For additional information please see our Add-ons page for more. Each product is described with the benefits to you and your clients outlined.

Transcript

Introduction

OK, well, thank you, everyone, for attending today’s webinar about TVision Add-ons. Just before we start the webinar, just a few housekeeping rules. All attendees will be muted and will remain for the whole webinar. Please use the question box to ask any questions related to the topic. All questions will be answered after the demo.

If we run out of time or if your question requires a longer answer, the question will be answered offline directly. Please use the chat box for questions related to the webinar such as if you can’t hear the audio or if the presenter’s going too fast. Please note, the link to view the webinar recording will be sent to all attendees after the demo.

This is our monthly webinar on Key Areas of Nav and Business Central, and you can sign up for as many as you like on our website. I’ll show you a list of upcoming webinars at the end of this session. Also, send out regular e-mails to register for the next one.

My name is Tiziana, also known as Deetz, and I’ll be facilitating the demo today. I’m an Account Manager here at TVision of working for 2.5 years. My background is 18 years in sales, marketing and partner management.

Ian will be doing the demo today, and he’s a Support Consultant here at TVision. Ian has been working for TVision for four years, and has been using NAV and Business Central since 2000.

So, today’s webinar is about TVision add-ons. We created these add-ons to assess our clients with repetitive processes that many finance functions carry out regularly. We will be talking to you about the most popular add-ons and how they could benefit your business.

Ian will be focusing on the most popular add-ons and highlighting their functionality. How are they going to be valuable to your business and how they integrate with Business Central?

So, these are the five top things we’re going to show you today about TVision Add-ons. First thing we’d like to discuss how we can help you improve your efficiency.

GL Excel/Import Journal. So, this is one of the most popular because it allows finance users to create Journal entries in Business Central from Excel. This is one of the add-ons that Ian will be demoing.

Intercompany synchronisation. When an organisation has multiple companies in Business Central, ensuring data integrity between companies is time-consuming and error-prone. This add-on automatically copies and synchronizes data from one company into another company or even multiple companies. This removes the need to manually re-enter, copy enter or spend time ensuring you’re working off the same data.

Credit Control Notepad. This helps to enhance your existing credit control processes. In particular, it shows another way to look at customers from an aged debt point of view. The credit controller can have a specialized role centre dashboard view, with the required task, status, and analysis, all on the welcome screen. It enables you to put in notes and assign tasks against specific invoices or customer. This means that you will know exactly which of your team is chasing which client about what the action that should be taken and whose responsibility it is.

Next slide, please.

Reporting and Corporate Policy Requirements. GL reconciliation can be helpful if the finance team are required to have the reconciliation process for the general ledger. This functionality is standard in Business Central, but anyone still using NAV find this add-on useful. Embedding this process in NAV removes the reliance on keeping the Excel files and mistakenly over writing while not viewing the latest version. This add-on has dedicated worksheets to enable users to carry out the reconciliation. From an auditing perspective this helps you see where each GL reconciliation post is recorded for auditing reasons. Reversing the reconciliation is possible and this reversal would be recorded for auditing purposes.

Currency on G/L entries. So, this add-on helps clients by adding information regarding the source currency exchange rate of the transaction. This is an alternative way of holding currencies outside of setting currency rates in the system. Standard Business Central only recalls the amount in base currency on the general ledger entries. This add-on will display additional information to allow reporting and reconciliation for journals posted in multi currencies. It is possible to report on this, and it is useful as an alternative means to viewing certain currency transactions. It is worth noting that this add-on applies to journals only.

OK, divisional dimensions: If you’ve got multiple companies and make sure the general ledger entry is balanced by one of the Global Dimensions, this is a must have add-on. Your divisions or departments may require their own P&L, balance sheet, or other finance reports, and this tool will ensure that you always balance and are accurate in your chart of accounts. Most important, it ensures accuracy in your finance reporting. We would advise you to implement this add-on at the start of the company’s financial year or at the beginning of the project.

Table dimensions. This is a feature that automatically creates a dimension value for key records in the system, and then associates them together. These include jobs, customers, vendors, items, resources, etc. You can go automatically creates and set up a task, which means there is less reliance on a specific team have to do this. This is particularly useful for jobs resourcing and distribution company. So, it is also useful when there are internal reports, which reports on specific dimensions. We have found it’s good to have a conversation about this during the implementation phase to understand your internal reporting requirements. Just to also mention, this is a default in Bevica, our Drinks Solution.

Next slide please.

Must Haves! BACS Export file allows the use of the payment file to be used in several GB banks and is recommended for companies that make many payments. So, if you need to make multiple payments, it is far quicker using the BACS Export file than doing the process manually. It’s a simple and faster way of creating a payment file, saving your finance team a considerable amount of time in processing the payment within your bank portal. For example, the purchase ledger journal generates the payments required. This information is then used to make the multiple payments to banks.

