New Features and Enhancements in Accounting Winter 2023

The following new features have been introduced in the Winter 2023 release of Accounting.

If you are upgrading from a previous version, see Upgrading to Accounting Winter 2023. This provides a summary of the items that have been added for each feature and details of any required upgrade steps.

Introducing FinancialForce Trailhead: Release Highlights

If you want to learn more about the new features in this release, see the ERP Cloud - Winter 2023 Release Highlights Trailhead module. This module will guide you through the new features in our ERP Cloud products.

Dependencies on other FinancialForce Packages

FinancialForce Accounting Winter 2023 requires the following FinancialForce packages to be installed in this order:

  1. FinancialForce Foundations Winter 2023
  2. FinancialForce Reporting Spring 2020

You must install these packages before installing or upgrading to FinancialForce Accounting Winter 2023.

Mandatory Steps to Upgrade Payments Plus

In the Winter 2023 release, Payments Plus requires additional mandatory upgrade steps to be performed. For more information, see Upgrading to Accounting Winter 2023 in the Accounting Help.

FinancialForce Help

We have introduced a new FinancialForce Help Lightning component to enable you to easily access documentation that is relevant to the processes you’re completing or the page you’re viewing.

The new component is available to access from selected FinancialForce apps or from custom utility bars.

For more information about using the new FinancialForce Help, see FinancialForce Help Overview.

Enhancements to Multiple Tax Statuses on Account to Support Payable Documents

We have enhanced multiple tax statuses on Account to now also support payable documents. Previously, this was only available for sales documents.

For more information, see Enabling Multiple Companies Configuration.

Enhancements to the Disable Dimensions Feature

The Disable Dimensions feature was introduced in Summer 2022. In the Winter 2023 release, this feature is now also supported for:

  • Automated Eliminations
  • Journals

This allows you to disable certain dimensions and is useful when posting documents, to minimize the possibility of selecting an incorrect or invalid dimension. If you select the Disabled checkbox, dimensions that are no longer required, are ignored. By default, all dimensions are enabled.

For more information, see:

New Posting Effective Dates Section for Dimensions and General Ledger Accounts

In the Winter 2023 release, we have introduced the Posting Effective Dates section on the Dimensions 1-4 and GLA pages. Using this section, you can now restrict the accounting periods that a document can be posted to based on the dimension or general ledger account. This ensures that documents only use valid dimensions or general ledger accounts.

For more information, see:

Currency Exchange Gains and Losses Feature

The new Currency Exchange Gains and Losses feature in the Feature Console introduces two enhancements in this release.

Manual Steps Now Automated

You can now enable the Currency Exchange Gains and Losses feature in Feature Console. This removes the need to complete the enablement steps manually.

For more information, see Enabling the Currency Exchange Gains and Losses Feature.

Currency Revaluation and Currency Revaluation Template

The Unrealized Losses GLA field is now also available for Currency Revaluation and Currency Revaluation Template. Until this release you had to use the Unrealized Gains/Losses GLA field for both currency gains and losses. This caused a problem for some countries that legally require different GLAs for unrealized currency gain and loss.

By selecting the new Use Unrealized Losses GLA checkbox at company level, you can use the Unrealized Gains/Losses GLA field to select a GLA for currency gains, and the Unrealized Losses GLA field to select a GLA for currency losses.

For more information, see Enabling the Currency Exchange Gains and Losses Feature.

Bank Reconciliation

Bank reconciliation has been enhanced so that you can choose to create journals automatically when you select bank charges, interest receipts, or interest payments for reconciliation.

A new custom setting, Reconciliation Settings, has been added. This contains the Allow Transactions Auto Creation checkbox. For more information, see Reconciliation Settings.

If you select this checkbox, when you create a transaction for a bank statement line, a matching journal entry is created and posted automatically, if the following conditions are met:

  1. These fields are populated on your bank accounts:
    1. Bank Charge Analysis
    2. Interest Paid Analysis
    3. Interest Received Analysis
  2. The bank statement line type is one of the following:
    1. Bank Charges
    2. Interest Paid
    3. Interest Received.

