Category: Business Central (Nav/Navision)

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 3rd of the new functionality in the Copilot and AI innovation section is create sales lines easily with Copilot.

The introduction of Copilot in Business Central adds a significant enhancement to the sales document processes. It expedites the creation of sales documents and minimizes time spent on repetitive tasks and lookups. With its ability to accept various input methods, including free text, files, or prebuilt prompts, Copilot understands the input and can use it to create sales lines. This Copilot assistance drives operational efficiency in creating and managing sales documents and contributes to potential revenue growth by getting sales documents into the hands of the customers faster. Copilot is the AI-powered assistant for work that boosts creativity and improves productivity for Business Central users.

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

Feature Details

In this Business Central release, Copilot can suggest and assist with creating sales lines on sales documents like Sales Quote, Sales Order, and Sales Invoice based on structured input or natural language. This drastically relieves the user of manual input and drives operational efficiency.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1: Create Sales Lines Easily with Copilot”

This post is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Purchasing), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

This is a query that came to me from one of my contacts who is migrating from Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly known as Great Plains) to Business Central.

In Dynamics GP you need to mark boxes in the setup to keep historic transactions; in other words, when a purchase order is invoiced, if the keep history box isn’t marked then the PO will be removed from the system. When the box is marked, the PO will be moved to a history table, so that it can be viewed in the future.

My contact wanted to know if I could advise them if the same functionality was present in Business Central. It is present and works very much the same way.

In Business Central, unless you mark some options to archive data, then the purchasing transactions will be moved to history when they are deleted (which can happen when they are fully received).

In the Sales & Receivables Setup page there is an Archiving fasttab containing four options (for quotes, orders, blanket orders and return orders) which need to be marked to have the transaction moved to the archive instead of deleted:

I always make sure these (and similar) options are marked so that historic transactions are retained; even if not required for regulatory purposes, clients generally want to be able to look back and report on previous transactions.

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.

Continue reading “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 In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Purchasing), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

This is related to the training preparation I was doing a while ago where I needed to work out how to get the Goods Shipped Not Invoiced Report and discovered there wasn’t one available as standard.

Well, the Goods Received Not Invoiced report is also not available as standard, but, fortunately, the same list page we can use to get the shipped invoice can also be used for the goods received one:

By applying filters of Completely Invoiced = No, Entry Type = Purchase and Document Type = Purchase Receipt, you can get a view of the posted shipments in the system which have not been fully invoiced.

While there is no report as standard, you can create a report using the data from the Item Ledger Entry page in a report; the data is in the Item Ledger Entry (32) table.

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 17th of the new functionality in the Application section is use currencies when posting employee transactions.

You can use general journals for employee accounts to register employee expenses and reimbursement transactions in foreign currencies, and then easily track the amounts and compare them to receipts. Leave your calculator in your desk drawer—Business Central can adjust the exchange rate for you.

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

Feature Details

When you use general journals to post transactions for employee accounts, such as when you reimburse expenses, you can use the Currency Code field to specify the currency for the transactions. Specifying a currency lets you use the same features as when you register transactions in the customer and vendor ledgers. For example, employees can register an expense in euros but get paid in dollars.

To ensure that the exchange rate for the amounts is up to date, you can adjust employee balances when you run the currency exchange rate batch job. If you want to use the exchange rate table, but settle employee balances in your local currency, you can exclude employee accounts when you adjust exchange rates.

My Opinion

Again this is one of the enhancements which strikes me as unusual that it isn’t already available, as it isn’t unusual for me to deal with clients who have people in several countries. Perhaps this is more of a European thing, but at least the functionality is coming.

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 16th of the new functionality in the Application section is Use standard terminology for project management.

Microsoft are making it easier to work with project accounting by updating the terminology Microsoft use for its features in the product and documentation. Specifically, Microsoft are renaming things that were called “jobs” to “projects.” The goal is to improve the user experience, the clarity of the documentation, and the consistency of the terminology across the application.

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

Feature Details

For a long time now, Microsoft have referred to project accounting features as “jobs,” which has caused confusion in their community because that’s not the term that people who work with project accounting expect. Microsoft are happy to announce that they’re addressing this legacy problem. To clarify the true nature and purpose of the project accounting features for various types of businesses, Microsoft are replacing the term “job” with “project” in the user interface and documentation.

For example, entities such as job tasks, job journals, and job planning lines are now project tasks, project journals, and project planning lines. The renaming won’t break existing integrations and customizations because Microsoft are only updating the captions in the user interface and the terms in their documentation. Microsoft aren’t touching the names of the underlying table and field objects.

My Opinion

It might be a small change, but I do like that jobs are being renamed to project, as this is a term much more widely used by clients. Microsoft do note that the change is only a surface change and the underlying objects will retain their name of Jobs so as to not break existing integrations or reports.

This is a good idea in general, but I do worry that future additions end up being called projects rather than jobs, thereby complicating the naming convention behind the scenes.

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 15th of the new functionality in the Application section is use new Excel layouts for 35 selected reports.

Running reports to analyze and present business information is a frequent task in any business. Now you can use the Excel report layouts to interactively generate analyses and present learnings

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

Feature Details

Microsoft have added 35 Excel reports with new report layouts for finance, sales (customers), and purchases (vendors). To give you more options in creating your own Excel layouts for the report, you also get data from the report request pages and data for translations of a layout. If the data in the reports comes from multiple tables, the report layouts show the data in multiple worksheets, which makes it easy to understand where the data originated.

The reports are flexible, and you can use them in the way that best fits your needs:

• Use the reports as-is to get insight about your business.
• Use pivot tables to slice and dice data for analysis.
• Use them as a template to create your own Excel layouts for the same data.

Over the course of 2024 release wave 1 Microsoft expect to add more layouts to cover areas like Fixed Assets, Inventory Jobs (Projects), and Service Management. You’ll find examples, typical use cases, and a description of the data for each report in their documentation.

My Opinion

Since starting to work with Business Central, I have to admit that I’ve not been very impressed with the quality, or in fact the number, of reports available in the system. This feature may improve things a little, but the reporting standard in Business Central remains quite poor.

I understand more now why third-party products like Jet Reports are popular with Business Central.