Microsoft Dynamics 365 | Controller Highlights in Business Central (Demo)

I want to show you some features of Dynamics 365 Business Central that provide benefits that controllers really like. We look at the user interface for business Central. We’re going to look at approval workflows that are built. Into the system, we’ll look at integrations with teams and power automate and we look at the chart of accounts. And also some new functionality with account review policy and intercompany transaction. Business Central has a user interface that’s perfectly suited to the modern workforce. We’ll take a look at the role center has universal search to look at the ability for users to personalize the way that they interact with business central. We’ll look at how easy it is to download into Excel and also the fact that it’s available. Anywhere.

Role Center

This is the role center in business Central. I’m logged in as a specific user. Here. In a specific role, a user can have multiple roles, but this role that I’m logged in as is a business manager that have access to a lot of the functionality in business Central. And depending on which role I use, when I log in, the role center may look different. So let’s take a look at the role center here. At the top I’ve got a basic menu. I’ve got menu items here, but I also have bookmarks. These are screens in business central that I go to on a regular basis. So for example, if I look at the chart of accounts. And it’s easy to bookmark almost any screen in business central. The icons in the upper right hand side. All I need to do is select it. It will then show up in the top of my role center on the role center. Also I have KPIs that tell me how my business is doing. You can see these KPIs right here. I can drill down on this and get more information. I’ve got tiles here that give me even more information about what’s happening. In my organization and allows me to drill down and get more details on this, I can drill down here. I’ll see all the purchase orders there they are. These are all my open. Orders. I can drill down and look at specific purchase orders if I want to. I also have quick graphs in business central that come with the system that allow me to look at various aspects of my business here. We’re looking at the top five customers and see that here I can drill down here as well. Because I’m an accountant and a controller, I also have my favorite accounts so I can look at these accounts. I can see how they’re doing, I can drill down and get detail, but one thing that people really like is the universal search that’s in business central from almost any page I can go up here and click on this. I can put in my search criteria here. And I’ll get different types of results. Here. I’ve got screens that I can go to right from here. I’ve got reports down here and I also have help and get help on business central almost anywhere I can use the search criteria here. I can also access the help from field labels on all the screens in business central. This makes it easy to learn and use the system.

Personalization

Another thing that users really like about business central is the ability to personalize all the screens in business central. For example, here’s the purchase invoice screen. If I don’t like exactly the way it’s set up, I can change it and it’s easy to do. I just go up to settings here, go to personalize. And I can add fields if I want to. I can also rearrange the way the fields show up in the screen. I can move the fields just like this. I can add fields as well here I’ve got a list of all the fields that are available. I can just add those in. And I’ve got that field there. I can take these off. I can save these, I can change them at anytime. The importance of this is it allows every user to personalize business central to make it easier to use for them and make them more effective. And business central is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office.

Excel Integration and Accessibility

I can download almost anything into Excel. For example, I’ve got a list of my vendors right here. All I need to do is go up here. I can’t open an excel that will download it into a new Excel spreadsheet. I can also edit in Excel. This is powerful. I can take the information in business central, download it into Excel, make changes and publish it back into business central. You can also share items on teams. So if I’m using teams in my organization, I can easily share. Different items I can share this list. For example I can share vendors, I can share transactions on teams. And finally what all users like about business central is that it’s available from anywhere. Anywhere I have access to the Internet, I can access my business central client. I can get all reporting, all transaction processing. Any process that I can get in the office. I can also get at home or when I’m away from home. It’s easy to do. All I need to do is log in to my business central business center also comes with a number of approval workflows. Built into the product and they’re easy to use.

Workflow Templates and Approval Matrix

There’s workflow templates that I can use, and then there’s approval matrix for a lot of the different workflows that I can use automatically out-of-the-box. Let’s take a look at it here. I’ll look for my workflow templates. I see them. Right there. These are templates that come with the system. They’re all ready to use. All I need to do is create a new workflow based on the template and I’ll do that right now. I’ll just hit new. I’m going to create a workflow from a template. And now I have a workflow that’s in my system. It’s ready to go. This particular one allows me to set up an approval process for vendors. All I need to do is activate it and then I can use it. So every time a vendor is added to the system, it goes through an approval process. Here’s an example of an approval matrix. This is built into business central and you can see I have different users on the left. I’ve got their approvers identified here and I’ve got their approval limits identified as well for sales, purchasing and requests. This makes it easy to use the workflow templates from business central and easily apply an approval matrix to those.

