The demonstration virtual machines that you can download from the PartnerSource site have a blank company that you can use to create your own data within. The good news about it is that it’s clean, so you can create your own personal demonstration data without having to look at TV’s and stereos all of the time. The bad news is that the company is clean, so you have to configure all of the data yourself. That’s not a big problem though, the configuration is not that hard, and having your own data makes the Dynamics AX look so much better.

In this walkthrough we will show how you can start the process by configuring the US01 legal entity so that you can start using it. We will show how to:

• Configure the US01 legal entity
• Create a new business unit for the organization
• Configure the business account structures
• Configure the company ledger
• Set the default accounts for the automatic transactions
• Create a bank account for the organization

Configuring the Legal Entity

The US01 company is initially just a blank shell without a real name or purpose.

In this step we will show how to configure the US01 legal entity so that it looks a little less generic.

How to do it…

To configure the legal entity, follow these steps:

1. From any of the existing legal entities within Dynamics AX, select the Legal entities menu item from the Organization folder of the Setup group within the General Ledger area page.
2. Select the US01 Legal entity from the list box on the left of the form.
3. From here you can change the Name, Search name, and also the Time zone.
   
4. Expand out the Addresses group and click on the Add button to add a new address to the legal entity.
5. When the New address form pops up, you can fill in the name of the Legal entity, and also give it an address and any contact information that you may want to relate to the organization.
   
6. You may also want to expand out the Contact information group and add some other detail to the organization, just for color.
7. When you are finished, click the Close button.

Configuring a Business Unit

To make your ledger a little cleaner, it is probably a good idea to create a new Business Unit for your new legal entity. This will allow you to separate out your organizational information, and also default in appropriate financial dimensions later on.

In this section we will show how you can create a new Business Unit for your organization.

How to do it…

To configure a business unit, follow these steps:

1. From any of the existing legal entities within Dynamics AX, select the Business units menu item from the Organization folder of the Setup group within the General Ledger area page.
2. When the Business Unit maintenance for is shown, click the New button in the menu bar.
3. Enter the name of the business unit into the Name and Search name fields, and then lick the Close button.
   

Configuring Account Structures

Before we can define the ledger for the new organization, we need to create some new Account Structures that will be used to manage what can and cannot be posted to our company ledger from within the organization. These will be linked back to the Business unit that we just defined to ensure that it is the only area of the ledger that is updated from within the organization.

In this section we will show how to configure the Account Structures within Dynamics AX.

How to do it…

To configure the account structures, follow these steps:

1. From any of the existing legal entities within Dynamics AX, select the Configure account structure menu item from the Chart of accounts folder of the Setup group within the General Ledger area page.
2. Rather than create the account structures from scratch, select one of the existing B/S account structures, and from the Maintain group on the Manage ribbon bar, click on the Duplicate button.
3. Give your new Balance Sheet account structure a name and description, and then click on the OK button.
   
4. This will create a duplicate version of the selected account structure. To change the Business Unit that is allowed to be posted to, click on the filter icon on the right end of the Business Unit element.
5. Change the From and To range within the filter to the new Business unit that we created in the prior section. Now your Balance Sheet account structure should be configured.
   
6. Select one of the existing P&L account structures, and from the Maintain group on the Manage ribbon bar, click on the Duplicate button.
7. Give your new Profit & Loss account structure a name and description, and then click on the OK button.
8. Change the Business Unit that is allowed to be posted to by clicking on the filter icon on the right end of the Business Unit element and updating the from and to range of the filter.
9. Now, select your new Balance Sheet account structure and click on the Activate button within the Maintain group of the Manage ribbon bar.
   
10. Click OK on the confirmation dialog box and wait for the account structure to be activated.
11. Repeat the same process for the Profit & Loss account, and you will be done.

Configuring Company Ledger

The next step in the configuration is to define the Company Ledger linking the account structures to the organizations chart of accounts, and also to default in some account codes.

In this section we will show how to configure the Company Ledger for the US01 organization.

How to do it…

To configure the company ledger, follow these steps:

1. Change the Legal Entity to US01.
2. Select the Ledger menu item from the Setup group within the General Ledger area page.
3. When the Ledger dialog box appears, select a default Chart of accounts from the dropdown on the field.
4. Select a default Fiscal calendar from the dropdown on the field.
5. Also, select a default Accounting currency for the Ledger.
   
6. From the Account structures group, click on the Add button in the groups menu bar, and select the Balance Sheet account structure that we just defined in the prior step.
   
7. The system will tell you that this will change the account structure, and since there are no old transactions, lich Yes to proceed with the update.
8. From the Account structures group, click on the Add button in the groups menu bar, and select the Balance Sheet account structure that we just defined in the prior step.
9. The system will tell you that this will change the account structure, and since there are no old transactions, lich Yes to proceed with the update.
10. Repeat the process again, except this time select the Profit & Loss account structure that we just created.
11. For the inter-organization balancing to work, select the Business Unit from the Balancing financial dimension.
12. And click Yes to continue with the update.
13. Finally, fill in the default accounts for the currency revaluation, and then click Close to finish the setup.
    

Configuring Automatic Transaction Accounts

There are a few additional defaults that need to be configured for the organization that will make your life a little easier when the system is up and running.

In this section we will show how to configure the Automatic Transaction Accounts for the new organization.

How to do it…

To configure the automatic transactionaccounts, follow these steps:

1. Select the Accounts for automatic transactions menu item from the Postings folder of the Setup group within the General Ledger area page.
2. When the dialog box appears, click on the Create default types button on the menu bar.
3. This will create a number of default accounts to be populated. Associate the appropriate main accounts to them and click Close to finish the step.
   

Creating a Bank Account

Finally, while you are setting up the main information for the company, you might as well also create a default Bank Account. Although you will not use it right away, it will save you a step when you start configuring payment types etc. later on.

In this section we will show you how to create a new Bank Account within US01.

How to do it…

To configure a bank account, follow these steps:

1. Select the Bank accounts menu item from the Common group within the Cash and bank management area page.
2. When the Bank accounts form is shown, click on the Bank account button within the New group on the Bank account ribbon bar.
   
3. Enter the short code for the account in the Bank account field.
4. Specify the Routing number and Bank account number.
5. Also, specify a description of the bank account in the Name field.
6. Finally specify the Main account for the bank, and then click the Close button.
   

Summary

Keep in mind, there are a lot of options and configurations that we skipped over while we were running through this process, but they are just the icing on the cake. We are just configuring the system with what we need in order to get the company up and available for us to start configuring the rest of the information.