Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft’s newest SMB ERP offering. Business Central has brought full NAV functionality to a SaaS environment and sits as the future of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV roadmap, offering cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployment options as part of the wider Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution offering.

One of the most noticeable changes when using Business Central is the refreshed desktop experience. The new UI helps users accelerate their productivity, with an improved layout which maximizes screen space, allowing for easier navigation throughout the entire application. The back button is prominently displayed in the top left of the window with dynamic system commands occupying the middle section.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is now available for on-premises, hybrid and cloud deployments. Users can connect to Business Central via the Universal Windows App, a web-based client, or mobile and tablet apps available for iOS, Android and Windows devices.

A new filtering pane is available on the side of pages where lists represent the primary content, such as worksheets. This functionality allows you to easily apply multiple predefined or custom filters to your lists, which will be retained as you navigate across multiple pages.

The Tell Me feature is an evolution of the capability to search for pages or reports, helping users find what they need more quickly and with fewer clicks. The window now also includes actions from the current page which can be immediately activated as well as online help content.

This new feature improves efficiency when working with data, allowing users to copy and paste rows into the same list or similar lists within Business Central. Alternatively, users can copy and paste rows from Business Central into Microsoft Excel or, vice-versa, copying data from Excel and pasting it into Business Central.

Every business works differently and the roles within organizations have different responsibilities. In Dynamics 365 Business Central, Permission sets are customizable, allowing users to add, delete and modify them to match businesses requirements.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is available as Essentials and Premium. All users in a tenancy must have the same license type, not allowed to mix and match Essentials and Premium licenses. Business Central licenses are named user licenses and businesses must purchase a license for each user they wish to access the software. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central has following functionality:

 

Financial management

  • Basic General Ledger

Set up a company, and start posting to the general ledger, chart of accounts, general journals, VAT facilities, recurring journals, and source codes.

  • Budgets

Work with budgets in general ledger accounts.

  • Deferrals

Set up deferral templates that automate the process of deferring revenues and expenses over a predefined schedule.

  • Basic fixed assets

Keep track of fixed assets and related transactions, such as acquisitions, depreciations, write-downs, appreciations, and disposals.

  • Audit trails

The system automatically assigns audit trails and posting descriptions to every transaction. In addition, users can define reason codes to create complementary audit trails.

  • Bank account management

Create, operate, and manage multiple bank accounts to cater to your diverse business needs and across different currencies.

  • Reconciliation

Reconcile your bank statement data automatically to open bank account ledger entries end keep track of all your bank statements.

  • Dimensions

Add unlimited dimensions to any ledger for advanced transaction analyses.

  • Currencies

Manage multiple currencies throughout the system, including payables and receivables, general ledger reports, resource and inventory items, and bank accounts.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM Functionality)

  • Contacts
    Maintain an overview of your contacts, and record your contact information for all business relationships.
  • Campaigns
    Organise campaigns based on segments of your contacts that you define.
  • Opportunity management
    Keep track of sales opportunities, section your sales processes into different stages, and use this information to manage your sales opportunities.
  • Dynamics 365 for Sales integration
    Integrate with Dynamics 365 for Sales in a few easy steps to synchronise your data, including sales orders, item availability, units of measure, and currencies.

Supply Chain Management

  • Sales order management
    Manage sales orders, blanket sales orders, and sales order processes.
  • Basic receivables
    Post sales transactions in journals and manage receivables. Register customers and manage receivables by using general journals.
  • Item transfers
    Track inventory as it’s moved from one location to another, and account for the value of inventory in transit at various locations.
  • Purchase order management
    Manage purchases, blanket orders, and purchase order processes.
  • Locations
    Manage inventory in multiple locations that might represent a production plant, distribution centre, warehouse, showroom, retail outlet, or service car.

Basic warehousing
Manage items on a bin level. Pick and put away items in a bin, and move items between bins by using a report that optimises space usage and picking processes.

Manufacturing

  • Production orders
    Create and manage production orders, and post consumption and output to the production orders.
  • Version management
    Create and manage different version of the manufacturing bill of materials and routings.
  • Agile manufacturing
    Plan rush hours, make exceptions, and handle last-minute changes to your processes with multiple planning options.
  • Basic supply planning
    Plan for material requirements based on demand, with support for master production scheduling and materials requirements planning.
  • Demand forecasting
    Plan and create production and purchase orders, taking into consideration the demand forecast together with the level of available inventory and parameters of requirement planning.
  • Capacity planning
    Add capacities to the manufacturing process. Set up routings, and use these routings on production orders and in material requirements planning.
  • Machine centres
    Manage capacity on several levels: on a more detailed level for machine centres and on a consolidated level for work centres.
  • Finite loading
    Take capacity constraints into account, so that no more work is assigned to a work centre than the capacities can be expected to execute during a given time period.

 

Project Management

  • Resources
    Register and sell resources, combine related resources into one resource group, or track individual resources.
  • Estimates
    Monitor resource usage, and get a complete overview of your capacity for each resource, with information about availability and planned costs on orders and quotations.
  • Jobs
    Keep track of usage on jobs and data for invoicing the customer. Manage both fixed-price jobs and time-and-materials jobs.
  • Time sheets
    Time sheets are a simple and flexible solution for time registration with manager approval, and they integrate with Service, Jobs, and Basic Resources.

Service Order Management

  • Service orders
    Register your after-sales issues, including service requests, services due, service orders, and repair requests.
  • Service price management
    Set up, maintain, and monitor your service prices.
  • Service item management
    Record and keep track of all your service items, including contract information, component management, and BOM reference and warranty information.
  • Service contract management
    Record details on service levels, response times, and discount levels, and also on the service history of each contract, including used service items and parts and labour hours.
  • Planning
    Assign personnel to work orders, and log details such as work order handling and work order status.
  • Dispatching
    Manage service personnel and field technician information, and filter according to availability, skills, and stock items.

Human Resources

  • Employees
    Group and track employee information, and organise employee data according to different types of information, such as experience, skills, education, training, and union membership.
  • Expense management
    Post expenses against employee cards to track and reimburse their expenses.

Other Features

  • Multiple languages
    Switch languages on the client in real time, provided that the desired language is available.
  • Reason codes
    Define a set of reason codes that can be assigned to individual transactions throughout the system, providing user-defined audit trails.
  • Extended text
    Set up an unlimited number of lines to describe inventory items, resources, and general ledger accounts.
  • Intrastat reporting
    Automatically retrieve the necessary data to report Intrastat information to statistics authorities. Local customs authorities can tell you whether your company is obligated to file such a report.
  • Outlook integration
    Synchronise your to-do items and your contacts with your meetings, tasks, and contacts in Outlook.

 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central will continue in the place of Dynamics NAV in the Microsoft roadmap, with the name change providing more consistency across the suite of Dynamics 365 applications.