Did you know TVision have created a suite of add-ons and extensions aimed at improving the Business Central user experience? These solutions are mainly focussed on two key areas of common need for our users: firstly, helping move data in and out of Business Central more efficiently and, secondly, assisting with repetitive processes that many finance functions carry out on a regular basis.
To find out more about these TVision-created solutions and discover how they could be beneficial to your business, watch our 30-minute on-demand webinar.
During the webinar, we give you:
- An overview of all the add-ons and extensions developed by TVision.
- A demo of some of our most popular solutions, including External Billing, Mandatory Fields and Credit Control Notepad. This demo highlights the functionality available, how they would be valuable to your business, and how they integrate with Business Central.
- Practical details about the add-ons and extensions and next steps to access them.
Transcript
2:23
Good afternoon everybody and welcome to today’s webinar.
2:28
My name is Danusia Jolliffe and I’m the Customer Service and Marketing Director here at TVision. And I am alongside Ian, as always, doing your demo and details and passing on all the information. So just a few housekeeping points. Please do, as always, pop questions in the chat or in the question box, and I’ll be monitoring those as I go along. So, if you can see me typing, I’ll be replying to a few of you. Sometimes people like a private reply. At the end of the webinar, we can also take questions at the end or throughout, and it will be available on demand once it’s been posted on the website. So, Ian over to you.
3:06
OK, so a few things we’re going through today, we’re going through some of the extensions that we offer, there you can see some of what I’m going to be speaking about. But let me get straight into the demo. Let’s see what we have.
3:23
So first up, when I start talking about these extensions, anybody who can log into the help desk portal.
3:31
You should see something, it looks like a book, that’s solutions, and on that page, you should see TVision add-ons.
3:39
You can get an overview of any of the add-ons that I’m going to speak about today.
3:44
So if we look at data solutions, for example, and I talk about the Excel import to GL.
3:50
You can click through on that. There’s full documentation on how it works, what it can do, what it can’t do, if it’s something of interest to you.
4:00
I’m going to be using my demo company today.
4:02
When we do talk about these extensions, if you’re on Business Central SaaS, you can always go to search, and you can search for extension management, you just have to type in the first few letters.
4:18
You can see what extensions you actually have installed on your system.
4:24
Most of them are installed by Microsoft by default, just to make Business Central work.
4:29
But you will notice that there are a few published by TVision Technology. So, these are all the ones that I have installed on my demo system today. Usually, I don’t install any.
4:42
I show you a brand new environment, and you’ll see, I’m going to speak about mandatory fields.
4:49
I’ll be demoing that, the GL importing from an Excel spreadsheet, BACS, reports, currency on general ledgers, and there’s this Excel import again. It’s on there twice.
5:03
But if you look, you’ll see there’s version numbers – this is an old version, that’s the newer version.
5:08
But you’ll see this one has been uninstalled. This is the one that’s currently active.
5:12
So, you always have an overview of all the extensions that are installed on your system, you’re in control.
5:20
Right. So, what are extensions? They just basically add functionality to Business Central. Something that’s not there by default, we’ve written some code that puts it there and makes it available for you.
5:32
There are quite a few I think, you saw there are about 14 or 15 available there. On their documentation page.
5:39
One you might have seen was, BACS file exports. So, by default Business Central, it doesn’t do BACS – that’s a uniquely UK thing.
5:50
I think the UK, South Africa and I think Australia also do BACS files. The rest of the world, they do their bank transfers in a different way.
5:58
So, we have created standard files for all the major banks in the UK. To export a BACS file, that you can send to them to pay your vendors. If that’s something you’re interested in,
6:11
give us a shout. We’ve probably got one for your bank.
6:15
Another one that’s incredibly popular, is Credit Control Notepad. And I do know, about this time last year, we spoke about extensions, and I showed Credit Control Notepad, so I’m not showing that one again. So that one is available on demand on the website if anyone wants to see anything further about it, or you know, watch it from last year. So, it’s available. Yeah, and that’s a great tool if you have a busy Credit Control department, and you’re trying to keep track of who’s promised, and what you can do now within that tool. Another one I think you saw that I’ve got installed on this machine is Currency on General Ledger Entries.
6:49
So, by default, when you post something, it doesn’t matter which currency you’re posting in, everything in your general ledger is recorded in your local currency.
7:00
It may well be that you’ve got an additional reporting currency, in which case it will be recorded in that currency as well.
7:08
But we have created an extension that for every transaction, no matter which currency it’s posted in, we can record that on your general ledger. Which is very useful when you’re trying to do reconciliations or explain to an auditor where did this money come from?