Document Layouts. While many reports and customer facing document templates come as standard, we have developed and customize a number of reports. Our document template packs include everything a customer may need, and we can develop more on request.

Banks import statement. We have this as an additional set up, not as an actual add-on with a subscription but many of our clients have this set up.

Next slide, please.

Practical details about the add-ons. All of them are straightforward to implement and can be purchased and set up quickly for a reasonable additional fee, for NAV, Business Central on premise and Business Central SaaS clients. If you would like more information about this, please do contact me after the webinar.

How to learn more. If you would like to know more about anything you see today, you can view a full list of our add-ons with a description and how it can benefit your business on our website.

The poll

OK, before the demo, and we would like to have a quick poll just to understand which processes would benefit your business.

You can choose more than one answer. So, I’m going to launch a poll now, so if you wouldn’t mind filling in your answers.

Hopefully you can see that, so create journal entries in Business Central from Excel, automatically synchronizing data to multiple companies, Credit control process, run multiple companies in one Business Central Company, and making multiple or single bank payments.

Okay we have an answer from everyone that’s interesting. Looks like running multiple companies in one company and making multiple payments. Oh, and also, enhancing the credit control process.

Thank you very much for taking part in the poll, just close that, and I will hand over to Ian. 

The demo

OK, hi, guys, I do apologize to anyone who was watching live for the technical hitch we’ve just yet. But we’re picking up now, and we’re going to record the demo.

So, what you’re seeing in front of you is the default Business Central SaaS screen, and hosted by Microsoft, so it’s not a fake screen. And this is what it looks like out of the box. But you can still install extensions.

So, let’s just have a quick look and see what extensions I’ve installed on this system. So, I click on my setup and in extensions, and let’s have a look at my extensions, and on this system, you’ll notice: there’s a lot of Microsoft extensions here, that’s your base application, integration with e-mail, some of the artificial intelligence stuff down here, but you’ll also see there are a few TVision Technology extensions that I did.

Yeah, Credit Control Notepad, I’m going to show you just now. The Excel Input to GL that Deetz promised I would show you, and for the BACS File export I’ve chosen HSBC. I’ve installed this one then there’s also this distribution costs managements thing here which is not installed.

So, basically, I just downloaded the source file already. And while I’m doing the demo, just to show you how easy this is, I’m just going to click on this. I’m going to say, next, I’m going to return the licence, and I’m going to install. So, this add-on is installing itself while we’re actually doing this demo, I’m going to go back out to my home screen and once I’m on my home screen, you can see this is my default screen but I’ve installed that Credit Control Notepad.

I haven’t done any of the setup that goes with credit control notepad yet. So, let me log on as if I was a credit controller. So, as part of the extension, you get a new Role Centre which I’m going to use. And for those of you who’ve watched these presentations in the past, it was in the middle of last year, June, July, and I think, when we did a full presentation on credit control notepad. So, I’m not going to go into too much detail on how to use it. Here, you can always go back and look at that, but we get this new role centre which is geared around credit controller. It’s not going to do much for me, because there’s still this set up that needs to happen.

But this one is a relatively easy setup to do. I need credit controller notepad setup. I need to click here, and once I go in, and there’s only four options I need today. It gives me some default values. I can choose am I happy with these default values, I think I’m going to turn on recording of interactions, and I’m going to leave that at seven days, and I’m happy to use these defaults here.

Now that setup is completed, the other setup is who are the credit controllers on my system, Basically I click on here, I get to populate list with who are my credit controllers who can use this functionality. On this system, I am the only user. So, I’m going to choose myself. I need to choose which salesperson I’m associated with and what’s my default aging period. 30 days, I could make that one month. If I use calendar months. But I’ve leave it at 30 days. I’m quite happy with that and that is the setup finished.

If you had a list of 5 or 6 credit controllers, you’d have to put each one in, but that’s pretty much this set up done. What would come next would be some training on how to use the functionality that’s involved here. And, as I said, we did do the demo June last year. I think it was, you can go, and you can look, and you can look through that.

But if we installed it for you, there would be a couple of hours training with your credit control team, so they can actually use this functionality, record interactions, record conversations that you’re having with your customers, promises of payment that they make, how to record those, and have to assign tasks to people in your credit control team.

So, when Deetz says these are all easy and quick to install, she wasn’t joking. I mean, this took me about 15 minutes to do the initial installation and 10 minutes to do this setup.

The bulk of the time will be on training users how to actually use this functionality. So, that’s a credit control notepad and that’s probably one of our more popular add-ons from the poll. When we asked it was one of the more popular answers that you guys gave, something that would add value to your business. So, it’s still a popular option.

