Microsoft Dynamics Business Central is an ERP and accounting software that provides a comprehensive suite of financial management capabilities for small and mid-sized businesses. The accounting module within Business Central delivers a broad range of features to help optimize and automate accounting workflows.
With Business Central, businesses can streamline tasks like general ledger management, accounts payable/receivable, cash flow analysis, fixed assets, invoicing, expense management, budgeting, and financial reporting. The accounting module seamlessly integrates with other core functions like sales, purchasing, inventory, and project management.
Business Central provides real-time visibility into financials through interactive dashboards and business intelligence tools. The software also enables multi-company and multi-currency accounting for global operations. With robust customization options, Business Central can be tailored to meet industry-specific needs.
The accounting module empowers finance teams to boost productivity, ensure compliance, gain insights, and scale operations as their business grows. This article explores how the key features and capabilities of Business Central’s accounting tools can be leveraged for accounting success.
Key Accounting Features
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central accounting module provides a comprehensive set of accounting tools and capabilities to help manage essential financial processes. Some of the key features include:
General Ledger
The general ledger forms the heart of the accounting system, allowing you to track revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, and equity. Business Central accounting module automates tasks like journal entries, accounts payable/receivable, allocations, and period-end closing.
Accounts Receivable/Payable
Efficiently manage customer invoicing, payments, credit terms, collections, vendor bills, and payment scheduling. Business Central accounting module streamlines AR/AP processes including invoice matching, payment application, collections, and cash forecasting.
Cash Management
Optimize cash flow with integrated management of bank accounts, cash receipts, payments, deposits, and reconciliations. Get visibility into cash positions and transfer funds between accounts or currencies.
Budgeting
Create budgets at summary or detailed levels. Compare budgets against actuals and drill into variances. Revise budgets as needed and leverage multiple what-if scenarios.
Fixed Assets
Maintain detailed fixed asset records including depreciation schedules. Automatically calculate depreciation expense based on straight-line or accelerated methods. Easily handle acquisitions, retirements, transfers, revaluations, and more.
Inventory Costing
Value inventory using standard costing, moving average, FIFO, and other methods. Update standard costs efficiently. Analyze profitability by item or inventory grouping.
Project Accounting
Manage project budgets, track costs and revenue, invoice customers, and recognize profit over time. Compare actuals against budgets to maximize profitability on projects.
Configuration Options
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central accounting module offers extensive configuration options to customize the accounting module for your business needs. Here are some of the key areas you can tailor:
Chart of Accounts
The chart of accounts is the foundation of your accounting system. Business Central allows you to fully customize the COA structure with segmentation, hierarchies, and reporting groups. You can add new accounts, modify existing ones, and set up templates for different business units or locations.
Complex organizational requirements can be handled through advanced features like intercompany posting groups. Consolidated financial reporting is simplified by mapping accounts from different companies.
Financial Reporting
Transform raw data into meaningful insights through configurable financial statements. Easily build income statements, balance sheets, cash flow reports, and more based on your chart of accounts.
Modify existing reports or create new ones from scratch. Set up row and column definitions, add totals, and design multi-level layouts with drilldown capabilities. Parameters and filters enable dynamic reporting by dimensions like customers, projects, departments etc.
Workflows
Streamline approvals and control access to sensitive accounting functions through customizable workflows. Route documents to appropriate reviewers based on conditional logic.
Workflows in Business Central provide complete audit trails for transactions like vendor payments, sales orders, purchase requisitions etc. Flexible configuration options include approval limits, authorized users, escalation rules, and automated notifications.
With these extensive configuration capabilities, Business Central can be tailored to meet your organization’s specific accounting process requirements. The system adapts to your needs rather than forcing you to adapt.
Integration Capabilities
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central accounting module offers seamless integration capabilities to connect with other business systems and platforms. This allows you to streamline data flows and business processes across your technology stack.