7:23
It’s a very simple extension if we go and have a look at our chart of accounts.
7:29
And I did post one transaction in US dollars earlier.
7:34
If I scroll down to the correct count, or there you go, my inventory accounts. If we drill in on these transactions.
7:44
And hopefully when it loads, I know that one of these 975s are recorded in US dollars.
7:52
If we scroll across, you’ll see that this extension has added some extra columns.
7:57
I have the original currency that the transaction was posted in. The amount in the original currency and the exchange rate that was used to get this so that $1502 found its way into the general ledger as £975. Again, very angry, doing your reconciliations, explaining questions to auditors, etcetera.
8:24
Other ones we have, Retros. We call it retros, you might have a different name, allowances, incentive rebates, something like that.
8:36
This way, you have perhaps one of your suppliers, if you order enough product this month in total, then at the end of the month, they’ll give you some special discount or cash back allowance or levels of free products or some kind of incentive.
8:52
Or maybe the other way around, that you have an agreement with your customers that if they buy enough for this type of product, at the end of the quarter, you will give them something back as an allowance or a rebate.
9:07
And we have a solution where you can track that both for your purchases and for your sales – splitting up items by category. What’s the break points when you start getting things, and you can start recording that and tracking that so that you can make good on those promises or collect on those promises if they’d been made to you.
9:22
Had a question in, so do the extensions get updated with additional features or is it only updates to maintain functionality with the wave updates? Yep, so that’s a very good question. So, when waves happen, that Microsoft’s changing the base functionality, we will check all of our extensions, and make sure that they still work.
9:48
If they do need a tweak, we’ll make those tweaks and make them available to everyone.
9:55
And occasionally, we do come up with a new feature for those extensions. Credit Control Notepad, when it was first released, it didn’t have the ability to record a promised payment from one of your customers.
10:09
We’ve added that functionality a year or two ago and made that available to everyone. And that’s the same with all of our extensions. If we do add some new functionality – we’ll make it available to everyone.
10:25
OK, so yeah, the Retros exist, and then our, one of our most popular ones is importing journals from an Excel spreadsheet, and it’s quite amazing, everyone still likes to do this because we like working in Excel. Everyone understands how Excel works.
10:46
Now, on this system, I have created a very simple journal.
10:53
I’ve put it in an Excel spreadsheet. There’s not much to this.
11:03
So, this is just a little six-line journal.
11:06
And a few columns. I given them column headings. They match the headings that I would see within Business Central.
11:14
And I do you know that this journal balances, everything adds up to zero, so I’m pretty confident it should be able to post.
11:24
Now, this journal, I can type it by hand. This can be something I have on a template and copy and paste from elsewhere. I could be using formulas to work out what these numbers are.
11:34
I could be importing these numbers from a third-party system and using the journals as a way of importing the data into BC. So, it works for any of those kinds of scenarios.
11:46
But wherever our journal has come from, that was just kind of a simple month end redistributing costs type of journal.
11:56
If I go now on this system to my general journal, we’ll open that page.
12:08
And hopefully we should be in a batch called Ian, there we go. It’s an empty journal.
12:13
And having this extension, it gives us this Import from Excel button.
12:18
This button is a lot simpler than using the Edit in Excel button over here.
12:21
Using this button, it gives me dozens and dozens and dozens of columns, and it can get a little confusing. You saw that spreadsheet that I created. It just had those few columns that I actually needed.
12:38
And it doesn’t matter what order those columns were saved in on my spreadsheet. And it doesn’t matter what order the columns are shown on my screen here, because we have what we call the mapping fields in-between.
12:50
So, I’m going to import that journal from Excel.
12:53
It simply asks me, which file do I want to use? I can drag and drop, or I can browse for the file.
13:01
It was this demo journal over here. Let’s open that one up.
13:06
It’s found sheet one has the information. There’s a heading, row, and I’m not sure if this mapping field is going to work.
13:17
So, I’m going to create a new mapping field.
13:23
From scratch. This is how easy it is. I’ll call it Ian Demo.
13:29
Please, if you do things like this, give them more meaningful names. I’ll just call that one Ian.
13:37
And I will say, OK. Now the system has checked, and it’s found the columns, it’s trying to match everything, and it’s going to show me what it’s managed to do.
13:47
Account name, it couldn’t match that. I’m not so fussed about the account name, so I’m going to leave that blank.
13:55
Department code. It found that, was the shortcut to dimension one code.