What I also had was a HSBC Bank Export. Now, anybody who’s used the BACS file export, you know how simple this. So basically, you go to your payments journals. And from within a payment journal, you follow your normal processes to suggest vendor payments. Whatever it might be that you do internally, you get your list of payments.

I’ve just made a journal here with one vendor, and pretty much I hit the bank button and I hit export. And there’s nothing to export? And the reason that there’s nothing to export is because there’s still a little bit of setup that needs to be done.

So, one of those pieces of setup is on the bank accounts themselves. And if we get to my bank accounts, and this is payment from my checking account. So, within this Bank’s set up screen, I need to tell the system when I’m exporting a payment, I am using the HSBC format, which has been installed as part of the extension. And apart from that, I also need to go to my vendors, and I need to set up their bank accounts, which hasn’t been set up for this vendor, which is why it gave me the message, there’s nothing to export.

So, on this one, it’s very quick to install. It’s very quick to do the setup for the bank account to use the HSBC Format. But you need to be going through your vendors and making sure that you have their bank account details loaded.

So that when they come through here, it can be pulled in and exported as part of the file. So, obviously, there’s a lot more time going to set up for this one. But then, once the setup is done, your end users need very little training. It’s pretty much, click on bank, click on Export, save the file, give it to the guy who interfaces with the bank. So, it’s 20, 30 minutes of training for the end user, but a little bit more time goes into that setup configuration.

The, the final one, which I installed was the GL import. Deetz mentioned this is probably one of the most popular add-ons. And it comes with a very interesting question, as well. So, if I go to my general journals. And why not within a general journal.

And, here’s an empty general journal. And you said to me, But Ian why would we need a tool to import from Excel when Business Central has a tool to edit in Excel, which I’ve shown you before in previous demos.

And that is a fantastic question. What if you have a situation where you have a separate sales system or a separate purchasing system?

And, at the end of the day, you can download from it, a CSV file or an Excel file of these are all the transactions that are posted in your sales system or in your purchasing system. That cannot access the Edit in Excel button here but it can create an Excel file. And once you’ve got an Excel file, you could come along and say, Well, it would be nice to import that Excel file into Business Central, so that I can post it, put it into NAV for that matter.

What if, another scenario which I’ve experienced before, you’re working for a large company and at the entrance to your building, there’s a lady who answers the door and answers the telephone. She doesn’t access NAV, she doesn’t access Business Central. But part of her job is to dish out the stationery.

And at the end of every week or every month, she prepares a file to re-allocate the stationery, to the different departments that took it. She can prepare an Excel spreadsheet, but she can’t use this Edit in Excel function because she has no access to my Business Central system, but she can send me the file. And this is what I’m going to pretend I haven’t done, on this system.

So, in the background somewhere, I have an Excel spreadsheet that my lady in reception has prepared for me and as quickly as it opens, just so you can see what it looks like. OK, now my Excel is going to be slow after the earlier problems. So, it’s a very simple spreadsheet, and my receptionist, she’s just filled in the amount of stationery she’s dished out and how much it’s gone to each individual department. She saves this file, and she sends it to me. It’s very simple. There aren’t any codes on this file.

Well, let’s assume. She sent it through to me. I can then come into my General Journal, and in the process, I’ve got a button to import from Excel. Let’s see which Excel file do I want to import, pretty straightforward. I can choose a file, and I choose that exact file we were just looking at, and which journals do I want to put it in, my general monthly journal and a mapping code. Now, let’s pretend I don’t have any mapping codes set up.

I’m going to create a new from scratch. I’m going to call it my monthly mapping file. I’ll just give a quick description, OK? And I say, OK, OK.

And that’s looked at my Excel spreadsheet, and it says, oh, it found two columns. Would you like me to try map them automatically. Yes. Please.

And it shows me what it’s come up with. So, in the Excel spreadsheet, it found these columns. It’s mapped them to these columns in my journal. It found this column department, it’s not quite sure what to do with it. So, I can choose which one of my fields I want to map it to and in here somewhere should be a department code. There it is. So, because it didn’t use the word department code, it didn’t know to map it to the code. But I’ve done that mapping. I said, OK. It saves the mapping. So, next time, it will remember, do I want to import? Yes please.

And it has created my journal with exactly the lines the receptionist gave me, and you’ll notice, I’ve got a lot more columns here that my receptionist didn’t have.

That import journal, it doesn’t care my columns are in a different order. That Excel Spreadsheet had amount, and then departments and then I’m out. That mapping, rearranges the columns, it handles all of this for us. So, this is a fantastic tool.

