagement, see the Salesforce Help.

Accounting Functional Permissions

We have redesigned Accounting permissions and the FinancialForce security model. This provides a robust and focused approach to manage user security. From Fall 2021, we have started to introduce a series of functional permissions. As this functionality is being delivered over successive releases and is not yet complete, we recommend that you do not implement the functional permissions contained in this release. For more information, see Overview of Functional Permissions for Accounting.

Changes to Permission Sets and Custom Permissions

We have updated permission sets and custom permissions labels, and added descriptions to make them more intuitive. In addition, we have also deprecated a number of permission sets and custom permissions. The permissions of deprecated permission sets and custom permissions are available within other permission sets and custom permissions.

Notes:

Delete deprecated permission sets and custom permissions, and manually grant permission access from the merged permission sets and custom permissions.
Before you remove permission sets that are deprecated in Fall 2021, you must ensure that you delete all the permission sets that you do not want the user to have. For more information, see Assigning and Removing Permission Sets.

To find a summary of the updated and deprecated permission sets and custom permissions, see Functional Permissions.

For detailed information on permission changes, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.

Security Checks

Permission Checks

A large number of CUD (Create, Update, and Delete) checks are added in this release. These checks prevent potential CRUD-bypass security vulnerabilities, where users might make unauthorized changes to data.

Warning: The following are mandatory requirements and must be carried out after the installation of Accounting Fall 2021. You must take action on the following information.

Note: The Security Settings custom setting has been added to FFA Permission Settings. The new Disable Permission Checks checkbox in this custom setting must be selected to deactivate the CUD checks until functional permissions become available for Accounting in a future release. The Disable Permission Checks checkbox is selected by default when installing or upgrading to Accounting Fall 2021.

For security reasons, the Disable Permission Checks checkbox will be deprecated in a future release.

Selecting Disable Permission Checks does not disable CRUD checks for the following Salesforce standard objects:

Account
Contact
Document
Opportunity
Opportunity Line Item
Price Book
Product

Warning:

Permission checks are always enforced on the above objects, regardless of the Disable Permission Checks setting.

You must provide read access for your users on the above objects.
If users require edit and delete access to the Account object, an administrator must grant permission.

For more information on the permission sets breakdown, see Salesforce Standard Objects and Fields Permissions in the Accounting Technical Pack.

For more information, see Security Checks.

Permission Error Logging

We have delivered a permission error logging feature to report on failed permission checks. For more information, see Permission Error Logs the Foundations Help.

When this feature is enabled and permission checks fail, a log is created containing the following information:

Timestamp
User
Location Type
Location Name

When permission checks fail, an error message displays specific details of the error. This is designed to assist the process of finding and correcting errors with the permission assignment.

Journals

New journal types have been added to the Journal Type picklist for the integrations with Revenue Management, Fixed Asset Management, Supply Chain Management and Professional Services Automation. When you create journals using these integrations, these journal types are passed into Accounting. This allows you to filter and search for these journal types in the list views.

Revenue Management Integration

The following new journal types are available:

Revenue Recognition Journal
Cost Amortization Journal

If you enable the RRT Integration features in Feature Console, these journal types are created when you create revenue recognition transactions in Accounting using the integration.

For more information, see Enabling the Journal Integration with Link Control.

Fixed Asset Management Integration

The following journal types are available:

Fixed Asset Acquisition
Fixed Asset Disposal
Fixed Asset Depreciation

If you enable the FAM to FFA Integration feature in Feature Console, these journal types are created when you create fixed asset information in Accounting using the integration.

For more information see Setting up Fixed Asset Management to Accounting Journals in the Integrations Help.

SCM to FFA Integration

The following new journal types are available:

SCM Drop Ship Journal
SCM Inventory Journal
SCM Procurement Journal

If you enable the new SCM to FFA Integration feature in Feature Console, these journal types are created when you create Supply Chain Management transactions in Accounting using the SCM-FFA Connector.

For more information, see Enabling the SCM to FFA Integration.

PSA to FFA Integration

If you use SRP to integrate Professional Services Automation with Accounting, the miscellaneous adjustment process now creates journals with a type of PSA Miscellaneous Adjustment in Accounting.

You must enable the PSA to FFA Integration feature in Feature Console to add this journal type to the Journal Type picklist.

For more information, see Enabling the PSA to FFA Integration.

Journal Loader Enhancements

The Journal Loader has now been updated to allow for easier processing of journals.

Large Journal Field in Journal Object

This field has been deprecated. You can now process large journals without selecting the “Large Journal” checkbox.

For more information on running the Journal Loader refer to the Using Journal Loader topic.

