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651. BUSINESS CENTRAL OVERVIEW
Why is it different??
- Increased Financial Visibility for forecast accuracy, chart financial performance in Real Time, informed decision
- Optimized Supply Chain with optimal time to replenish stock. Better Inventory management with optimized Manufacturing capacity and resources
- Boost Sales and Improve Services
- Deliver projects on time develop, modify and control budgets to ensure project profitability
- Protect Data and support General Data Protection Regulation Compliance
- Run Business Anywhere in Cloud, On-Premises. Experience seamless experience on Windows, Android, iOS devices
2. BUSINESS CENTRAL LICENSING
The Essentials license gives your users:
- Financial Management – Includes the following features: basic general ledger, budgets, fixed assets, cash flow forecast, multiple currencies, bank reconciliation, allocations, account schedules, check writing, cost accounting, inter-company postings
- Artificial Intelligence – Cash flow forecast, inventory forecast, sales forecast, image recognition, late payment prediction
- Customer Relationship Management – Contact management and classification, opportunity management, relationship management, task management, business inbox for Outlook, email logging, interaction/document management, campaign management, and pricing
- E-Services – Document exchange service, document capture, and management, bank feeds (U.S., Canada, and the U.K.), Microsoft Pay
- Human Resources Management – Basic HR
- Project Management – Basic resources, job quotes, capacity management, project management jobs, timesheet, multiple costs
- Supply Chain Management – includes the following features and more: basic inventory, basic payables, basic receivables, calendars, demand forecasting, drop shipments, item attributes, item tracking, purchase invoicing, purchase order management, requisition management, sales invoicing and discounts, sales order management, Sales tax/VAT
- Assembly Management – To support companies that supply products to their customers by combining components in simple processes without the need of manufacturing functionality (Business Central includes features to assemble items that integrate with existing features, such as sales, planning, reservations, and warehousing.)
- Warehouse and Inventory Management – Automated data capture system, bin set-up, internal picks and put away, pick, warehouse management systems, warehouse receipt, warehouse shipment
- Other functionality – Analysis reports, changelog, job queue, user tasks, notifications (on-premises), embedded Power BI, reason codes, Word and document reporting, workflow, unlimited companies, extended text, user management, Intrastate
Fig 2.1 Business Central –Essentials
Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium Functionality
In addition to the features you get with Essentials, Premium offers Service Order Management and Manufacturing capabilities with a subscription of $100 per user per month.
- Service Order Management – Service order management, service item management, service price management, service contract management, planning, and dispatching
- Manufacturing – Production orders, production bill of materials, basic supply planning, basic capacity planning, version management, machine centers, finite loading, sales, and inventory forecasting, agile manufacturing
3. KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Fig 3.1 Keyboard Shortcuts
4. DASHBOARD AND ROLES
Personalization of Screen and designing is readily available in Business Central Wave 2 (Fall Edition, this is still under upgrade). Screen change is relative to the job assigned. The dashboard is as per the role profile. For example, if you are working as Business Manager, pre-configured Role Center can be assigned, which will give insights into Sales Metrics, Trial Balances, top –five customers can be viewed in the dashboard with reports which can be visualized in Charts and Graphical representations.
Personalization can be carried through Selecting My Settings, selecting role profile, company environment.
Fig 4.1 Dashboard: Business Central
Fig 4.2 My Settings
Fig 4.3: Dashboard Role Assignment: Business Manager
Fig 4.4 Heading shown above is configurable.
Fig 4.5 Sales Metrics and Widgets
Actions buttons are displayed for creating easy to use functionalities such as Sales Quote, Purchase Order, Sales Invoice, and Purchase Invoice which is quite handy as the receipt of payments and Re-conciliation of payment in banks can be carried right from the action buttons.
Fig 4.6 Business Assistance
Interactive business Assistance has a wide range of charts for selection. Such as Cash Cycle, Cash flow, Income & Expenses, Top 5 customers. Period length can be changed. Data can be exported to excel.
Fig 4.7 Key Performance Indicators to provide Business Insights
In Self Service, Job Time sheet can be seen Open, submitted, requested to approve
Fig 4.8 Trial Balance and Self Service
Trial Balance chart provides a quick overview of the financial performance of your company displayed in two periods. This chart is a simplified version of the General Ledger Trial Balance chart. The total revenue figure corresponds to the total in your chart of accounts.