Teams Integration and Power Automate

Business Center also has a powerful integration into teams and also power automate. Let’s take a look at this. This is my list of customers. I have an alert set up in power automate that will tell me when a specific customer goes over their credit limit. Here’s my list of customers with a credit limit. Here. Let’s take a look at this customer here. We’ll process an invoice to go over the credit limit, and we’ll see the result. Here’s the customer card for this specific customer. From here, I can create a transaction and post it. Let’s do that. Here’s my blank sales invoice form. The typical transaction form in business Central. I’ve got header information. I’ve got the line information. Let me fill out this invoice a little further. Business Central has shown me that this customer is now over their credit limit and this is fine, but I also want this notification to go to teams so that other people can see this. So I’m going to go ahead and post this from business central. I can go directly over to teams. Here’s my teams right here. I can go down to this channel here and I can see that I have new notification generated by power automate in the teams telling me about a condition in business central. We can see that right here. But also on teams I’ve got access to business central information too. If I go up here to this tab, I’ve got customer information. These are all my customers here. I can access information about the specific customer just by scrolling down here. I’ve got different tiles similar to the role center in business Central, but I also can create new documents from here. You can see that. Here. And I can access other information about the customer. I can do this all within teams. Is looking at data directly in business central. Before we continue, if you like this type of content, the best way to support us and help others find this content is to subscribe to our channel, activate the notifications and share your thoughts in the comments section below. Thank you for helping us grow this channel. Let’s get back to the demonstration.

Chart of Accounts and Dimensionality

Let’s take a look at the chart of accounts in business central. The turn of accounts in business Central is referred to as a dimensional chart of accounts. It’s dynamic in that I don’t have to set up all the relationships between the main account and the dimension. The dimensions are merely segments. You may be used to segments and other systems. The dimensions allow you to have different values to attach to a domain account, have a full account string. This is just one example. I’ve got main account here with three dimensions. These four segments together identify a trial balance account. And I can use the dimension combinations before having to set them up ahead of time. I can also have additional dimensions here. Here I’ve got dimension 4, dimension 5. This is not part of my trial. Months, but it allows me to add additional information to transactions, so when I post it and then I go to report on it, I get even a richer results. I can use those additional dimensions to represent customer groups, particular customers, vendors, particular item groups, whatever I want to. It’s not part of my trial balance, it’s just additional information that I can enter. If I want.

Account Review Policy

Business Central also allows me to set up an account review policy so I can review specific accounts before closing to make sure that all the work is done before I issue the financial statements. So let’s take a look at that. These are three accounts that I’ve marked for review, which means I’m going to look at these accounts. I’m going to look at the transactions and make sure they’re OK. Before I go ahead and publish my financial statements. I’ve got the fixed ask to clear an account selected and go up here to related. And review the entries. These are the transactions that have not yet been reviewed, so I can look at these transactions when I’m satisfied they’ve been processed properly and that they belong in this account. I can select them as reviewed. They come off my list and I’m getting closer to the result that I want. I can look at this as well. I can review. It if it’s not reviewed, I can set it back. So this gives me control over transaction processing, particularly at the period end. I can do this during the period to make sure that the transactions that are going into a specific account are legitimate, and then I want them to stay there. This is a powerful tool to help control your trial. Balance.

Intercompany Transactions

Next, let’s take a look at intercompany transactions. Business Central allows you to have as many entities in your instance that you want does not affect the total licensing. Let’s take a look at it. Business Center allows you to set up an intercompany chart of accounts to make sure that all your entities can easily consolidate the results at the end of the period. So here’s my chart of accounts. Look at the mapping to the current company I’m logged into. You can see there’s accounts here that are not mapped. Every entity will have its own chart of accounts. But you want to be able to synchronize it so that when you do a combined statement. Or you do intercompany transactions. There’ll be no mistake about which accounts to use. Let’s take a look at an example of an intercompany transaction. This is a purchase invoice and in the detail of the invoice, I can allocate expenses to other entities in my organization. You can see the vendor here. These are the line items. Here’s the GL account in the company that I’m logged into. And for this, I’m allocating $20,000 from my home entity. I have a second line here that’s going to a different entity. If I look up the account number, it’s looking at the intercompany chart of accounts. I’m going to select the one here that I want, which is prepaid insurance. And on the receiving company side, they’ll be synchronized with their chart of accounts. All I need to do then is go and post this and I’m done. This intercompany transaction functionality is available in almost all transactions in business central payables receivables also general Ledger. So it’s very useful in a multi entity environment.

Conclusion

So I showed you a number of features in business central that will benefit controllers. We looked at the user interface, which is particularly good for the modern workforce. We looked at approval workflows that are built into the system that are easy to use. We looked at the integration to teams and how you can use power automate to give you alerts for specific activities in business. Central, we look at the dimensional chart of accounts. This is the chart of accounts in business central. It uses dimensions, it’s dynamic in nature and gives you a lot of power, not only in posting, but also in reporting. We looked at the account review functionality in business Central that gives you greater control over period and end and specific posting accounts. And with that intercompany transactions that you can use to. Easily create transactions across multiple entities.