Dynamics 365 Business Central vs. Dynamics GP
* Key Differences (Demo) *

Dynamics GP vs D365 Business Central Key Differences

I want to show you some key differences between Dynamics GP and Dynamics 365 Business Central. These are differences in the user interface that users really like about Dynamics 365 Business Central so let’s take a look at it.

Chart of Accounts Structure

We’re going to look at the chart of account structure and we’re going to look at the ability to read and edit in Excel information that’s in business Central we’re going to look at user personalization and also the universal search function in Dynamics GP you’ve got a fixed account string you’ve got a main account and then a number of different segments that further Define each account in your chart of accounts in Business Central you’ve got a dynamic account string it’s got a main account and then to that we add dimensions you can have up to eight dimensions in your chart of accounts you can have additional Dimensions that help you analyze data and report on data so this is a key thing in Dynamics GP you’ve got to set up all your accounts ahead of time before you can use them in business Central you can set up accounts as you need them by selecting the dimensions that you want for specific transactions this makes Dynamics 365 Business Central a lot easier to use.

Edit in Excel

Let’s take a look at the ability to edit information in business Central using Excel this is an exciting tool it makes working with the data in business Central a lot easier to do. Let’s take a look at my vendor list. These are all the vendors I have in my system right now so if I want to make a change in some of this data I can export it to Excel and then publish it back into business Central and it’s easy to do. Let me click here, and edit in Excel. When I do that it will create a new Excel spreadsheet and connect to the data in Business Central from here I can look at the data. This is my vendor Master file. Let’s scroll over and take a look at one of these fields here this is my location code field and what I want to do is identify a default location for each vendor I’m going to use the main location so all I need to do here is copy this and then paste on all the other vendors once I’m done with that I can publish it this will update the data in business Central it’ll go through all the edits that are needed to make sure that the data goes in properly and I don’t get a lot of junk in there. So another thing I can do with the edit in Excel I can also add data into my system so for example, say I’ve got a list of other vendors I want to add to my system I can copy them from a file and paste them right into this document.

Here I’ve got four new vendors I want to add to my system and all I really need is the vendor name Business Central will add a vendor number and any other defaults that are required. So I’m just going to publish this and there you go now I’ve got four new vendors in my system, the edit in Excel functionality is a great way to manage your data in Business Central and allows you to make easy changes across a large number of records and you can add new records. Let’s now take a look at how every user can personalize the screens in Business Central to meet their needs this is really easy to do I can do it right from the user interface so let’s get started.

User Personalization

Let’s take a look at a purchase invoice to personalize this all I need to do is go to my settings button in the upper right hand corner and go to personalize from here I can move fields around I can hide Fields can add new fields. To add a new field I click on plus Fields here. I’ve got all these available fields for this screen. Other things I can do is I can move fields from left to right I can also hide fields if I don’t want this field here I can just remove it and it’s just removing it from the screen view it’s not removing it from the database. The information is still there but allows me to change the way that the screen looks to move Fields all I need to do is drag and drop them. So with personalize, it can add Fields I can move fields and I can hide Fields this is a great way for each user to personalize Business Central for themselves and when a user personalizes this it just personalized for them for their use in their role and doesn’t affect anybody else once I’m done I just say done and now I’m done with personalization every time I come back to this screen the purchase invoice screen I’m going to have those modifications that I made.

Universal Search

As a user another great function that Dynamics GP does not have is the ability for Universal search. To use that I click on the Looking Glass here and I can enter the search criteria that I want so let’s do that.

I’m going to look up a chart of accounts and when I do that it brings up different types of results I’ve got screens listed here within Business Central. There are 19 in total. I’ve got reports related to my search criteria they’re listed here and then I’ve got documentation the documentation in business Central is online available at any time from any screen in any field and I also have resulted from the Microsoft app Source related to my search criteria so this gives me a lot of information and the ability to find other areas within business Central that I want to go to I don’t have to use a menu I can just use the universal search. So we looked at the chart of accounts the way it Compared with Dynamics GP, which is the static chart of accounts to business Central which is more Dynamic it allows you to add new account combinations as you need them looked at the very powerful edit and Excel functionality, which makes it easy to review and modify data within business Central we also looked at user personalization, which allows every user to make Business Central the way they want to see it and then finally we looked at the universal search functionality. The features that we looked at in this video show the differences between Dynamics GP in Dynamics 365 Business Central