Manage the Intercompany Inbox and Outbox

The intercompany transactions that you receive from your partners are listed on the Intercompany Inbox page. To learn how to process incoming intercompany transactions, go to Process incoming intercompany transactions. The intercompany transactions that you send to partners are listed on the Intercompany Outbox page. To learn how to process outgoing intercompany transactions, go to To process outgoing intercompany transactions.

However, depending on your intercompany setup, some transactions are automatically handled. You can set up the source company and partner companies to automatically create documents and journals that correspond to transactions that partners post through the intercompany general journal. To learn about using intercompany journals, go to Fill in and post an intercompany journal.

Organizing the Inbox

You can use the filter fields at the top of the Inbox page to determine which transactions are shown on the page. For example, if you only want to explore transactions that a particular partner created, use the Transaction Source and Intercompany Partner Code filters.

Transaction source

What you can do with a transaction depends whether it was:

  • Created by your intercompany partner
  • Rejected by your intercompany partner and returned to you

Use the Show Transaction Source field to filter the Intercompany Inbox Transactions page so that it displays only one of these types of transactions. You can also filter by intercompany partner, or by the contents of the Line Action field.

Created by intercompany partner

When you receive a new transaction that was created by your partner, you can choose to either:

  • Accept the transaction
  • Reject the transaction (return to partner)
  • Cancel the transaction (delete the transaction and don't return it to your partner)

Returned from intercompany partner

If your intercompany partner rejects a transaction, you must cancel the transaction in the inbox and then create correction lines or reverse the journal or document.

Recreating inbox entries

If you accepted a transaction in your inbox but then deleted the document or journal instead of posting it, you can re-create the inbox entry and accept it again.

Get an overview of intercompany transactions for a period

You can get an overview of all of the intercompany transactions that you have sent and received in a period. The Intercompany Transactions report lists all intercompany G/L entries, customer ledger entries, and vendor ledger entries.

Note

If the intercompany partners are in the same database, the partners can automatically accept transactions. The go directly to the Handled Intercompany Inbox Transactions and Handled Intercompany Outbox Transactions pages. To learn more about auto-accepting transactions, go to Auto-accept transactions from intercompany partners.

  • For the synchronization partner, on the Intercompany Setup page, turn on the Auto. Send Transactions toggle.
  • For partner companies, on the Intercompany Partner page, turn on the Auto. Accept Transactions toggle.

Import intercompany transactions from a file

The following content applies to on-premises deployments only.

If you have an intercompany partner that is not in the same database as your company, you can receive intercompany transactions from that partner in an .xml file. Then you must import the transactions into your inbox.

  1. Save the file to the location that you specified in the Intercompany Inbox Details field when you set up intercompany.
  2. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Intercompany Inbox Transactions, and then choose the related link.
  3. On the Intercompany Inbox Transactions page, choose the Import Transaction File action.
  4. on the page that appears, select the .xml file that contains the transactions, and then choose the Open button.

The transactions are imported into the inbox and you can now process them.

Process incoming intercompany transactions

When your intercompany partners send you intercompany transactions, the transactions end up in your intercompany inbox. You must evaluate each transaction in your inbox and act on it.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Intercompany Inbox Transactions, and then choose the related link.
  2. On the Intercompany Inbox Transactions page, select a line, and then choose an action, such as Accept, to process the line.
  3. On the Complete IC Inbox Action page, fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.
  4. Choose the OK button.

For lines that you accept, document or journal lines are created in your company. Open each document or journal, make any necessary changes, and then post them.

Lines that you reject and return to your partner go to your intercompany outbox, where you can send them to your partner.

For lines that a partner rejected and returned to you, you must post a correction to the original transaction that you posted in your company.

To process outgoing intercompany transactions

When you post an intercompany journal or document, or send an intercompany order confirmation, the transactions go to your intercompany outbox. To send them to your intercompany partners, open the outbox and process them.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Intercompany Outbox Transactions, and then choose the related link.
  2. On the Intercompany Outbox Transactions page, select a line, and then choose an action, such as Return to Inbox, to process the line.

Use the Send to Intercompany Partner action to send lines to the relevant partner's inbox.

Use the Return to Inbox action to move lines to your inbox, where you can then accept them to create documents or journal lines in your company.

If you use the Cancel action, you must post a correction to the transaction that you originally posted in your company.

Recreate intercompany inbox transactions

You might want to re-create a transaction in the inbox or outbox. For example, if you accepted a transaction in your inbox but then deleted the document or journal instead of posting it, you can re-create the inbox entry and accept it again.

The following procedure describes to re-create inbox transactions, but the same steps also apply to the outbox.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Handled IC Inbox Transactions, and then choose the related link.
  2. On the Handled IC Inbox Transactions page, select the line with the transaction that you want to re-create in the inbox, and then choose the Re-create Inbox Transaction action.

See Also

Managing Intercompany Transactions
Finance
Setting Up Finance
Work with General Journals
Work with Business Central

Find free e-learning modules for Business Central here