5. APPLICATION ENHANCEMENTS
Following are Dynamics 365 Business Central enhancements
5.1 Autosave & Work date Indicator
AutoSave
The indicator on the right-hand side of document showcase work date while on the right side it shows status Saving, Saved, Not Saved. As shown below changes values from saving to saved while the user is working on Page and actively communicates with the server and saves the Data. In case of data validation error being faced it will display Not Saved
Fig 5.1.1 Shows Status as” Saving”
Fig 5.1.2 Shows Status as “Saved”
Fig 5.1.3 Shows Status as “Not Saved”
Work Date
Business Central allows advanced users to understand the work context in an easy and quick way. The work date presented directly on-screen in the current view as shown in fig 5.1.1 and 5.1.2. The new work date indicator is displayed only when needed and when the work date is different from today. Users who use today as the work date won’t notice it. But advanced users will get a notification and can easily:
- Adjust the work date.
- Switch the work date to today.
- Switch the notification off.
Fig 5.1.4 Notifications on My settings
Switch the reminder on/off under My Settings > Notifications.
Fig 5.1.5 Working Date reminder Notification Setting
5.2 Longer names/Descriptions
Fig 5.2.1 Description and Name Field Length
You can now enter up to 100 characters in all Description and Name fields across Business Central. In earlier versions, the character limit was 50. This change applies to:
- The Nameand Description field on master data cards, such as customer, vendor, item, contact, and resource cards. The Name and Description field on documents, such as sales and purchase orders, invoices, and quotes.
- The Descriptionfield on journals, such as general journal and item journal.
- The Descriptionfield on ledger entries, such as customer, vendor, and item ledger entries.
Fig 5.2.2 Description in Item Card
In addition, you can now enter up to 50 characters in the Unit of Measure Description field. In earlier versions, the character limit was 10
Fig 5.2.3 Description in Unit of Measure
5.3 Multiple Item Selection for Sales / Purchasing docs
Multiple selection and posting of documents are possible in Business Central. It can be carried by selecting the checkbox for all the lines representing orders that are required to be posted at the same time. Choose the Posting action, and then choose the Post Batch action. On the Batch Post Purchase Order page, fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.Choose the OK button.
View potential issues that occurred during the batch posting of documents, open the Error Message Register page
Fig 5.3.1 Multiple Document Selection in List of Documents
Fig 5.3.2 Posting Functionality
Fig 5.3.3 Batch Post
Fig 5.3.4 Multiple Documents posting
Fig 5.3.5 Error Message Register
In case of any error being faced while posting, it’s registered under Error message register which can be used to check and rectify the error
Fig 5.3.6 View Error in Error Message Register
5.4 Reconciling Vendor Payment WITH Vendor Ledger Entries
Choose the Search icon and enter Vendor details, and open the relevant vendor with entries that have already been posted in Vendor Ledger Entries. Create Payment functionality which is nested under Process can be chosen for selected the Invoice entries as required
Fig 5.4.1 Create Payment from Vendor Ledger Entries
A pop –up window will open which requires selection of the Batch name, Posting Date, Starting Document No, Bank Account, Payment Type.
Fig 5.4.2 Create Payment from Vendor Ledger Entries
Click OK after filling the details, Payment Journal is created with required details. Document can be checked and posted
Fig 5.4.3 Payment Journal
5.5 Bulk Import Item Pictures
Importing multiple item pictures in one go is possible as one of the enhancements of Business Central. It’s required to name picture files with names corresponding to the item numbers, compress them to a ZIP file.
Fig 5.5.1 Import Item Pictures
Use the ZIP file folder to Import Item Pictures page to manage which item pictures to import. All common file formats are supported
Fig 5.5.2 Selecting Zip Files to Import Item Pictures
5.6 External Document Numbers on Posted Sales Documents
External document numbers for customers and vendors in all sales and purchase orders, invoices, and credit memos can be entered. It can be used to search for posted sales and purchase lines.
Fig 5.6.1 External document number search in the posted document list
5.7 Focus Mode on Documents
Focus mode provides a special view expanding the line items section of the document to take a larger part of the screen and leave more room for productive and fast data entry.
Fig 5.7.1 Focus Mode for Sales Order
When viewing documents with the section of the line in that mode, advanced filtering can be used for browsing. It makes searching through longer documents easier.
