Tag: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1

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 11th of the new functionality in the Copilot and AI innovation section is automate tests for your Copilot extensions with the Business Central Test Toolkit.

As the partner community brings generative AI capabilities to market and matures their offerings, partners need new engineering tools and practices to help them succeed in the AI era. Data-driven test automation is vital to ensure AI systems are accurate against diverse inputs, preserve the trust and safety of customers and their data, and are resilient to changes in AI model versions. The developer tools for Copilot in Business Central are an end-to-end toolkit covering development, deployment, administration, feedback loops, and now test automation.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: Jul 2024
General Availability: Dec 2024

Feature Details

With this feature, you can:

• Author tests for your prompt dialogs using a familiar framework in AL and Visual Studio Code.
• Organize your test datasets based on purpose and prompt variations.
• Implement automated verification depending on your feature use case.
• Run tests as fully automated or semi-automated.

Initially, this feature launches as a PR on the Business Central BCApps repo on GitHub, which allows partners to review and try out the tool with their own Copilot features and provide feedback.

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 Copilot and AI innovation section is Simplify collections with Copilot for Finance and Business Central.

Improve your cash flow and lower the cost of collecting payments for unpaid invoices by empowering your collections team with easy access to relevant and timely data about customers with outstanding payments, without having to do expensive task-switching between applications.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: Jun 2024
General Availability: Sep 2024

Feature Details

A healthy cash flow is key to business operations, and in a perfect world, all customers pay their invoices on time. When they don’t, the cost compounds in delayed payments combined with the costly effort of collecting payments. This release helps you claim payments faster by increasíng the effectiveness and productivity of your collections team to drive down the cost of collections while improving your cash flow.

Business Central supports native integration with Copilot for Finance. This integration lets you access and work with real-time financial data from Business Central directly within Copilot for Finance in Outlook. The direct access to financial data helps you make informed decisions and act quickly, without wasting time switching between Outlook and Business Central to look up key information about the customer. This integration supports your collections team with relevant and timely information to support constructive dialogs with the customers.

Copilot for Finance provides AI-powered assistance while working in Microsoft 365 applications, eliminating the need to juggle tasks, making financial processes more streamlined and automated.

Key features of the integration

• Copilot assistance with drafting dunning letter emails and other correspondence with customers who have outstanding balances. This helps your collections team draft personalized emails for every customer.
• Real-time access in Outlook to customer aging data from Business Central, contextual to the company of the current email, which is key to understanding the customer’s payment patterns.
• Access in Outlook to unpaid invoices from Business Central, contextual to the company of the current email. It’s easy to attach the invoice to the email draft, and providing the document makes the process more convenient for your customer convenience and can speed up payment.
• Access in Outlook to contact information from Business Central, related to the company of the current email.
• Set a Promised to Pay date on a posted invoice in Business Central directly from Outlook. The date adds transparency so that other stakeholders know that payment of the invoice is underway and agreed with the customer.

All of this makes your collections more efficient because people don’t have to switch between Outlook and Business Central while they’re in a dialog with customers over email.

The integration is easy to set up and use, and is designed to help you save time and improve your financial management processes. With Copilot for Finance and Business Central working together, you can free up time for your finance and collections teams.

For more information about the Copilot for Finance integration to Business Central, including regional and language availability, see the Copilot for Finance release plan here.

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 35th of the new functionality in the Application section is install Field Service Integration with Business Central from AppSource.

The Field Service Integration application published on AppSource is designed to improve the integration experience, reduce the complexity of the setup, and prepare for future scalability and flexibility. It also aims to minimize disruption for existing users while paving the way for broader adoption.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Jul 2024

Feature Details

To avoid disrupting existing integrations to Sales for customers who aren’t using Field Service integration, you can now install and enable Field Service Integration as an application from AppSource. Although it introduces additional steps for setting up Field Service integration, the process is documented and the Set up integration to Dynamics 365 Sales assisted setup guide, which is currently a prerequisite part for integrating with Field Service, now contains an optional step to install the Field Service Integration application from AppSource.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1: Install Field Service Integration with Business Central from AppSource”

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 34th of the new functionality in the Application section is enable sustainability features for integrations with APIs.

You can use sustainability features in Business Central with third-party software. For example, you might use data about your greenhouse gas emissions in Business Central to enrich data in another application.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview:  Jun 1, 2024
General Availability: Jul 2024

Feature Details

Sustainability pages will have APIs enabled, so in the future you can use Business Central data with other applications—for example, so that you can use sustainability features for collaboration with Power Automate or Power Apps, or for reporting in Power BI.

APIs will be enabled for the following pages:

• Sustainability Account
• Sust. Account Category
• Sust. Account Subcategory
• Sustainability Journal Line
• Sustainability Entry

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 33rd of the new functionality in the Application section is manage subscription billing and revenue and expense recognition.

Businesses are finding ways to create recurring revenue streams by selling goods and services on a subscription basis. This release lets you manage subscription contracts in Business Central. The new subscription module lets you spend more time selling and less time organizing and invoicing contracts.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Companies across sectors have increased their adoption of digitalization and are revamping their products and services to accommodate subscription-based business models.

