The Third Module Is Here: Northern Comfort Planned Apply
Our last two announcements both ended with the same sentence: "the next module is already in the works." Today we're delivering on that for the second time — Northern Comfort Planned Apply is here, the third module in the Northern Comfort Finance series.
The Problem: Mass Application Blows Up Your Session
A single payment covering 800 open invoices. A vendor account that needs cleaning up after years of neglect. A migration where thousands of entries from the legacy system have to be applied against each other.
In standard Business Central this is a test of patience: the application runs as one very long transaction. Your session is blocked, the browser eventually times out — and if a single entry misbehaves, everything rolls back. After twenty minutes of waiting you're back where you started, with no idea which line was to blame.
The Solution: Plan First, Post in the Background
Northern Comfort Planned Apply cleanly separates two phases that the standard mixes together:
Planning. You collect the entries in a worksheet and group them into applications — one main entry each (typically the payment) plus its secondary entries. The app suggests the main entry automatically based on entry type and amount. Nothing happens to your ledger during this phase: you can sort, correct, and discard as often as you like.
Posting. Release validates and locks the batch, Start hands the actual work to a background task. Your session stays free, the browser stays usable, and you get an email notification when the run finishes.
Two Posting Modes
The difference sounds technical, but in practice it decides how robust a run is:
- Pairwise (default): the main entry is posted against each secondary entry in turn, with a database commit after every pair. That makes large batches resumable — one failing pair doesn't block the rest.
- Combined: the entire application runs as a single transaction. This is required when payment discounts or payment tolerances are involved.
Max. Steps per Run (500 by default) controls how much a single background run works through.
Handling Differences Properly
An application rarely nets out exactly. For the remaining amounts the app offers four routes that you choose per application: payment discount, granting a discount after the discount date, using the payment tolerance, and writing the difference off to a G/L account via Write-Off Account No. You define the suggested accounts once in setup as the debit/credit difference accounts.
When Something Does Go Wrong
Large runs need a plan B. Every step is logged, an interrupted run can be resumed, and Restart Failed Pairs retries exactly the steps that didn't go through — without rebuilding the whole batch. Reopen takes a batch back into planning, Archive closes out a finished one.
Pricing and Availability
Northern Comfort Planned Apply is available for Business Central Online at € 700 per year per production environment — sandbox environments included. You can try it free for 30 days on Microsoft AppSource.
Find all the details on the product page and in the documentation.
Questions or feedback? Drop us a line at hilfe@northerndynamic.de — and yes: module number four is already in the works.