What is No. Series Relationship?

I got surprised when i discovered that so many people working in Navision for quite some time doesn’t understand No. series Relationship feature.
So what is No. Series Relationship?

Say you want to generate different invoice nos based on to where (geography) you are selling your service / material. So your domestic sales can have invoice nos which is different from invoice nos of export sales.

Now to implement the above feature, you need to use at least 2 no. series for invoice numbering? But in Sales & Receivables Setup’s Numbering tab, you have provision of mentioning only one no. series for Sales Invoice nos. how to resolve this?

You can go for some customisation or simply use the No. series relationship.

No. Series Relationship is a feature in Navision which helps you to group multiple no. series together and use it for one document no. Take an example of a sales Invoice. This feature will make 2 (or more) no. series related to each other and both can be used for the sales invoice nos.
Lets do it in Navision.
Create 2 no. series S-INV and S-INV EXP. First one for the domestic Sales & Second one for Export Sales.

Now relate the second no. series (S-INV EXP) with the first one with no. series relationship. To do that, select the seclect the S-INV in no. series window and click on the menu button series -> Relationships. Select the second no. series (P-INV EXP) in this window. Close it.
Your relationship between the 2 no. series is done. Now to use these no. series for sales invoice nos, you need assign it to sales & Receivables Setup.

Open Sales & Receivables Setup and go to the numbering tab. Choose the first no. series (P-INV) in the Invoice Nos.
Now you are ready to use both the no. series to generate the Sales Invoice nos. To test it –
Open the sales Invoice Window (Sales & Marketting -> Order Processing -> Invoices) and press F3 to create a new Sales Invoice. Don’t tab away from the no. field. Now click on the assist edit button (the 3 dot button) next to No. field and you will find system is suggesting both the no. series to you. Select any one series (depending on what type of Sales invoice – Domestic / Export you are creating) and a new no. document no will be generated.
So, you have the option of using 2 no. series (or more) for one single document no. You can extend this functionality further by automating the selection of no. series own the basis of USER ID.
Experiment on it. See you in next post.

Do you know what Happens if you assign same no. series to both unposted as well as posted document?

Let us simulate the same scenario.
I have created a new no. series named ‘Test’ with a starting document no. ‘TEXT0001’ and assigned it to both ‘Unposted Sales Invoice’ as well as the ‘Posted Sales Invoice’ in sales & Receivables Setup window.
Afterwards, we have created 2 unposted sales invoices with the document no ‘TEST0001’ and ‘TEST0002’ (generated by the no. series Test).
The first sales invoice has the external document no ‘ABC’ and the second one has ‘ABC1’ as external document no.
Now what will happen if I post these documents? One of the comments in this discussion says that it will create a document no after the last no created by the no. series. So the first posted document will be ‘TEST0003’? What do you think? Let me post the invoices.
To make it more interesting, I have posted the second document (‘TEST0002’) first and the first document (‘TEST001’) second. Here is the screen shots of the posted documents. You can identify the documents with their respective external document no.

This is the first document posted second identified by the external document no ‘ABC’.
This is the second document posted first identified by the external document no ‘ABC1’.
You got the answers?
In this scenario, the posted documents are taking the same document no assigned in their unposted state. And as no new no is generated by the no. series, the posting process does not update the ‘Last no used’ field of the no. series line.
Have you tried this ever? Try it and I believe you will also find application of this functionality in real life implementation scenario also.
Best of luck