You can now support many different types of subscription scenarios in Business Central. There’s a simple set of processes that let you manage portfolios of the items and services that you bill on a recurring schedule. For example, hardware maintenance, IT support, cleaning services, and so on. You combine the sale of services and items in mixed subscription contracts that hold information about the items, services, and billing schedule.

Templates simplify the process of creating subscription contracts by standardizing the parameters and schedules for recurring billing. You can manage current pricing and plan for future price updates. On the accounting side, posting accruals to balance sheet accounts is automated, and revenue or expense are assigned to the correct periods in the income statement.

The new module comes with:

• Contracts for which you do recurring billing for items and services.
• Billing schedules with flexible parameters that cater to typical use cases for recurring billing.
• Usage-based billing.
• Automated billing.
• Deferral integration.
• Revenue recognition based on billing schedules.
• Contract updates (parameters and prices).
• Standard reports for contracts, customers, billing schedules, recognized revenue, future billing dates and amounts, and so on. Most reports are available as Power BI reports.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), 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.

So, in the article I discussed how to stop people posting to a closed year, but I started thinking about why you would want to post to a closed year. After all, the year has been closed to prevent posting.

The main reasons I can think of are to allow adjustments and corrections to be posted. Adjustments might include correcting errors which have been found, audit adjustments or additional postings, or legal obligations which require changes to be made. However, all of those could be managed by stopping posting until the year is closed rather than closing and continuing to allow posting.

I’ve not found a good explanation for why Business Central works the way it does, so I’m still waiting to understand this one myself; I’ve previously worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP which, depending on settings, allowed users to post only to the last closed financial year and the changes were automatically rolled forward into the open year.

One point to note for Business Central, is that if users do post into a closed year then the Close Income Statement process, must be run again. If this isn’t done then the closed year postings, won’t be transferred to retained earnings.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), 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.

Being fairly new to Business Central (compared to the 19 years I worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP), I’ve been a bit surprised by the process required for closing a year in Business Central. I’m going to cover the process over a few posts, each dealing with one part of the process.

As I’ve warned in each post about closing fiscal years in Business Central, one of the things I was surprised about Business Central is that even after a year had been closed, people can still post to the year

To stop them posting to a closed year, the Allow Posting From field on the General Ledger Setup (118) page needs to be changed to (at least) the first date of the new financial year.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), 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.

Being fairly new to Business Central (compared to the 19 years I worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP), I’ve been a bit surprised by the process required for closing a year in Business Central. I’m going to cover the process over a few posts, each dealing with one part of the process.

Once the Year End Close has been run, the next step is to close the income statement.

To do this, open the 94 task.

There are a number of fields which need to be entered/selected:

• Fiscal Year Ending Date – should default to the date which needs to be closed; always worth checking to make sure the date is the one you expect and that you’re not in the wrong company.
• Gen. Journal Template and Gen. Journal Batch – template and batch which will be used for the closing journal.
• Document No. – will default from the journal template/batch, but can be overridden.
• Retained Earnings Account – G/L account to which P&L accounts are to be closed.
• Post to Retained earnings Acc – choose whether detail or only balance si required; balance is the default option.
• Posting Description – description to be used on the journal.

The close by options can be configured to post by business unit, set dimensions for the closing journal.

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… Close the Income Statement”

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), 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.

Being fairly new to Business Central (compared to the 19 years I worked with Microsoft Dynamics GP), I’ve been a bit surprised by the process required for closing a year in Business Central. I’m going to cover the process over a few articles, each dealing with one part of the process.

The first part of the process, is to close the fiscal year and accounting periods. To close the year, open the Accounting Periods (100) page and click the Home » Close Year action:

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), how do I… Close a Fiscal Year”

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Financial), 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.

in an earlier article, I covered the only mandatory step to close a period in Business Central which is to set the allowed posting from and to dates (you can override these for individual users), but there are also other steps which would be recommended to do at period end.

These steps are largely going to be common with other accounting systems, but I thought it was still worth outlining them:

General ledger

• Post all necessary general ledger (G/L) adjustments.
• Update and post recurring journals.
• Run financial reports.

Sales and receivables

• Post all sales orders, invoices, credit memos, and return orders.
• Post all cash receipt journals.
• Update and post recurring journals related to sales and receivables.
• Reconcile accounts receivable to the general ledger.
• Run the Delete Invoiced Sales Orders batch job; if archiving is enabled the shipped sales orders will be moved to the archive rather than deleted.

Purchases and payables

• Post all purchase orders, invoices, credit memos, and return orders.
• Post all payment journals.
• Update and post recurring journals related to purchases and payables.
• Run the Aged Accounts Payable report and reconcile accounts payable to the general ledger.
• Run the Delete Invoiced Purchase Orders batch job; if archiving is enabled the invoices purchase orders will be moved to the archive rather than deleted.

Fixed assets

• Create and acquire any assets.
• Post adjustments.
• Post depreciation.
• Post all maintenance costs that have been posted through the fixed asset journals or invoices.

Intercompany

• Process intercompany transactions.

Calculate and process VAT

• Complete VAT statements if required; depending on profile, this may only need to be done every one, two or three months.

Depending on your processes, there may be other steps which you need to do at month end, but the above gives an overview of the most common.