The Two Big Mistakes Made In Business Central Number Series, IMHO

In My Humble Opinion... by Steve Endow

I'm noticing that Business Central number series (No. Series) configuration is apparently not receiving proper attention during implementations.  People seem to be configuring No Series without thinking.

Or even worse, they are using or copying the No. Series values from the Cronus demo company.  Please don't do this.

For example, we just received a support ticket for this message:

Two obvious mistakes were made in this GJNL-PMT number series, IMHO.  Sloppy.

Even worse, we received a support ticket for this message:

Users should never encounter this error when posting, IMHO.  

This is how I intentionally configured the Cronus default Posted Sales Invoice series to generate the above error.  I simply updated the Last No. Used to end in 4999 to cause the error.

So, what is wrong with this sample No Series Line?

IMHO, the line should be configured like this:

I did 2 things differently--which I believe are the two big mistakes being made in number series:

1. Any number series line related to transactions should have an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM of 7 digits.  8 is probably prudent--especially for high volume customers.  I have had customers that post over 2 million transactions in a day.  Such a customer could burn through 7 digits in a week.

2. In general, I believe that number series lines should NOT have an Ending No value!  For a number series with a single line, there is no reason that I can currently think of to have an ending number.  It serves no purpose other than to arbitrarily block the number series at some point.

YES, Business Central does allow the Ending No. field to be blank!  Try it!  It works fine!  

"But Steve, what happens if you have no Ending No. and the number series runs out?"

Nothing!  Test it!  It's very easy to find out!

Here is a test with a 2 digit Customer number series line that increments by 10.

Business Central issues customer number C80, then C90, and then... yes, it issues number C100.

No error.   No need for an Ending No.  You don't even need to have the extra digits in the Starting No.

The minor downside to allowing BC add a digit is that you will end up with different number lengths.  This will cause the No. Series to sort 'improperly'.

I would assume that most BC customers search for customers by name, and the customer number does not hold much value, but I can imagine a few customers who place some importance on the customer number for some reason, and want it to sort properly.

If customer number is that important, then spend the 5 minutes to discuss it with the BC customer and setup a number series line that doesn't use letters and won't ever need to expand.

But that's just my opinion...

Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP in Los Angeles.  He works with Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies.

You can also find him on X and YouTube, or through these links:  links.steveendow.com