Main account mask in Chart of Accounts - Microsoft Dynamics AX

Main Account mask, what is this? How is this helpful? These are some regular questions that linger around when we see this field in the Chart of Accounts form on Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Let me throw some light on it. While creating a number sequence we often configure the segments. We specify the segment as AlphaNumeric and provide a value as #####. The 5 hashes indicate that there are 5 running numbers. Quite often we also find && which indicates that there are 2 alphabets in the Number sequence segment.

 # - indicates a number

& - indicates an alphabet

Main Account mask is similar to the segments in a number sequence (except that it doesn’t automatically generate numbering like number sequence) and is used for validating the Main Account code assigned against the Mask specified in the Chart of Account and if a Main account code doesn’t match the Masking guidelines, AX will throw an error indicating mismatch in the masking guidelines.

For Example:

The CFO advises all the finance team to maintain the Ledger accounts (Main accounts) to have a account code that starts with the type of main account (represented by first character) continued with 5 digits.

This can be done by keeping the Main account mask as &##### (as below)

If the Main account code does not follow this protocol while creating a main account, then system throws error as below:

The correct Main account code to be affixed is as shown in below screen:

 

In the above A is an alphabet for & (representing the Assets), 11001 are the numerical code for #####. Hence it is treated as a correct combination for Main account code