In the General ledgersection, you define and manage the financial records for your company. These financial records include the following:

• Company currencies

• Ledger accounts within the chart of accounts.

• Fiscal periods and fiscal years.

• Sales taxes (for both sales and purchases).

• Journals for posting to ledger accounts and accounts in other sections.

• System accounts for automatic posting.

• Parameters, defaults, and number sequences that apply to ledger accounts and ledger transactions.

• Dimensions, dimension sets and hierarchies, and financial statements.

• Optional features related to journals and posting.

• Sales tax specific to countries/regions.

• Vendor withholding tax.

• Ledger budgets and period allocation keys.

• Fixed assets.

In the Cost accountingsection, you set up and manage cost accounting. You can redirect overhead and indirect costs to the entities that you set up as cost categories and to the dimensions that you define in cost accounting.

When you set up cost categories, you can enable a link to the ledger accounts so that a copy of posted ledger transactions automatically appears in the appropriate cost category. You can then redistribute the costs among other cost categories and dimensions, and analyze the cost structure of your business.

In the Banksection, you create and manage company bank accounts and the financial instruments that are associated with bank accounts, such as deposit slips, checks, bills of exchange, and promissory notes.

You also create bank groups, bank transaction types, the bank accounts that the company has in each bank group, and check layouts for the bank accounts.

You can view bank data by using several standard inquiries, reconcile bank account statements, and print bank data in standard reports. These standard reports include balances, payment lists, summaries, deposit slips, payment advice, and bank transactions that are not reconciled.

In the CRMsection, you enter and track all business contacts, accounts, opportunities, and relationships. Some of the tasks you can perform include the following:

• Track activities.

• Create and manage campaigns.

• Manage sales quotations.

In the Accounts receivablesection, you track all sales and incoming payments from customers.

You also set up customer groups, customers, posting profiles, various payment options, interest notes, collection letters, commissions, parameters for customers and sales orders, prices and discounts, charges, supplementary items, deliveries and destinations, and bills of exchange.

Depending on your setup, you can then perform many tasks that are related to customers and sales. Some of the tasks you can perform include the following:

• Create and manage sales orders, sales quotations, and free text invoices.

• Settle customer invoices.

• Create reports.

In the Accounts payablesection, you track all purchases and outgoing expenditures to vendors.

You also set up vendor groups, vendors, posting profiles, various payment options, parameters for vendors and purchase orders, prices and discounts, charges, supplementary items, deliveries and destinations, and promissory notes

Depending on your setup, you can then perform many tasks that are related to vendors and purchases. For example, you can create and manage purchase orders and planned purchase orders, use various kinds of journals, and settle vendor invoices.

In the Inventory managementsection, you track items from receipt to issue, and track their storage and transport.

In the Master planningsection, you set up and run scheduling to calculate requirements and generate planned orders. You can use forecast scheduling to calculate gross requirements based on forecasts, and to plan long-term materials and capacity needs. Use master scheduling to calculate net requirements based on actual orders and to control inventory replenishment on a daily basis.

In the Productionsection, you manage the production of items, from creating an order to the finished, manufactured item.

The section is integrated with other sections, including the Inventory management, General ledger, and Basicsections. This integration supports the information flow that is needed to complete manufacturing.

In the Product Buildersection, you set up dynamic configurations for items based on requirements and modeling variables determined by sales order, purchase order, production order, sales quotation, or project quotation.

Based on a configuration, and from these predefined modeling variables, this section automates the generation of standard bills of materials and standard routes—within Microsoft Dynamics AX —for the production of each item. This simplifies the job production process and improves the interaction of sales and production.

In the Shop Floor Controlsection, you set up and manage data collection for a production environment.

You also set up employees, work profiles, indirect activities, various employee groups, parameters for posting on production orders and projects, pay agreements, and registration forms.

You can collect data about time and attendance, production orders, projects, and indirect activities. You can post collected data about production orders and projects, generate payroll data for employees, and schedule shift plans.

In the Human Resourcessection, you manage a wide variety of business information and perform a range of actions that are related to the business workforce and its organizational structure.

In the Questionnairesection, you design, create, distribute, and complete questionnaires, and then analyze the results.

In the Balanced scorecardsection, you create scorecards to help your company identify its visions and strategies and then translate them into measurable objectives.

In the Expense managementsection, you can manage expense reports and reimbursements.

In the Projectsection, you set up projects, estimate project costs, use projects to generate quotations, and track project process. Types of projects you can manage include:

• Time and materials

• Investment

• Fixed price

• Time

• Cost

• Internal

In the Servicesection, you set up and manage service agreements, service orders, and service subscriptions.

The Basicsection contains data and functionality that is used across other sections. In it, you manage the data for:

• Employee information

• Work center groups

• Work calendars

• Dimension values

• Companies

• Record templates

• E-mail templates

• Number sequences

You can also manage the following functionality:

• Alerts.

• Document management.

• Batch processing.

• Reporting.

• Application integration framework. For more information, see the Server and Database Administration Guide.

In the Administrationsection, you manage users and groups, company accounts, domains and virtual company accounts, system settings, Internet-related settings, and security.

For more information, see the System and Application Setup Help and the Server and Database Administration Guide.

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides multiple tools for viewing and analyzing business data.

• Ad hoc reports offer you the flexibility to create and modify reports using a drag-and-drop feature and a report template.

• Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) reporting helps you analyze trends in business data.

• Standard reports enable you to produce reports and filter data in them.

Enterprise Portal provides Web-enabled access to data stored in Microsoft Dynamics AX. From Enterprise Portal, you can manage documents that are attached to records in the Microsoft Dynamics AX database, search for data stored in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, and use SharePoint announcements, surveys, and discussion lists to collaborate with customers, business partners, and other employees.

For more information, see the Enterprise Portal Administrator's Guide.

The Workflow system enables you to define the approval process for specific documents, such as purchase requisitions and expense reports.

Application Integration Framework (AIF) enables companies to integrate and communicate with other business processes and partners electronically. AIF enables more secure business-to-business and application-to-application integration scenarios.

For more information, see the Server and Database Administration Guide.