If these conditions are not met, you can manually create journal transactions by entering the required information.

Additionally, you can now create and match cash entries while reconciling your bank statements.

For more information, see Reconciling your Bank Statement Automatically.

Transaction Reconciliation

The transaction reconciliation process has been updated to align it with the changes made to the bank reconciliation process in the previous release. The transaction retrieval process window and the retrieved transactions page have been updated. New buttons, labeled Reconcile and Continue and Reconcile and Finish have been added. These allow you to reconcile transactions separately and continue working or to reconcile your transactions and finish working. For more information, see Reconciling Transactions.

The Auto Match functionality has also been updated. A new button, Auto Match, has been added, replacing the previous icon. The auto match settings are now displayed in a separate window. You can select up to 5 fields to use for your auto match process. Only transactions that match on all fields are selected for reconciliation. For more information, see Reconciling Transactions.

Note:

As part of this update, the Export Data button has been removed.

To support these changes, additional steps have been added to the Enabling Reconciliation Processes feature in Feature Console. You should perform these steps if upgrading from a previous version of Accounting. For more information see Enabling the Reconciliation Processes

Lightning Experience

For the Winter 2023 release, we have improved our user experience using Lightning Experience across FinancialForce Accounting. This ensures that Accounting is intuitive, consistent, configurable, and flexible.

New Lightning Record Pages for Cash Entries

We have introduced the Cash Entry Lightning record page. This page provides a modern user experience and enables you to perform your daily tasks in a streamlined way. Using the Cash Entry Lightning page, you can:

  • View the payment details of the cash entry matched with any invoice.
  • Add, clone, and delete a cash entry line.
  • Post, cancel, edit, amend, and discard the cash entry.
  • Match the cash entry in background or manually as required.

The Cash Entry Extension package fields are implemented in the FFA Core package in this release. To view and use these fields use the new Cash Entry Layout (extended) page layout.

For more information, see:

New Lightning Record Pages for Period Close Template

We have introduced the Period Close Template Lightning record page in this release. This page is used to create and review a template before closing periods for the selected accounting companies. It lists the accounting companies that you can select and the Period Close Options section with Soft Close and Hard Close options, which allow you to close the period for all GLAs or for specific GLA Groups (AP, AR, Cash, or Other).

For more information, see:

Enhancements to Journals

We have redesigned Accounting Journals in Lightning Experience. This provides a robust and focused approach to manage journals. In Winter 2023, we have introduced a series of basic journal functionalities in Lightning Experience. For more information on the updates for this release, see Upgrading to Accounting Winter 2023.

As the functionality is being delivered over successive releases, some of the features will be implemented in the future releases.

Creating Recurring Journals from the Journal Lightning page

Now you can create recurring journals from the Journal Lightning page. For more information, see Creating Recurring Journals.

Display of General Ledger Account and Local GLA fields

We have introduced a new custom setting which allows the display of General Ledger Account and Local GLA fields in the Journal Line Items grid. For more information, see Journal Fields and Accounting Settings.

Duplicating Journals

We have introduced a new action to duplicate manually created journals. This creates an "In Progress" journal. For more information, see Duplicating Journals.

Journal Currency Override

You can override currency values at the journal line item level by configuring a custom setting. When this setting is enabled, the Dual Rate and Rate fields are displayed in the journal line items grid. For more information, see Journal Fields and Accounting Settings.

Journal Mass Actions from Journal List View

In Winter 2023, we have introduced journal mass actions from the Journal List View. This allows you to bulk process journals in just one button click. You can Cancel, Discard, Duplicate, Post, and Reverse journals in bulk. For more information see, Viewing Journal Lists.

Enhancement to Cash Matching

We have renamed the existing Cash Matching Lightning tab to Cash Matching. It redirects you to the Cash Matching app page. The existing Visualforce Cash Matching tab is deprecated.

