Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central – Continuity, Flexibility, Scalability
One of the major advantages of any Microsoft software is that it’s just that – Microsoft! Smaller software vendors are often excellent at adding new features and fixes to their software but there are always risks to continuity and a smaller pool of business partners to works with. The Microsoft Business Central Partner network is global with over 3000 specialising partners.
Microsoft continue to display their commitment to their SME focussed ERP Business Central in their planned Spring update and this article aims to bring you some of the edited highlights our customers will find useful. Update roll outs start from April 2022.
Qi is proud to hold advanced specialisation status in Business Central
Bank Reconciliation in Business Central gives even more information
The Bank Account Statement report on the posted bank reconciliations has been modified so it now shows a more detailed snapshot of the bank information as of the time when the bank reconciliation was posted. G/L Balance, Outstanding Payments, and Checks fields have been added, making it easier to validate and audit.
Find the Bank Statement Report in the Bank Statements list (posted bank reconciliations list).
Blocking deletion of G/L accounts in Business Central
Whilst changes to a chart of accounts once established is rare, it can occur. Wave 1 April 2022 introduces a further check to reduce the chance even further of a G/L deletion mishap!
Project Management in Business Central just got easier
Managing a project is never easy. Business Central will enables project managers to enter ‘sell to’ and ‘ship to’ addresses on a job so that the beneficiary of a service is listed accurately and the entity paying for the service is invoiced!
Flexibility on payments: select from your multiple bank accounts in Business Central
Companies today use multiple bank accounts at different banks, which reduces the costs of handling financial transactions, limits currency risks, and so on. Also, more and more companies use electronic sales invoices that need to include the bank account that the company expects to get paid. Being able to change the bank account on sales and service documents adds flexibility to directing customer payments.
Business Central Customers & Vendors
Q: When is a customer not just a customer?
A: When the customer is also a vendor
The Spring 2022 wave will allow a reconciliation to ensure that payments and receipts are rationalized thus saving not only time but transaction fees in many instances.
Business Central and Foreign Currency Reporting
Changing currency exchange rates and accurate reporting can be a minefield. This wave enables accountants to preview the effect of an exchange rate change prior to posting.
Business Central demand forecasting – variants of a single core product
With the Wave 1 2022 release, manufacturers who use a single core product type but offer it in multiple variants (colours for example) can set up a single product and add variants to that product, rather than having to enter that single product multiple times to reflect, as in this example the wealth of colours it is available in.
Think, the same fabric available in 100 colours.
With 2022 release wave 1, you can define the right level of details in the Forecast by Location and Forecast by Variant fields in the Demand Forecast Overview page. Notice that filters by date, locations, items, as well as forecast type are stored in the Demand Forecast Name table. So, you can easily stop and continue your work later.
(Existing customers must activate the new experience in the Feature Management page)
Business Central partners with Shopify
Business Central will now come with the Shopify connector as standard providing access to an easy-to-use e-commerce solution, with automatic synchronization between systems for price changes, product updates, and customers.
Eliminating manual processes will not only improve accuracy, but also keep people focused on taking care of customers. By connecting Shopify and Business Central, you will improve visibility into stock, pricing, existing customers and order history, order status, billing, and payments. Better visibility means faster customer inquiry responses, timely returns and refunds, and more accurate order processing.
Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft continue to integrate Microsoft Office 365 with Business Central.
Look at our previous article
Business Central and Teams
Microsoft appreciates that business users benefit from reduced context-switching and collaboration efficacy when they can do more inside Microsoft Teams.
In Wave 1 2022, Microsoft continue to strengthen the Teams integration:
- The details window now occupies more space on the screen, showing more fields and actions at once. This includes automatically displaying the FactBox pane if space allows.
- From the Details window, you can open the full Business Central experience in the browser. With the addition of this feature, the Popout button on adaptive cards may be removed.
Business Central and Outlook attachments
While Business Central CRM will capture emails sent from and sent to an email address on a contact card including all attachments, this new feature in Wave 1 2022 is super useful.
Imagine a customer sends as a Word email attachment supporting information for an existing order? Or (less ideally) a photograph of damaged goods or a spoiled proof of delivery?
The Outlook add-in now offers the option to copy email attachments to the record displayed in the add-in. For example, the add-in will automatically display the contact record that matches the current email sender, from which you can navigate to that customer’s latest sales order. Once you have identified the order that the email relates to, the attachments feature can be used to copy files from the current email to that order.
This feature encourages smarter working and better communication all round!
Business Central Updates just got (even) smarter
With this new update enhancement, only users who have a valid Business Central license will be queried and updated when the admin runs the Update users from Microsoft 365 process. As a result, the process runs even faster.
Thought for the Day
Business Central will continue to benefit from the impressive research and development of the Microsoft corporation. It’s a scalable, flexible,, robust, modern ERP solution, ideally suited to SME’s in the UK. Please contact Qi Ltd if you have any queries regarding Wave 1 2022 or if you wish to have a demonstration of the software as part of your IT infrastructure review.