Category: Dynamics

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.

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 14th of the new functionality in the Application section is invoice a customer for multiple projects.

Simplify your invoicing process by sending one invoice for multiple projects, which reduces manual effort and improves accuracy.

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

Feature Details

Add project planning lines from multiple projects to a sales invoice in one go. This process is similar to creating a sales invoice from a project planning line and entering a value in the Append to Sales Invoice No. field.

Here’s an overview of the process.

1. Create a new sales invoice, and fill in the Sell-to Customer No. field. If needed, also fill in the Bill-to Customer No. and Currency Code fields.
2. On the Lines FastTab, choose the Get Project Planning Lines action. The Get Project Planning Lines page shows billable project planning lines from projects for the sell-to customer, bill-to customer, and invoicing currency where the quantity to invoice is more than zero.
3. Choose the lines you want to add to the invoice, and then choose OK.

You can repeat these steps to add another set of project planning lines. You can also delete the invoice or its lines and start over.

There are these noteworthy limitations:

• The Get Project Planning Lines action isn’t available on sales orders or sales quotes.
• You can’t filter on the Ship-to Code or Contact No. fields.

My Opinion

This sounds like it could be a decent time saver, allowing for the production of consolidated invoices for a project.

This post is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Sales), 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.

A while ago I was preparing for training a client on the purchasing module in Business Central and was identifying the key reports to show them and realised that there was a rather key one missing: the Goods Shipped but Not Invoiced report.

I’ve done some exploring of the system and it really does seem that there is no shipped but not invoiced report available in the system. However, there is a list page which can be used to easily get this information, and which can be exported to Excel.

That list is the Item Ledger Entries list:

By applying filters of Completely Invoiced = No, Entry Type = Sales and Document Type = Sales Shipment, 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 13th of the new functionality in the Application section is assemble to project.

Assemble to project helps you improve inventory management by assembling to order only when it’s required, and enable other ways to customize projects.

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

Feature Details

When you enter an assemble-to-order item on a project planning line, an assembly order is automatically created. The assembly order is based on the project planning line, and its lines are based on the item’s assembly BOM. The quantity of components on the assembly BOM is multiplied by the order quantity.

The Assemble-to-Order Lines page shows details about the linked assembly order lines. The details can help you customize the assembly item. As in sales, you can’t directly post linked assembly orders. The created assembly order is reserved for the project, and Business Central synchronizes item tracking between project planning lines and assembly orders. The feature integrates with warehouse management features to make assembly and shipping easier, and ensure that the workflow from project assembly to delivery runs smoothly.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1: Assemble to Project”

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 12th of the new functionality in the Application section is create projects that you can invoice to multiple customers.

When projects involve multiple customers, billing the right customers for the right project tasks can be challenging and take time. Business Central makes billing less complex by letting you specify the bill-to and sell-to customers on each project task line. Having that information on each task lets you automatically generate invoices for the correct customers.

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

Feature Details

You can define the Bill-to Customer No. and the Sell-to Customer No. for each project task line. To enable you to enter that information, Microsoft have made the following fields available on the Project Task table, Project Task Lines subform page, and the Project Task Card page:

• Bill-to Customer No.
• Bill-to Name, Bill-to Name 2
• Bill-to Address, Bill-to Address 2
• Bill-to City, Bill-to Post Code
• Bill-to County, Bill-to Country/Region Code
• Bill-to Contact No., Bill-to Contact
• Sell-to Customer No.
• Sell-to Customer Name, Sell-to Customer Name 2
• Sell-to Address, Sell-to Address 2
• Sell-to City, Sell-to Post Code
• Sell-to County, Sell-to Country/Region Code
• Sell-to Contact No., Sell-to Contact
• Ship-to Code
• Ship-to Name, Ship-to Name 2
• Ship-to Address, Ship-to Address 2
• Ship-to City, Ship-to Post Code
• Ship-to County, Ship-to Country/Region Code
• Ship-to Contact
• Language Code, Format Region
• External Document No., Your Reference
• Payment Method Code, Payment Terms Code
• Price Calculation Method

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1: Create Projects That You Can Invoice to Multiple Customers”

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 10th of the new functionality in the Application section is use general ledger account revaluation for more accurate financial statements.

With a new setup on the G/L account card, you can now run G/L Revaluations for accounts with transactions in foreign currencies. This enables you to generate a more accurate financial statement with little need to keep separate spreadsheets.

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

Feature Details

If you use general ledger accounts to register balance sheet items that are denominated in foreign currencies, a revaluation of the balances is often required before you produce financial statements for your business.

Until now, most businesses have used either a bank account or a vendor account to register and track such assets and transactions. They’ve had to keep the bank or vendor account separate from others, and to make it work they’ve had to maintain an expanded setup for posting groups.

The G/L Revaluation feature simplifies revaluations. For the general ledger accounts that you use for revaluations, you can turn on a general ledger account subledger that will hold the original currency value of the transaction and any adjustments you made using the Adjust Currency Exchange Rate batch job. Balances present in local currency (LCY) are revalued, which enables you to produce a more accurate financial statement with little effort.

Posting gains and losses during a currency exchange rate adjustment follows the normal posting routine. For example, it’s done for each setup on the currency card.

My Opinion

Revaluation is another of the areas with which Business Central has surprised me, due to the lack of or poor functionality in certain areas. This enhancement sounds like it should plug one of those holes.