Primary data, such as sales orders, purchase orders, production orders, and financial transactions, flow through the NAV system, as follows:

• Initial Setup: This is where the Essential Master data, reference data, and control and setup data is entered. Most of this preparation is done when the system (or a new application) is prepared for production use.
• Transaction Entry: Transactions are entered into Documents and then transferred as part of a Posting sequence into a Journal table, or data may be entered directly into a Journal table. Data is preliminarily validated as it is entered with master and auxiliary data tables being referenced as appropriate. Entry can be via manual keying, an automated transaction generation process, or an import function that brings in transaction data from another system.
• Validate: This step provides for additional data validation processing of a set of one or more transactions, often in batches, prior to submitting it to Posting.
• Post: This step posts a Journal Batch that includes completing transaction data validation, adding entries to one or more Ledgers, perhaps also updating a Register and Document history.
• Utilize: This is where we access the data via Pages, Queries, and/or Reports, including those that feed Web Services and other consumers of data. At this point, total flexibility exists. Whatever tools are appropriate for users' needs should be used, whether internal to NAV or external (external tools are often referred to as Business Intelligence (BI) tools). NAV's built-in capabilities for data manipulation, extraction, and presentation should not be overlooked.
• Maintenance: This is the continued maintenance of all NAV data as appropriate:

The preceding diagram provides a simplified picture of the flow of application data through a NAV system. Many of the transaction types include additional reporting, multiple ledgers to update, and even auxiliary processing. However, this represents the basic data flow in NAV whenever a Journal and a Ledger table are involved.

When we enhance an existing NAV functional area, such as Jobs or Service Management, we may need to enhance related process flow elements by adding new fields to journals, ledgers, posted documents, and so on.

When we create a new functional area, we will likely want to replicate the standard NAV process flow in some form for the new application's data. For example, for our WDTU application, we will handle the entry of Playlists in the same fashion as a Journal is entered. A day's Playlists would be similar to a Journal Batch in another application. After a day's shows have been broadcast, the completed Playlist will be posted into the Radio Show Ledger as a permanent record of the broadcasts.