Late last month Microsoft released their plans for updates to all Dynamics 365 applications, including Business Central, coming from April 2022 as part of the 2022 Wave 1 update. Most of these features will be available for public preview in March with general availability in April (although Microsoft do make it very clear that delivery timelines may change and some projected functionality may not be released). This blog explores the new or updated features that will most affect the user experience of Business Central.
We will be holding a webinar in April highlighting the features we think will be used most. Register here.
Application enhancements
The Business Central 2022 Wave 1 updates will deliver in some of the most requested areas for improvement as well as improvements in reporting and supply chain functionality.
- Blocking deletion of G/L accounts – In this release wave, Microsoft have introduced an extra safeguard against accidental deletion of G/L accounts.
- Allow the sell-to and bill-to customers to be different for jobs – With this improvement, Microsoft have added support for projects where the party that is receiving a service is different from the party that is paying the bill.
- Bank reconciliation – Building on the bank reconciliation enhancements of the last few waves, the report for the posted bank reconciliations (bank account statements) has now been improved to allow for more efficient validation and auditing.
- Change default company bank account on sales and service documents –With this update, you will now be able to set default bank accounts for companies, and for individual currencies, by choosing Default Bank Account from the list of company bank accounts on the Company Information and Currencies pages. This will give companies greater flexibility when directing customer payments.
- Check documents and journals in background –To help users easily identify potential issues with documents and journals, Microsoft has introduced a new feature that allows Business Central to validate documents and journals while you are working on them.
- Consolidate customer and vendor balances –A company that you do business with might be both a customer and a vendor. To avoid making unnecessary payments or receipts and save on transaction fees, improvements in this new wave will allow users to consolidate the customer and vendor balances.
- Fixed Quantity in product bills of materials –This development will allow users to ensure that the consumption of a component is the same, regardless of the scrap or output quantities.
- Improved and extensible Adjust Exchange Rates batch job –This feature update gives accountants additional control over how they adjust exchange rates. At the same time, it allows partners to extend and customize an exchange rate adjustment to meet the needs of specific industries or markets.
- Map to Dataverse option sets such as payment terms, freight terms, and shipping agents without code –Payment terms, shipment methods, and shipping agents can change along with the environments in which businesses operate. This update will allow businesses to quickly and cost effectively change their payment, shipping, or freight policies across their business systems.
- More control over deferrals posting –This new functionality will let users automatically defer revenues and expenses over a specified schedule and multiple accounting periods, giving accountants more control over when people post deferrals.
- New UI for entering demand forecasts to add support for variant code and other improvements –With 2022 release wave 1, users can define the right level of details in the Forecast by Location and Forecast by Variant fields in the Demand Forecast Overview page.
- Payment reconciliation journal – The Payment Reconciliation Journal has been improved with a number of new capabilities, including preview before posting and reversing the G/L register posted through the payment reconciliation journal.
- Report selection for projects –If using the Jobs module to manage projects, the Report Selections for Jobs page will let users specify which report object will be used to print job quotes.
- Set default dimensions on locations –With this improvement, users can set default dimensions for a location on the Location Card page.
- Shopify connector – This will allow for a seamless connection between the two systems.
- Support inventory pick and warehouse pick operations for jobs – This upgrade will enable internal warehouse activities for jobs to ensure an effective flow through the warehouse and to organise and maintain company inventories.
- Synchronise sales quotes and orders in both directions between Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales
- Use different G/L accounts for payable and receivables transactions – With this update, businesses will be able to post payable and receivable transactions to a different G/L account than the one that is specified on the customer or vendor posting group.
Improved integration with Microsoft 365
In Business Central 2022 release Wave 1, Microsoft is investing in stronger reporting, including better integration with Excel. They are also improving the support of collaborative business processes in Teams.
- Improvements to the Teams integration and Details page – When a link to the Business Central web client is shared to Microsoft Teams, Teams automatically displays a preview of the link as a compact card. In this release wave, Microsoft has enhanced the cards, making them both larger on the screen and allowing the user to open the full BC experience (in the browser) from the Details card.
- Outlook add-in: add attachments from emails directly to Business Central documents
Improved User Interface (Modern Clients)
The 2022 Wave 1 update includes Modern Clients improvements that focus on better usability, accessibility, performance and stability.
- Introduce copy link option in the Share menu –This improvement will allow users to copy page links from the installable app or when Business Central is embedded in other apps, such as in Microsoft Teams, thus making it easier to share data and work across different devices.
- The new PWA app replaces the Windows desktop app (UWP)
- Usability improvements to the web client.
Improved integration with Microsoft Power Platform
With Business Central 2022 release wave 1, Microsoft is improving the integration with Microsoft Dataverse and Power Platform. This includes improvements to the Power Automate and Power Apps connector.
Better reporting capabilities
With this update, Microsoft is improving the reporting capabilities of Business Central.
- New capabilities for financial reporting with account schedules
- Use Excel to design layouts for reports.
In this blog we have concentrated on those updates that will directly improve the user experience of Business Central. In addition, there are also governance and administration improvements, development enhancements and onboarding developments.
TVision is here to help
If you want to know more about Microsoft Business Central and how TVision could help you, please feel free to contact us to arrange a demo to see how it could be the perfect ERP to help you overcome your business challenges.
If you are already a TVision customer and want to know how and when these Business Central 2022 Wave 1 updates will affect your business, contact us.
