The 'Ledger posting' and 'Line property' search priority in the Project Management and accounting module in D365FO (or AX)

In the Project Management and Accounting module, a lot of financial setup is managed via the 'Project groups' option. In this setup you also have two search priority fields:

• Ledger posting search priority
• Line property search priority

In both fields you have to select the value 'Project' or 'Category':

In this article I explain both search priorities, including some examples.

Where is the search priority used for?

The search priority is used for determine the right ledger posting and right line property to project transactions made in the 'Project management and accounting' module. Because when it comes to ledger setup, related to both Project Group and the Project Category you can select the ledger accounts to use. And when it comes to the Line property, related to both the Project Group and the Project Category you can select a default value to use.

This means that based on two directions you can select the values to use, which means that it can be possible that for the project transactions two values will be found. Therefore, in the fields 'Ledger posting search priority' and 'Line property search priority' you select the priority of how the right value should be chosen.

Ledger posting search priority

When it comes to the ledger posting, the setup can be done in the 'Ledger posting setup' option of the Project management and accounting module. In this form for the project posting types you can select the main accounts that most be used. To determine the right main account you can relate to project and category settings:

What you can see in the example above is that there is several overlap because of the use with some 'All' options.

• For both project group 'CategorySP' and 'ProjectSP' a main account is entered for all categories.
• For several categories or groups of categories main accounts are entered in relation to all projects.

That means that multiple combinations can be found in relation to the same project or the same category.

Now what happens based on the search priority fields in the Project group settings? To show this I have created two Project groups with the same settings, except the Ledger posting search priority and the Line property search priority. First I create a Project group 'ProjectSP' with the search priorities to value 'Project':

Also I create a Project group 'CategorySP' with the search priorities to value 'Category':

Now I create two projects with the same settings, except the Project group value:

For both projects I enter project expenses of USD 150,- for the project category 'Car Rental'. After posting the expense journal, I get two vouchers, one voucher for each project. Even when the same project category is used, two different main accounts are used for the 'Project - Cost' posting type:

• Project 000264 (search priority on 'category') finds main account 601501 for ledger posting type Project - cost
• Project 000263 (search priority on 'project') finds main account 601600 for ledger posting type Project - cost

Looking back to the Ledger posting setup you can see that for Project 000264 (search priority on category) main account 601501 is found. This is related to the fact that for category 'Car Rental' a line is added for main account 601501. For project 000263 (search priority on project) main account 601600 is found, because on that project the Project group settings are leading:

So the search priority is giving the priority to search the right main account if multiple lines are available where for the same project transactions main accounts are assigned.

What's different for this field in relation to the Line property search priority is that when you have saved the Project group, the setting of the Ledger posting search priority can't be changed anymore. This can be done for the Line property search priority:

Line property search priority

For the line property the behavior is basically the same when it comes to find the right value. In case of the line property you specify how the project transactions must be managed (like must they be invoiced to the customer, must revenue be accrued when posting project costs):

In the Project Group you can select the default 'Line property' setting:

In both project groups that I have created for this article I select here the value 'Billable'.

This setting for Default line property is also available in the Project category:

On the category 'Car Rental', I select value 'NonBill' here.

Combined these values can be found in the 'Project/group line properties' form, a form similar to the Ledger posting setup for adding the right Line property value:

So for this Line property setting the search priority will check what line property value will be given by default to project transactions. You will find this value already when entering the project transactions, because on each transaction you will have the possibility to change the default setting.

To show you the behavior for the same projects used above for the ledger posting search priority I also enter different expense lines.

Project 000264 (Category search priority): in this project, the Line property search priority is starting on the Category. In that case you see that for 'Car Rental' the value 'NonBill' is chosen:

This is because on the Project group the Category is chosen as search priority and the value on the Category 'Car Rental' is on 'NonBill'.

Project 000263 (Project search priority): in this project, the Line property search priority is starting on the Project Group. In that case you see that for all categories the value 'Billable' is chosen:

This is because on the Project group the Project is chosen as search priority and on the Project group 'ProjectSP' the value is on 'Billable'.