You can now view the dimensions in the header of the Cash Matching app page and on the Select Account window.

For more information, see Matching Cash.

Vendor Payments using Asperato

New Feature Console Step for Vendor Payment Customization

We have added a new Vendor Payment Customizations feature in the Feature Console. This new feature helps you complete the following mandatory actions to set up vendor payments using Asperato:

  • Add new custom values to the related fields
  • Remove unused custom values from the related fields
  • Add new fields to the related page layouts

For more information, see Enabling the Vendor Payment Customizations Feature.

Creating Vendor Payments at Account Level

To reduce the transaction cost per vendor, we have made the "Select Invoices for Separate Payments" checkbox available for the Asperato payment method in Payments Plus. If you deselect this checkbox, you can create payments at account level instead of invoice level when paying vendors via Asperato.

For more information, see 1. Payment.

Collections Plus

Changing the On Hold Status of Billing Documents

To help you manage your billing documents, in this release we have added the ability to manually change their On Hold status. You can now select and deselect the On Hold checkbox on a billing document as long as the document does not have the status of "Complete" or "Posted".

For more information, see Placing Billing Documents On Hold.

You can also change the On Hold status of a billing document using the API by setting the On Hold value to:

  • "true" to place a billing document on hold.
  • "false" to release a billing document for collection.

Payable Invoices

Creating Payable Invoices in Multi-Company Mode

For the Winter 2023 release, we have added the ability to create and process payable invoices in multi-company mode when using Lightning Experience. In multi-company mode you do not need to change the current company when processing payable invoices. For more information, see Activating and Configuring Lightning Record Pages for Documents.

Improved Processing of Large Payable Invoices

We have also improved the support for large documents by adding the ability to create payable invoices with up to 9,980 lines using Lightning Experience. For more information, see Payable Invoice Line Volumes.

Years and Periods

Multi-Book Accounting Support for the Year End Process for Multiple Years and Companies

The year end process for multiple years and companies now supports Multi-Book Accounting. If you are using Multi-Book Accounting, the process takes into account your accounting books and:

  1. Runs a year end process for each book.
  2. Calculates year end journals by identifying the balances book by book.
  3. Associates the resulting year end journals with the correct accounting book.

This is done automatically so you do not need to run a year end process per company and accounting book. Multi-Book Accounting is compatible with both year end modes: General Ledger Account and Full Accounting Code.

For more information, see:

Preventing Changes to the Company Selection during the Year End Process

We have added additional validations to prevent users from deselecting the companies for which the year end process is running. In this release, when the year end process is running for a current company, you cannot deselect that company until the process is complete. This ensures that users do not interrupt the year end process by accidentally changing the company for which the process is running.

For more information, see About the Year End Process.

Desktop Notifications for the Year End Process

In the Winter 2023 release, you receive a notification when the year end process completes.

For more information, see About the Year End Process.

Trigger-Posting Documents

The Trigger Posting feature enables you to automatically post a document either synchronously or asynchronously via a database update. You can use this feature to trigger-post the following document types:

  • Cash Entry
  • Journal
  • Payable Credit Note
  • Payable Invoice
  • Sales Credit Note
  • Sales Invoice

The Trigger Post feature supports posting documents by updating their headers via a database update, which allows you to use it with the following solutions:

  • FinancialForce Datastream
  • Salesforce flows
  • An integration mechanism independent of FinancialForce Accounting
Note:

Before you use this feature, we recommend enabling it in the Feature Console to automatically add the Trigger Posting and Trigger Posting Error fields to their related page layouts. If you use other page layouts, you must add these fields manually. For more information, see Enabling the Trigger Posting of Documents Feature.

For more information about the Trigger Post feature, see Trigger-Posting Documents.

Deprecated Features and Functionality

Cash Matching

The Visualforce Cash Matching tab and the Cash Matching Lightning tabs have been deprecated. The Cash Matching Lightning tab is now replaced with the new Cash Matching tab in the Task Launcher.

For more information, see Upgrading to Accounting Winter 2023.