Some of the key integrations include:
CRM Systems: Dynamics Business Central can integrate directly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, providing a complete view of customer data and interactions across sales, service, and accounting. This bi-directional integration synchronizes key data like contacts, accounts, opportunities, quotes, orders, invoices, and payments.
Point of Sale: Connect your physical and online stores with Business Central through native integration with Dynamics 365 Retail. This allows for real-time visibility into inventory, orders, customers, and retail transactions. All data flows back to Business Central in real-time.
Ecommerce Platforms: Seamlessly connect your webstore with Business Central to share customer, order, inventory and fulfillment data. Out-of-the-box support for platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce makes it easy to get started. With these integrations, your webstore can leverage Business Central as the backend ERP.
Payment Gateways: Integrate payment processing with platforms like PayPal, Stripe and others directly from Business Central. This allows you to accept payments online and process transactions directly in your accounting system.
With robust integration capabilities, Business Central provides the connectivity needed to unify data across disparate systems and ensure your entire technology stack works together. This creates an end-to-end view of your business and customers.
Automation Benefits
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central provides powerful automation capabilities that can streamline accounting workflows. By automating repetitive manual tasks, accounting teams can work more efficiently and focus their efforts on high-value activities.
Some key automation benefits include:
- Automated bank reconciliations – Business Central can import bank statements and automatically match transactions, only stopping on exceptions. This saves significant time compared to manual reconciliation.
- Automated customer payment processing – Payment runs can be scheduled to automatically generate payments for invoices due. Remittance advices are also automatically emailed to customers.
- Automated reporting and analysis – Scheduled financial reports and dashboards keep stakeholders up-to-date without manual effort. Key trends and metrics can be monitored automatically.
- Automated sales order processing – Many steps like credit checking, inventory checks, and invoicing can happen automatically based on configured business rules.
- Automated data integration – Data from other systems can be automatically imported into Business Central through built-in connectors and APIs. This removes duplicate data entry.
By taking advantage of automation, accounting teams can focus their time on high-value strategic tasks like analysis and advising the business. Business Central makes it easy to eliminate repetitive manual work in accounting.
Analytics & Reporting
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central comes with powerful built-in analytics and reporting capabilities to help accounting teams gain insights and make data-driven decisions.
The software includes out-of-the-box financial reports such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and trial balances. These reports can be customized and additional reports can be created using the built-in report designer.
Some key analytics features include:
- Role-tailored dashboards provide real-time snapshots of KPIs like sales, profits, cash flow and more. These are customizable for different users.
- Power BI integration allows connecting data to Power BI to create interactive dashboards, reports and visualizations. This provides deeper analysis into financials, sales, inventory and other operational metrics.
- Excel integration allows exporting General Ledger, budgets, cash flow forecasts and other financial reporting data to Excel for further manipulation and analysis.
- Financial insights provide an overview of company financial health with key ratios, metrics and trends over time through an easy-to-read financial report.
- Account schedules offer flexible reporting by allowing users to set up row and column layouts to generate custom financial statements and reports.
With these built-in tools, accounting teams can easily access and analyze financial data to gain insights, track trends over time, forecast future performance and support data-driven business decisions.
Mobility Access
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central provides mobile access to accounting and finance data through the Dynamics 365 Business Central app available for iOS and Android devices. This enables accounting and finance professionals to view and manage financials remotely from a smartphone or tablet.
Key features of the mobile app for accounting include:
- Real-time visibility into general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, bank management, and other modules
- Ability to approve invoices, vendor payments, customer credit memos and more on the go
- Sales order and purchase order management capabilities
- Dashboard views of KPIs, account balances, budget vs. actuals, and other financial metrics
- Secure access with multi-factor authentication and data encryption
- Touch-optimized interface designed for ease of use on mobile
- Works online and offline with automatic data synchronization
- Integration with device features like camera, contacts, and location
With mobile access to accounting data through Dynamics 365 Business Central, finance teams can achieve greater productivity by approving transactions, analyzing data, and collaborating with colleagues whenever and wherever necessary. This allows for timely financial management and informed decision making on the go.