Fig 5.7.2 Focus Mode for Sales Order Line
5.8 New Item Creation from Sales / Purchase Document
When entering an item that does not exist on a document line, the system prompts to either create a new item card or select an existing item. In some cases, such as when importing many new items, this prompt blocks the process. Therefore, now the option to select “skip the prompt to create Item” is available. On the Inventory Setup page, select the Skip Prompt to Create Item checkbox to enable it.
Fig 5.8.1 Skip Prompt to create Item in Inventory Setup
On the Sales & Receivables Setup page, Create Item from Description checkbox is available, which can be deselected to allow users to fill the Description field on a sales line with an item that does not exist in the system.
Click Create Item from Item number checkbox to allow users to fill the number field on a sales line with an item that does not exist in the system. The same field is added to the Purchases & Payable Setup page for purchase lines.
Note that the Skip Prompt to Create Item checkbox on the Inventory Setup page merely defines if the message about the missing item appears. It does not allow or disallow the activity.
Fig 5.8.2 Create Item from the description in Sales & Receivable Setup
Fig 5.8.3 Create Item from the description in Sales Order
Fig 5.8.4 New Item Template
5.9 Attachment on documents
The Document Attachments feature allows attaching any type of file to a sales or purchase document within Business Central. During the settling of vendor payments, a quick view of the original invoice that the vendor has sent.
Attachments on sales and purchase documents can be viewed on the resulting Customer Ledger Entries and Vendor Ledger Entries pages. To view it on the Apply Entries pages apply payments to ledger entries
Fig 5.9.1 Attachments on documents
5.10 Physical Inventory Orders
Physical Inventory take of Items can be done by using physical inventory order and physical inventory recording documents. Multiple recordings for one order can be done. Create a new Inventory Order to manage a new inventory counting; it can be created for many Inventory Orders, for example, one different order for each different location. To calculate lines click Calculate Lines
Fig 5.10.1 Physical Inventory Document
The Physical Inventory Recording report can be printed from each recording and contains empty quantity fields for entering the counted inventory. When a user has taken physical count, the quantities are entered on the Physical Inventory Recoding page. Click to finish the action. This transfers the quantities to the related lines on the Physical Inventory Order page.
Fig 5.10.2 Calc. Phys. Inventory Order Lines
This functionality ensures that no item count can be recorded twice.
Items are extracted and inserted as inventory orders lines.
Fig 5.10.3 Calc. Phys. Inventory Order
Fig 5.10.4 Phys. Inventory Order
Counting inventory by using documents consist of the following overall steps:
- Create a physical inventory order with expected item quantities pre-filled.
- Generate one or more physical inventory recordings from the order.
- Enter the counted item quantities on the recordings,as captured on printouts, for example, and set it to Finished.
- Complete and post the physical inventory order.
Fig 5.10.5 Make New Recording
With this function, system create a New Inventory Recording Document, the user will compile the document during inventory and can create one or more recording document, all related to one Inventory Order
5.11 Merge Duplicate Customers or Vendors
As different users create new customers, vendors over the course of time, multiple records are registered in the system. In this case use “Merge Duplicate” functionality on the page from the card of the record that is to be kept. The page gives an overview of duplicated field values and provides functions to select which values to keep or discard when merging two records into one.
Only users with the MERGE DUPLICATES permission set can use this functionality
The Merge Duplicate page shows all fields where the values are different for the two records being compared. Therefore, a duplicate is indicated by the page showing very few fields. Whereas, if the page shows many fields, then the suspected record is probably not a duplicate.
Fig 5.11.1 Merge Duplicate
The Fields Fast Tab, lists all fields where the values are different for the two customers. This means that if the selected customer is really a duplicate, then only very few fields should be listed, such as typing errors and other data entry mistakes. The Current Count and Duplicate Count fields show the number of fields in related tables where the Number value of both the current and the duplicate customer is used.
5.12 Sales Quote Validity Policy
To have the Quote Valid until Date filled in automatically with a certain number of days after quote creation, you can fill in the Quote Validity Calculation field on the Sales & Receivables page.