If you’ve got somebody who gives you a file that you want to import. It could be your external accountants who want to pull some adjustments at year-end. They can manually set up a journal in Excel, send it through to you and say please close this. And instead of you retyping it, you could use your Import from Excel, and import the journal that they would like you to post.

One of the things I was planning to do, with all our hiccups, it slipped my memory, I was going to, oh, I did start re-installing that, distribution costs. So, if I go and have a look at my Extension Management screen.

Extensions, and if I could spell properly, it would help. Extension Management. And, if we have a look at our extensions, we can see. it is now installed. If I manage, and I look at my deployment status, it will even confirm that it’s installed.

So, in the time that I’ve been speaking, which is about 10 minutes, this Distribution Cost management has installed itself. That’s how quick it is. And, that is a little bit of setup that goes with this, and this is quite interesting. This is a brand-new extension that we released pretty much a week ago, so Deetz isn’t even aware of this one yet. It will be making its way to our website very soon.

But, basically, it allows you to set up shipping costs and distribution costs to charge your customers, based on which haulier you use or which distribution agents you use to deliver which postcodes that customer is living in and, you can set rates for if it’s this quantity, the distribution costs are so much. If it’s that quantity and that can be done by volume or quantity whichever it is. There is obviously a bit of setup that goes with this one.

Distribution costs set up, where you have to. This one is based on quantity, I could choose to do by volume or by weight. I can set up my shipping agents and my item charges by region. And again, that’s how quick it is to install the setup, we can help you with the setup.

We provide the training, and then you can carry on from there. You can train other users. And you can tweak that set up yourself, because no, we don’t just do it for you. We help you do it yourself so that you can carry on in future if you need to make changes Now, because they’re not live. I don’t have any live questions coming through. But Deetz has prepared to pretend questions. What are the questions?

Questions

The questions are, how often do the add-ons get updated by TVision if you have an automatic Wave updates with Business Central SaaS? So that’s an excellent question, Deetz. Sf you’re on prem or on NAV, if you don’t need to update anything. It’s a pretty much static. With Business Central SaaS, every six months your system automatically updates. Microsoft do that for you as part of your subscription.

A few months before that goes live, Microsoft give us a preview where we upload all of our extensions, and we test them extensively to make sure that they do still work, so that when it’s applied to your system, we guarantee that the extension will still work for you.

And obviously, because you’re paying monthly for your extensions, we provide support for them, so if there is any glitch at all that you discover, once it has gone live, something we didn’t test, then we cover the support for that. And we will fix it for free as part with that support agreement.

What was the second question?

How long does it normally take to set up and train someone for the intercompany synchronization, add-on?

OK, intercompany synchronization, that is a little bit complicated. And that is where, you can choose, if I set up, or change, or delete, or modify a general ledger in accounting company A, all my other companies, B C, D, and E, that propagates through so that they stay exactly the same. And if I set up a new vendor in company C, that vendor get completed around, well, maybe a customer or a dimension, you can choose which ones move around.

So, there is a little bit of training that goes with that. There’s a bit of setup that goes with it, as well. And I think, for the intercompany synchronization, we quote about seven hours for the setup and training, which as you can see, it’s a little bit more intense than the GL import. It’s a lot more intense than the BACS export.

It’s similar, I suppose, to the credit control notepad, but I think that is probably one of the longest ones.

OK, that’s me done. I will pass it back over to Deetz. Thank you very much.

Five key takeaways

We would like to leave you with the key takeaways, which will hopefully, will assist you.

Say, how much would it cost not to have it? The TVision add-ons have been developed to make processes much simpler. So, for example, with the credit control notepad, you don’t have to worry about who’s chasing a particular client and about what. With BACS export file, you make it simpler and faster to create a payment file saving your team time. All the add-ons will quite simply save you time, which you can use for other value-adding activities.

Pricing, training, and support. So, if you have Business Central SaaS, the TVision add-ons are priced on a monthly subscription with a separate implementation fee. Support is included within your monthly Business Central Staff Support Pack. For NAV and Business Central on-premise clients, these add-ons, are available as perpetual licences with a maintenance fee. Please feel free to contact me after the webinar for more details on pricing.

Will the TVision add-on be affected by Business Central SaaS wave updates? The simple answer is, it won’t be affected.

We’ll thoroughly test the add-ons to ensure they continue to work and we will continue to support all our add-ons.

Lastly, talk to your account manager about what you need. They’re always looking to create new add-ons. So, if your requirements are not met here, please do get in touch, and we can discuss your needs. Do you have a suggestion for a generic add-on? please let us know and we might develop it if we can see there is a demand.

Close

So, we hope you found this webinar interesting and informative. We shall be sending out e-mails to register for the next one. We shall also put a reminder about the webinar in our newsletter as well.

Thank you for listening to the webinar, and I look forward to seeing you on the next one.