14:01
And if any of these, I couldn’t find the mapping, I have the ability to manually change these things myself.
14:08
I’m very happy that the system found everything for me.
14:12
So I’ll just say it OK.
14:14
Do I want to save that? Yes.
14:17
Hasn’t found any errors, I can import my journal.
14:21
There’s all six lines imported ready for me to post.
14:26
It’s really simple. It’s really easy.
14:28
I can now just follow my normal procedures. One thing you’re not seeing are those amounts. There they are – the amounts are all there and the total balance is zero.
14:35
So it’s brought everything through.
14:41
It’s really easy, really effective – finance people like that. If it’s something you’re interested in.
14:46
Again, please do let us know.
14:50
What else do we have?
14:51
Ah, a nice one which I’ve never shown before, is called Mandatory Fields.
14:56
So, what quite often happens within Business Central, there are a lot of fields that are mandatory. When you create an item, posting groups are mandatory so that the system knows how to post them. When you create a customer, again, posting groups.
15:14
Things like that, are mandatory. But they are, oh dear, I don’t know what my systems doing. Some fields are not mandatory according to Business Central and you might want them to be mandatory. So, I’ve come up with a little scenario.
15:32
On my items, I’ve got some people who are being naughty and they’re supposed to put in the gross weight of an item, but for quite a few of the items they’re not doing that.
15:44
I hope, I’m in the right company here.
15:48
I’m in a production environment and I shouldn’t be.
15:51
Let me move back to the system we should be on.
16:01
That’s because I didn’t do my updates yesterday when I was supposed to.
16:06
So, we’ve got this scenario. They’re not putting in the gross weights, and that means when I print my delivery notes, it’s not printing the correct weight and my guys in logistics they’re sending the wrong size trucks, which means it’s costing me money now to getting extra trucks, etcetera.
16:22
I really need to enforce this, that items must have a gross weight.
16:30
This could be on my vendors, or my customers. Maybe I really need to have a post code, so I know where trucks are going to be going to do my planning.
16:35
Or things like that.
16:40
So, I have created an item, Ian’s Item. Again, please use more creative names that I use in my demos.
16:50
And if we just have a look at the details for this item, you will notice that I have not entered a gross weight.
16:58
Now, this extension for Mandatory Fields, every time I create a new item, it always creates it as blocked, so it cannot be used.
17:07
And we can put rules on that say what happens when I try to unblock.
17:12
Now at the moment, I don’t have any rules, it just lets me unblock. Now let me re block that, and let’s add some rules and see what happens.
17:22
If I just go search for a mandatory fields template list.
17:31
And at the moment I do not have any rules at all, I’m going to apply some new rules.
17:39
Again, you’d give them a code.
17:42
With a meaningful description.
17:46
Which table do you want to put these restrictions on? You can put the restrictions on your items, your customers, your vendors, your sales documents, your purchased documents.
17:58
And that can be invoices, orders, quotes, credit memos. So, these are all the tables where we can start putting on these restrictions. Now, I happen to know I want to put mine one the item table, which is Table 27.
18:14
And I can even filter on my items and say, only apply this to certain types of items. I can say where the type of item is finished goods, et cetera.
18:26
I’m not going to do that. I’m going to apply this to every single item on my system.
18:32
So, I’m going to apply it to the Item Number, where the Item Number equals absolutely anything.
18:38
Apply this rule.
18:40
I want to make sure that the field for the gross weight, now, I can search for this, I can scroll down and browse for it. I happen to know that it’s field number 41 because I did this earlier today.
18:54
Um, I want to say the gross weight must have some kind of value. So, I will leave this blank.
19:01
If I want to, I can put in a restriction here and say…
19:04
It must equal 200 or 650 or something, and as soon as I click off that line and come back, the system has gone through … and had found 39 of my products are violating this rule.
19:18
I can drill down. I can go fix those products.
19:22
Those are ones that already exist and have been released.
19:27
What I can do, I can go back to my item now. If I try to release this item and make it available for purchasing and sales.
19:36
It lets me do it.
19:38
I probably didn’t save my work, I should have. It would pop up an error message and tell me no you must enter a gross weight.
19:47
I’m sorry. I’m not going to do the demo again.
19:50
But that’s basically the idea of what it should do, the joys of doing things live. It just makes it impossible to release that item.
19:59
And you can do the same thing with your customers and vendors, making it possible to raise documents for them unless a certain field is completed. I’ve has a question about the mandatory fields for fixed assets.
20:13
How can I make the switch mandatory to exclude from the local GAAP posts?
