Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud-based ERP application with users accessing the system from a variety of web browsers and devices. Users of cloud-based applications like Dynamics 365 benefit from being able to access the system from anywhere with an internet connection – even on the go from their mobile device.

Like any system, there are tips and tricks for users that make their experience a positive one. In this blog we’ll cover various performance to ensure the end-user experience in Dynamics 365 Business Central is consistent and effective.

A major benefit of implementing Microsoft business applications like Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 is the interconnectivity between applications and data. Microsoft Excel is currently one of the most popular software applications available for viewing and manipulating data.

For users of Dynamics 365 Business Central, the integration between Business Central and Microsoft Excel provides the ability to view and edit financial data from Business Central directly in Excel and import it back into Business Central.

Today, Microsoft held their Business Applications Launch event for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2021 release wave 1. During this event Microsoft walked through a few of many new capabilities coming to Dynamics 365 apps like Sales, Marketing, Business Central, and more over the course of April through October 2021. Here are the biggest announcements.

Many organizations support multiple companies and will also often have users that process data, documents, and other tasks from multiple companies within the organization. While these companies are part of the larger organization, they still need to process and track their individual financial and operations data. Dynamics 365 Business Central allows multiple environments and companies to be set up and has tools to assist users in more easily managing work across them.

For the mid-market space specifically, providers like Microsoft, SAP, and NetSuite all have cloud-based ERP applications that offer similar functionality. It can be difficult to wade through the many online resources and sales calls to determine the best solution.

To make it easier, we have put together a high level comparison between Microsoft’s premiere mid-market ERP application Dynamics 365 Business Central, and the most common competitors include NetSuite, SAP, and Epicor.

Microsoft Teams stands tall not only as an effective method for businesses to facilitate internal communications, but also as a way for them to collaborate on their work. Teams allows for seamless collaboration in a variety of applications, especially with other Microsoft applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and SharePoint.

Teams has an integration to work with Dynamics 365 applications such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing. This integration is receiving some new features as part of the 2021 Dynamics 365 Release Wave 1. They’re expected to be coming with the first part of the release wave next month.

Time sheets in Business Central are used to track resource time usage. These time sheets are most often used in tandem with jobs to track resource time to a specific job planning line.

Jobs in Business Central are a system that is used to manage projects that utilize resources and materials. Resources in Business Central can be employees or machines. Keeping track of the time used by resources is critical to ensure costs and billing can be properly calculated for each project.

As with most ERP systems, keyboard shortcuts and process tips can make the life of a day to day user so much easier. As a cloud-based application, Dynamics 365 Business Central includes many of these tips and tricks to speed up data entry and increase the efficiency of end users.

Sellers often offer multiple inventory items together as bundles, products that otherwise require some assembly prior to being shipped to the customer, or items customized to-order. These typically don’t involve extensive production processes and can be accomplished by one or a few employees.

In Dynamics 365 Business Central, these types of items are created via assembly orders which can improve process efficiency and decrease manual labor. For inventory management and selling purposes, assembly policies can be set to either assemble-to-order and assemble-to-stock.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive ERP system featuring a wide range of capabilities including manufacturing management. This diversity in functions allows Business Central to cover virtually all business processes for manufacturers.

For manufacturers that sell items assembled or otherwise produced from component parts and resources, Bills of Material (BOMs) are likely to be an integral business function. Business Central allows BOMs to seamlessly connect with all related processes because it manages not just inventory but also inventory, employee and machine resources, and sales documents.

One of the most crucial parts of managing a business is balancing supply and demand. Without proper balance, supply may be insufficient to meet demand causing a drop in customer satisfaction, or there may be too much supply thereby hurting profits. Dynamics 365 Business Central includes robust planning functionality to give guidance on purchase and production orders to ensure items are in stock and available for customers.

In Dynamics 365 Business Central, there are multiple ways to conduct manufacturing processes depending on industry and process type. In this blog we’ll go through the difference between Jobs and Manufacturing capabilities in Business Central so manufacturers have a better understanding of what the differences are, which one makes the most sense for their business, and even if it makes more sense to implement a combination of the two.

For manufacturers planning to use Dynamics 365 Business Central or those already doing so, adding a product configurator can have a major impact on manufacturing operations. Why is this? Product configurators remove the time-consuming task of manual entry of customized product orders and eliminate costly mistakes in customizes sales orders. In this blog we’ll discuss the capabilities and benefits of using a product configurator in Business Central and how to get started implementing one.

We often encounter organizations that are looking to upgrade from an existing business system and discover Dynamics 365 without truly understanding what it is. While it’s true that Dynamics 365 has an answer to almost every business process at this point and it is a major benefit to use business applications that speak to each other natively, it isn’t necessary to dive head first into Dynamics 365 and overhaul all existing processes.

Keyboard shortcuts are important tools for many ERP system users that spend their days entering data and navigating around the system. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft has included a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts to make actions and navigation easier within the application. The shortcuts discussed below are mostly the same between Windows and macOS, however if a shortcut doesn’t work on macOS, there may be an alternative shortcut listed in Microsoft’s official documentation.

Microsoft just released their plans for updates to all Dynamics 365 applications coming from April 2021 to September 2021 as part of 2021 Release Wave 1. Most of these features will be available for public preview in March with general availability in April. While delivery timelines may change, we now have a good idea of the major updates to Dynamics 365 Business Central that will be coming throughout the middle-part of the year.

Here are some of the biggest changes coming to the application that Business Central users and admins should be aware of.

Microsoft has recently released the preview of the updates coming with the Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 1 this spring. There are a variety of features coming to the Dynamics 365 ecosystem with general availability for many beginning in April and continuing to roll out through September. Early access for new features becomes available on February 1st. We have picked out some of the highlights for Dynamics 365 applications that are included in the release.

If your organization uses Dynamics 365 for Sales, you can track emails from clients, vendors, leads, opportunities, etc. right from Outlook and those emails will automatically sync up to the associated record in your Dynamics 365 CRM system.

Dynamics 365 Business Central makes use of a feature called Business Intelligence to assist end-users in data analysis and reporting. This works largely with the help of dimensions. Dimensions in Business Central are custom attributes that can be assigned to a variety of different entry records. These dimensions can then be grouped by similarities such as a region or product and with reporting via account schedules.

Dynamics GP clients have many questions surrounding the future of Microsoft ERP and where Dynamics GP fits into that picture. We’ve put together some FAQs to help organizations understand the context of Microsoft’s messaging and give them the information they need to make informed decisions about their long-term ERP solution.