The mobility features make Dynamics Business Central a modern accounting solution suited for remote and hybrid work environments. Financial data is always readily available in the palm of your hands.
Implementation Best Practices
A successful implementation of Dynamics Business Central accounting requires planning and preparation. Here are some best practices to follow:
Conduct training sessions – Provide training for all users so they understand how to use the new accounting system. Hands-on training workshops are ideal to allow staff to practice real-world scenarios. Have experts available to answer questions during and after training.
Start with a small pilot group – Before rolling out Business Central company-wide, start with a pilot group in accounting or finance. Work out any issues on a small scale first. Get feedback from the pilot group before expanding.
Customize the chart of accounts – Take time early on to set up and customize the general ledger chart of accounts to match your business needs. This will make transaction coding and reporting easier down the line.
Migrate data carefully – Work with experts to properly migrate and validate your existing financial data into the new system. Data integrity is crucial for accurate reporting. Take time to clean up data before migrating if needed.
Leverage consultants if needed – Consider working with Dynamics consultants or partners, especially if you lack in-house expertise. Their guidance can smooth the implementation and help tailor the system to your workflows.
Encourage adoption through change management – Get buy-in from management and end users by clearly communicating benefits. Provide ongoing support and address concerns proactively. Recognize teams for embracing the new tools.
With the right preparation and training, your organization can fully leverage Dynamics Business Central accounting to enhance financial operations and insight. Taking a phased approach and getting staff onboard will set you up for a successful implementation.
Training Resources
Microsoft offers comprehensive training options to help admins, accountants, and end users get the most out of Dynamics 365 Business Central.
For administrators and IT professionals, Microsoft provides in-depth training on deploying, configuring, and managing Business Central through the Microsoft Learn platform. Self-paced modules cover topics like deploying in the cloud or on-premises, managing data and environments, integration, troubleshooting, and more. Hands-on labs allow admins to practice key tasks in a test environment.
On the accounting side, Microsoft offers training tailored to the needs of accounting professionals and bookkeepers. The Dynamics 365 Business Central Bookkeeper Learning Path provides video courses and exercises focused on core accounting tasks like working with the general ledger, accounts payable/receivable, bank management, and financial reporting. Microsoft also offers prep courses for accountants studying for CPA certification exams.
For end users, Microsoft provides short video tutorials on the Dynamics 365 YouTube channel covering basic tasks in areas like sales, purchasing, inventory, and finance. The videos use real-world examples to demonstrate processes step-by-step. Microsoft Learn also has user-focused training content organized by role. Face-to-face training workshops are another option available through Microsoft partners.
Leveraging Microsoft’s comprehensive training resources helps ensure all users are equipped with the knowledge to use Dynamics 365 Business Central effectively for accounting and financial management. The variety of self-paced online learning, hands-on labs, and in-person workshops provide flexible options tailored to different audiences within an organization.
Conclusion
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central provides a comprehensive accounting solution that can be customized to meet the needs of any organization. By leveraging its robust accounting module, businesses can streamline financial processes, gain actionable insights, and drive growth.
Some of the key benefits for accounting teams include:
- Automated workflows and approvals that increase efficiency and reduce errors
- Real-time visibility into financial data through dynamic reports and dashboards
- Built-in intelligence through AI and machine learning to guide better decisions
- Seamless integration with Microsoft Office and other business applications
- Anytime, anywhere mobile access to accounting information
- Scalable solution that grows with your business
With powerful accounting tools, flexible configuration options, and intelligent analytics, Dynamics Business Central enables accounting success no matter the size or industry. Organizations that implement Dynamics Business Central can transform their finance operations to be more productive, proactive, and strategic. The platform provides a future-proof solution to take accounting to the next level.