Custom Settings

Document Line Volume Settings (FF) custom setting includes the following custom field: "Manual Journal Batch Line Limit". In previous releases, this custom setting was applied when processing “small journals,” meaning journals not flagged as “large journals.” In this release, the custom setting has been updated and now applies to all journals.

The default number of lines has been increased from 1,000 to 9,980. If you had not customized this limit before you do not have to do anything as the new limit will now apply, allowing you to process large journals.

If you had previously customized this limit, you will need to review it to assess if this update is appropriate for all journals you want to process - large and small.

Feature Console

The “Large Journal Processing” feature in Feature Console has now been deprecated and is not listed when you access Feature Console. We have introduced changes to the way Large Journals are processed which means that you do not have to activate the “Large Journal Processing” feature to post large journals.

For more information on running the Journal Loader refer to the Using Journal Loader topic.

Electronic Invoicing

Electronic invoicing is a way of sending and receiving documents electronically in a structured data format that is machine-readable. This allows the documents to be processed automatically without the need for manual entry. The benefits of electronic invoicing include reductions in time, cost, and invoicing errors, and faster reporting. Some government authorities already require their suppliers to submit invoices electronically.

In this release you can send Accounting sales invoices as electronic invoices by connecting Foundations to Storecove. Storecove is a third-party electronic invoicing provider that uses the PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine) network to deliver your electronic invoices.

For more information, see Sending Sales Invoices as Electronic Invoices.

Automated Eliminations

Filter Enhancements

The filter functionality in Automated Eliminations has been updated so that you can more easily apply and manage filters when creating automated eliminations.

The Filters section has been moved from the related list to a separate tab on the Automated Eliminations details page This new tab has sub tabs so that you create separate filters for general ledger accounts and each of the dimensions. You can select the filters that you want to apply and search for general ledger or dimension values. If you want to filter on dimensions, you can also select blank values.

The sub tabs contain a count of the values applied for each filter. You can enable and disable the filters, so that you can re-use the automated elimination. Filters are only applied if they are enabled.

For more information, see Creating an Automated Elimination

Withholding Tax

In this release FinancialForceAccounting has introduced the ability to withhold tax for all or part of a sales invoice or sales credit note.

You can now exclude individual sales invoice or sales credit note lines from withholding tax.

For more information, see Withholding Tax on Sales Invoices and Withholding Tax on Sales Credit Notes

Expansion Pack

As part of Localization, in order to assist with reporting to tax authorities, the Accounting Expansion Pack now contains the following reports in the Withholding Reports folder:

Withholding Sales Credit Note
Withholding Sales Invoice

The reports display the information relating to sales invoice or sales credit note withholding tax information and are grouped by Company and Period.

For more information, see Withholding Tax on Sales Invoices and Withholding Tax on Sales Credit Notes

Reporting Currency

Reporting Currency fields added to the Transaction Line Item and the Currency objects.

The Reporting Currency feature is integrated and supported by the following areas of Accounting:

Automated Eliminations, through the Transaction Line Item object.
Currency Revaluation and Translation, integrated as an option in the Currency Revaluation Template. You can now perform translation to a reporting currency the same way you perform translation to dual.
Cash Matching, through the Currency and Transaction Line Item object.
Transactions, through the Transaction Line Item object.

We have also updated several Related Lists and Line Items in the Currency Revaluation pages to display the Reporting Currency fields by default once the feature is enabled.

Reporting Period

New fields have been added to Accounting objects so that you can easily consolidate reports for a parent company and its subsidiary companies based on the financial calendar of the parent company.

The Reporting Company field has been added to the Company object. This field defines the parent company for a subsidiary company, based on the ownership details on the subsidiary's company ownership details.

The Reporting Period field has been added to the Transaction object. The reporting period is determined by the financial period of the reporting company. If no reporting company is defined, this field contains the period of the company that owns the transaction.

For more information, see Enabling the Reporting Period Feature.

Accounts Receivable Write-Off Process

The accounts receivable write-off process automates the bulk creation and posting of journals recording write-offs for sales invoices and billing document invoices. The write-offs are posted and matched as cash matching journal line items to a write-off general ledger account. This can be accessed from the Accounts Receivable Processes section in the Accounting Task Launcher. For more information, see the Accounts Receivable Write-Off Process topic.

Background Matching

Background Matching has a number of updates to improve the efficiency of matching cash entries, sales documents and billing documents. Note that these only apply when using the new Background Matching Lightning page.

Sales Invoice to Sales Credit Note matching is now available in Background Matching, alongside Cash Entry to Cash Entry matching.
Billing Document Invoice to Billing Document Credit Note matching is now available. Document Matching Sequence is now available in Background Matching and Matching from Cash Entry.
This feature allows you to select which documents to include in the matching process, and the order in which they are matched.

