Rent. Insurance. Subscriptions. Monthly accruals. Every accounting team has a stack of journal entries that show up like clockwork, month after month. Typing them in from scratch every time is a waste of your day — and a great way to introduce typos.
Both Microsoft Dynamics GP and Dynamics 365 Business Central know this. Both give you a way to enter a journal once and reuse it. But they go about it very differently — and once you see what Business Central’s recurring journals can do, GP’s recurring batches start to feel like a flip phone next to a smartphone.
This is Round 3 of our Functionality Face-Off series. We already covered journal entries and budgets. Today: recurring entries.
How You Do It in Dynamics GP: Recurring Batches
In GP, recurring journal entries live inside recurring batches. Here’s the routine:
- Go to Financial > Transactions > Batches and create a new batch.
- Change the Frequency from Single Use to Monthly, Weekly, or Miscellaneous (where you pick the number of days to increment).
- Set Recurring Posting if you want the batch to expire after a set number of postings — say, 12 for a one-year rent schedule. Leave it at zero and the batch recurs forever.
- Optionally check Clear Recurring Amounts if the dollar amounts change each period. GP will zero them out after each posting so you can key in fresh numbers.
- Enter your journal entries into the batch and save.
Each period, you open the batch, review or update the amounts, and post. GP moves the posting date forward by your frequency (one month, seven days, and so on) and tracks Last Date Posted and Times Posted for you.
GP also has a second tool: Quick Journals (set up under Tools > Setup > Financial > Quick Journal). These are templates where the accounts stay the same and you only key the amounts — handy, but they’re a separate feature you have to set up and remember, and they only allow a single offset account.
This all works. Thousands of companies run month-end on it. But notice what’s missing: there’s no automatic reversal for accruals, no built-in way to split one expense across departments by percentage, and the “recurring” logic lives on the batch, not the individual entry.
How You Do It in Business Central: Recurring General Journals
In Business Central, you search for Recurring General Journals — a purpose-built journal page with a few powerful extra columns (Microsoft Learn). Each line carries its own recurring behavior:
- Recurring Method — pick how each line behaves after posting:
- F (Fixed): the amount stays for next time. Perfect for rent.
- V (Variable): the amount clears to zero after posting, ready for a new figure. Like GP’s Clear Recurring Amounts — but per line, not per batch.
- B (Balance): BC takes the balance of an account and spreads it across other accounts using allocation keys.
- RF / RV / RB (Reversing): same as above, but BC automatically posts a reversing entry the next day. Accrual teams, this is your new best friend.
- Recurring Frequency — a date formula like 1M (one month) or 1M+CM (post on the last day of every month). BC advances the posting date automatically after each posting.
- Expiration Date — set an end date per line, and BC simply stops including it. No babysitting.
- Document No. placeholders — type %4 in the document number and BC stamps in the month name each time it posts.
- Allocations — on any line, choose the Allocations action and split the amount across accounts, departments, or dimensions by percentage, quantity, or amount (allocation keys on Microsoft Learn).
When it’s time to post, you open the journal, glance at the lines, update any variable amounts, and post. Fixed lines keep their values. Variable lines reset. Reversing lines post their own reversal dated the next day. The posting dates roll forward on their own.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Batch Entry window (recurring batch) | Dedicated Recurring General Journals page |
| Recurring logic | Set on the whole batch | Set per journal line |
| Frequency options | Monthly, weekly, misc. days | Flexible date formulas (1M, 1M+CM, 1W…) |
| Amounts that change | Clear Recurring Amounts (whole batch) | Variable method (per line) |
| Automatic reversing entries | Not built in — reverse manually | Built in (RF, RV, RB methods) |
| Split across departments | Manual lines or separate tools | Allocation keys by %, quantity, or amount |
| Stop after a date | Recurring Posting count (whole batch) | Expiration date per line |
| Document numbering | Static reference | Placeholders like %4 insert the period name |
Why BC Comes Out Ahead
GP’s recurring batches are dependable, and if they’re serving you well today, that’s no accident — it’s a solid design from its era. But Business Central simply gives you more control with less work:
- Line-level flexibility. Mix fixed rent, variable utilities, and reversing accruals in one journal. In GP, the batch settings apply to everything inside it.
- Reversing entries are automatic. Month-end accruals post their own reversals. That alone saves hours every close — and eliminates the “forgot to reverse the accrual” cleanup entry we’ve all made.
- Allocation keys. Split one utility bill 40/35/25 across three departments automatically, using dimensions instead of account segments. No extra module, no manual math.
- It’s the modern platform. Recurring journals in BC keep getting better with each release wave, while GP is winding down. Microsoft’s own training module on periodic journal entries shows how central this feature is to BC’s finance toolkit.
Ready to Stop Re-Keying Month-End?
If your team is still re-entering the same journal entries every month in GP — or manually reversing accruals — it’s worth seeing what that same workflow looks like in Business Central. The Aisling Dynamics team does GP-to-BC migrations every day, and we’re happy to show you a live demo with your own chart of accounts.
Contact us or call (251) 293-0555 — and catch the next round of the Face-Off tomorrow.