Protecting customized auto journals during an upgrade

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This question came up in a Sage University class “How do I protect my custom auto journals during an upgrade?” It was noted that they weren't using activity codes (updated from "there were no activity codes") in the Automatic journal (GESGAU) function under Setup, Financials, Accounting interface.

Will everything be lost during the upgrade? Your auto journal customizations are safe! In the Installation Guide, it states, “Automatic journals are integrated into the X3 parent folder only.” The auto journals must be manually copied from the X3 reference folder down to Production. It isn’t an automatic part of the upgrade.

Before copying them manually to the X3 Product folder from the Automatic journals function (GESGAU), run the Automatic document comparison (CMPGAU) to identify your variances. It can be found under Setup, Financials, Accounting interface. Note in this example, I entered “*” in the Entry field. This will compare all 134 auto journals on the X3 folder to the production folder which in this example is SEED.

Once the report is generated, check if there are changes that you should incorporate into your custom journal or question if your custom journal is no longer needed after changes made in the new patch level.

There are a couple of things I want to point out in the log:

  1. The Canadian legislation was added in 2021 R2 (v12.0.26) so the number of active legislations increases.
  2. Date time updates will be listed. These are benign differences.
  3. The addition of Canadian legislation to the auto journal.

You can compare auto journals one at a time. You can compare custom journals to the journals they are based on. In this example, I customized the SIHI auto journal. Following best practices, I named the custom auto journal ZSIHI. (Best practice was to not change SIHI, but instead create a new auto journal with the name beginning with the letter “Z”)

The comparison report shows differences for the Canadian legislation and a comment I added to the Free Reference on line 20.

Once you’ve completed reviewing the comparison, you can decide which auto journals to copy from the X3 folder and which custom journals need to be updated. Don’t forget to check out the Manual actions section of the Installation guide. There you will find which automatic journals have been changed or added and what those changes/additions accomplish. This is not cumulative; the changes listed are for that specific patch level only. Here is an example from 2021 R3:

I hope this helps you as you plan your next upgrade. Let the techies on your team know that there is a Sage X3 technical help website available at https://online-help.sageerpx3.com/erp/12/public/index.html

Take care my X3 friends. Stay safe!