Fig 5.12.1 Quote Validity Calculation
5.13 View time information on Registers
It specifies the time when the entries in the register were posted
Fig 5.13.1 Creation time
5.14 View item descriptions, customer and vendor names in ledger entries
When analyzing ledger entries, it is useful to also see the item description, customer names, or vendor names. The Description and Name fields can now be added to the ledger entries, such as Item Ledger Entries, Customer Ledger Entries or Vendor Ledger Entries page by selecting:
- Copy Item Description to Entries check the box on the Inventory Setup page for Items
- Copy Customer Name to Entries check the box on the Sales & Receivables Setup page for Customers
- Copy Vendor Name to Entries check the box on the Purchases & Payables Setup page for Vendors
Fig 5.14.1 Inventory Setup
Fig 5.14.2 Item Ledger Entries
Fig 5.14.3 Sales & Receivable Setup
Fig 5.14.4 Customer Ledger Entries
Fig 5.14.5 Purchase & Payable Setup
Fig 5.14.6 Vendor Ledger Entries
5.15 Changing Descriptions of General Ledger Entries
Field Copy Line Description to G/L Entry Specifies that description on document lines of type G/L Account will be carried to the resulting general ledger entries. For enabling it Field Copy Line Description to G/L Entry is required to be checked in Service Management Setup, Purchase & Payable Setup, and Sales & Receivable Setup
Fig 5.15.1 Service Management Setup
Fig 5.15.2 Purchase & Payable Setup
Fig 5.15.3 Sales & Receivables Setup
Fig 5.15.4 Editing description in General Ledger Entries
5.16 Page Inspection
Page Inspection provides information about the page, its different elements, and the source behind the data it displays. Shortcut used: Ctrl+ Alt +F1
Fig 5.16.1 Page Inspection
5.17 Improved all product navigation
Adjust page design and save changes as extensions. Go to Settings Click Design
Fig 5.17.1 Page Design
Different options Like Move, Remove, Show Under "Show More”, show when collapsed, exclude from Quick Entry can be used as required
Fig 5.17.2 Page Design Options
Fig 5.17.3 Page Design moving field
5.18 Quick Entry
Quick Entry can be personalized using personalization experience, it facilitates to enter data in essential fields.
Developers can define an initial path of Quick Entry fields per page in their application, customize that in extensions, and also tailor it to specific role profiles. Furthermore, the Quick Entry AL property supports expressions to create dynamic Quick Entry paths to different fields.
Quickly switch between different views of a list in the filter pane or from the command menu, no matter how you accessed that page.
- Moving to any Quick Entry field across the page, including moving in and out of editable parts such as list parts, by using a powerful combination of keys: Enter, Shift+Enterand Shift+Ctrl+Enter.
- Expanding a collapsed Fast Tab (field group) if the next Quick Entry field is in that group.
- Cycling from the last Quick Entry field to the first Quick Entry field on the page
Fig 5.18.1 Quick Entry
5.19 Save and Personalize List Views
Personalize your work space by showing, hiding, adding, moving fields and much more
Fig 5.19.1 Personalization
Click on Settings --> Personalize -->New Window opens as shown below
Fig 5.19.2 Personalization in list
Click on + Field to add field, Additional fields will show on right side of the window
Fig 5.19.3 Personalization, with field addition in the list
Choose a field and drag and drop in the column of the list page
Fig 5.19.4 Adding field in list
As displayed below the column is shown. After addition of field click on done
Fig 5.19.5 Closing Personalization
5.20 Design Functionality
Adjust Page design and save as an extension. Open Page for which field is to be added.
Go to Settings --> Design
Fig 5.20.1 Page Design
A new window opens, as of now, only a field can be added. As the product is still evolving various features such as +Actions, Part, Page will be added to the user interface. In design mode, different icons are visible to set the required view namely desktop, tablet, mobile.
Fig 5.20.2 Item Page Field Design
On clicking +Field, additional fields will be showcased in the right panel of page which can be dragged and dropped to the tabs of page.
Fig 5.20.3 Field Addition
A field is added to the Page as shown below
Fig 5.20.4 Field Addition
Click on stop designing after the required changes, name the publisher and extension and click on Save
Fig 5.20.4 Save Extension
5.21 Manage Extensions and Services
For assisted Setup go to Setups & Extensions ->Assisted Setup
Fig 5.21.1 Setup & Extension
Click on Setups & Extensions—> Assisted Setup à View as per List or Tile.
It’s a way to walkthrough wizard.
Fig 5.21.2 Assisted Setup
Configuration of Account Schedule can be done from here
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