20:17
OK, so the mandatory fields, we don’t have that set for fixed assets yet. But if people start asking questions about it, then it’s something that Jason who leads the team on these extensions.
20:34
He would look at to make it available for other areas of the system, fixed assets if people are interested. And that’s worth mentioning, actually, all of these have been designed as a specific request that we’ve had come in and not just one person, multiple people, so we’re trying to solve that for multiple clients. So, as Ian says, if multiple people ask, then we will develop it. But we can get back to you on that question in detail as well. Thank you.
21:02
Just mentioning that, there are a couple of things coming down the line when I was speaking to Jason, foreign exchange rates… So quite a few of you, you’re doing transactions in foreign currencies every month, you have to type in the exchange rates.
21:18
Business Central does have the ability to import those automatically if you have a reliable data source.
21:26
Some of you have got that setup. But the data source that you’re using is an American, um data source, which means it’s maybe not accurate for UK circumstances, or you can get one from your bank, but then you have to pay a subscription, and those can be quite expensive.
21:45
So, the one Jason has just come up with, he’s busy testing at the moment. It’s going to be available very soon, is going to HMRC.
21:53
Going to the website and pulling the exchange rates that they say are the official exchange rates for recording transactions.
22:04
And that can be run as a job to automatically, once a month, update all your exchange rates with the HMRC, saying this is the current exchange rate.
22:14
And again, this is something that plenty of people have asked for, they’ve asked for a Bank of England exchange rate or a HMRC exchange rate. We’ve found HMRC is one that we can do.
22:26
So, we’ve created it. And that’s going to be available in the next few weeks.
22:31
For you, if you want it. Another one that Jason’s team are working on is Cost Modelling.
22:37
This is where, for every item, especially if you’re a business that buys items, puts them in a warehouse and then sells them.
22:46
For any item you can put in, this is how much the supplier charges.
22:49
These are all the additional charges that come.
22:53
Fixed fees or percentages, crate, shipping, insurance, et cetera.
22:59
This is how much it costs me to get it into my warehouse.
23:03
And then, you can say, these are the costs for me to distribute this item: shipping, dunnage, et cetera.
23:10
You can say, this is the margin that I want. I want a 33% margin. It will tell you, this is price you need to call the selling price of this item.
23:19
And you can do that for all of your inventory, and they’re busy putting that together, testing that at the moment as well.
23:25
If that’s something that interests you please, to let us know. We can arrange a demo as soon as that is ready.
23:33
Other ones that exist that are really interesting, is a divisional dimension, where you can force your general ledger to balance by a certain dimension.
23:42
So, you can use it as if you had separate internal companies within one company.
23:50
We have an external billing tool, which allows you to import billing information, invoices, et cetera on a third-party solution and bring them into Business Central and record your billing of customers there.
23:58
We’ve got intercompany data sync. Now, that’s an interesting one. You can change some data.
24:13
A GL chart of accounts, for instance, on one company and propagate back through to all of your other companies.
24:20
And that one’s so useful that Microsoft have actually started offering a very similar solution that does a lot of what our intercompany data sync does.
24:28
So, these things grow, obviously on that one, thousands of people have escalated for Microsoft to be interested.
24:36
We’ve got a GL reconciliation extension where you can reconcile GL accounts, not just your creditors and debtors, you can reconcile a loan account or something for example.
24:46
And a tick off entries to reconcile ready for audits.
24:52
All of these extensions, they’re pretty standard, they’re pretty quick for us to install, and if any of them interest you, by all means go and read the documentation.
25:03
You can ask for a demo, and you can ask us to install them for you.
25:08
Danusia. Yes, we’ve just had one more question talking about the Excel upload. Someone’s asked, how can you fix a certain layout, which they mostly used to avoid having to select it each time, so almost making it the default.
25:20
OK, so, that one that I created, if I went into my general journals again, because I’ve created it, it will be there for me to use next time. It’s an option. It’s an option.
25:32
So, you can have your month and batch with a good descriptive name. I can just select it. My monthly fixed asset accruals.
25:45
I can go select that, whichever one it happens to be. I can save a draft layout.
25:53
That’s it for the moment.
25:59
So yeah, as Ian has mentioned, there’s the articles within Freshdesk that you can go and view. We’ve got the information also on our website under the Business Central add-ons section. So, if you do require any more information, please get in touch, or have a look at the website and see what interests you the most. As always, thank you everyone for attending today, and thank you Ian for demoing some of those TVision extensions.
26:26
Bye.