Background Matching Updated Permission Sets

Accounting - Background Matching permission set has been renamed to Accounting - Background Matching and Write Off.

Cash Entry Line Items

Multiple invoice references are now supported on Cash Entry Receipt Lines. For more information on Cash Entry Line Items refer to the Matching Cash Entries topic.

API Updates

The FinancialForce Accounting API has been updated to support the background matching changes for credit note to invoice matching, cash entry to cash entry matching and matching multiple invoice references on cash receipt lines.

The FinancialForce Accounting API has also been updated to support the new Accounts Receivable Write-Off process.

The new Accounts Receivable Write-Off process allows for the bulk creation and matching of journals for recording write-offs for sales invoices and billing document invoices.

The FinancialForce Accounting API has been updated to support multiple companies in background matching.

The Background Matching Service has been updated. You can now supply multiple company IDs to run background cash matching across multiple companies.

Note:
If you supply more than one company ID, you cannot supply Cash Entry IDs.

For more information, see Accounting Apex API Developer Reference.

Background Matching Lightning

The Background Matching feature is now located in the Accounting Task Launcher, within the Accounts Receivable Processes section.

Configuration fields for the matching default values are defined in the Default Information section of the Accounting Company record. For more information, see Running Background Matching.

Record Page Layouts

In this release, FinancialForce Accounting has enhanced FinancialForce Record page layouts to ensure that consistent page structure and logic are followed across all the FinancialForce Apps.

Localization

New Countries

The following countries have been added:

Austria
Belgium
Germany
Norway
Sweden

For more information, see Setting up Localization.

Belgium

You can now apply non-deductible tax to all Belgium localizations.

For more information, see Belgian Non-deductible VAT.

France

Various changes have been made to ensure that the audit file for France is FEC compliant.

In order to meet FEC compliance, an important part of this is to run or schedule the Generate Sequences Job. For more information, see Run or Schedule Generate Sequences Job.

Norway

A new section titled Localization has been added to the Accounting Task Launcher. The new additions in this section are:

Norwegian Audit File (SAF-T) Account Mapping - this enables you to map your general ledger accounts to the standard general ledger accounts of the Norwegian Tax Administration.
Norwegian Audit File (SAF-T) Tax Code Mapping - this enables you to map your tax codes to the standard tax codes of the Norwegian Tax Administration.

Note: To view the Localization section, you must have the necessary permission set. Go to Permission Sets and assign Accounting - Localization Audit File.

For more information, see Creating Mapping.

Collections Plus

The following enhancements have been made to Collections Plus.

Sending Reminders to Additional Email Addresses

A new custom setting has been added so that you can define a field to use for additional email addresses to send reminders for sales invoices. For example, you could link to a field on an opportunity or an account.

This custom setting is not used if you have enabled the "Send All Invoices in One Email" or "Send Reminders for Billing Documents" custom settings.

For more information, seeSetting up Collections Plus.

Billing Documents On Hold for Collections

Billing documents have been updated so that you can put them on hold for collections. Putting billing documents on hold will exclude them from the reminders process.

A new On Hold field has been added to the Billing Document object and new buttons, Place On Hold and Release For Collection are available. If you add the new buttons to your billing document details page and search layouts, you can place billing documents on hold and release them for collections from the billing document list view. You can only place billing documents on hold if their status is "Draft","Completed" or "Posted".

For more information, seeSetting up Collections Plus.

Customer Statements

The customer statements functionality has been updated to exclude accounts that have the On Hold for Collections setting enabled. These accounts are not displayed in the Accounts list and statements are not sent.

For more information, see Customer Statements.

Deprecated Managed Workspace Components

As part of our regular maintenance, in this release we have started the deprecation process for the following managed components, and replaced them with customizable components.

We have added a prefix of DEPRECATED: to the component labels to identify these components explicitly. They still function for this release, but they are scheduled to be removed in a future release.

Period End Workspace Components

Currency Revaluations in Progress count card
Journals Posted Last 30 Days count card
Currency Revaluations Last 30 Days count card
Period End Workspace Navigation

Accounts Payable Workspace Components

Payable Invoices on Hold count card
Payments Awaiting Reconciliation count card
Unallocated Credit Notes count card
Accounts Payable Workspace Navigation

Collections Workspace Component

Accounts on Hold for Collections count card
Unallocated Cash Entries count card
Collections Workspace Navigation

Cash Management Workspace Components

Payable Invoices on Hold count card
Sales Invoices on Hold count card
Reconciliations in Progress count card
Cash Management Workspace Navigation