New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1: Map e-Documents to Purchase Order Lines with Copilot

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1.

The 2nd of the new functionality in the Copilot and AI innovation section is map e-documents to purchase order lines with Copilot.

As procurement processes become more digital, the e-documents feature in Business Central plays a key role in automating the vendor invoice reception and processing. Copilot can assist in this process by improving the mapping and matching of vendor invoices to purchase orders. This reduces time-consuming tasks that would normally include extensive search, lookup, and data entry. The benefit is compounded by the fact that vendor invoices often don’t relate exactly with purchase orders, in which case Copilot is better positioned to identify the corresponding purchase orders. Enhanced matching capabilities particularly benefit small and midsized organizations that need efficient document tracking for purchase order lines. Copilot is the AI-powered assistant for work that boosts creativity and improves productivity for Business Central users.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Apr 2024
General Availability: –

Feature Details

In the initial release of the e-document app, Microsoft introduced fundamental scenarios for e-documents for the entire sales process. However, there’s a need for enhancements and automation in handling the received documents, especially in the context of purchase processes. Copilot refines how you manage e-documents in the purchase process, particularly with respect to purchase orders. The e-documents framework lets you specify the type of purchase document to create for each vendor when you receive e-invoices from them. Previously, the only option was to create a purchase invoice, either as a document or a general ledger journal.

You can now update an existing purchase order in Business Central with the information received in the e-invoice.

Identify purchase orders
First, you can identify the purchase orders that you can automatically match.

Map lines
New mapping functionality lets you automatically match on e-invoice lines with purchase order lines. Copilot also provides additional matching intelligence to improve the matching.

After they’re matched and mapped, Business Central updates the matched purchase order with the relevant receipt information to ensure the right quantities are received on the order lines.

Geographic areas

This feature will be released into the following Microsoft Azure geographic areas:

• Germany
• Norway
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• United Arab Emirates
• United States
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• South America
• Canada
• India
• Japan
• France
• Korea

My Opinion

Many clients use scanning and OCR products like Continia Document capture, which now includes its own AI enhancements; I’d have liked to see some screenshots from Microsoft to understand exactly what this function was going to do. I’ll mark it as potentially interesting and follow up when this version becomes available and take a look at how it works.