Business Central
Introducing Business Central – an ERP for Small to Medium Size Businesses
ERP
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It refers to a type of software system that integrates and manages various aspects of a business's operations and resources. An ERP system provides a centralized platform for organizations to streamline and automate processes related to areas such as finance, human resources, supply chain management, manufact uring, customer relationship management (CRM), and more.
ERP
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It refers to a type of software system that integrates and manages various aspects of a business's operations and resources. An ERP system provides a centralized platform for organizations to streamline and automate processes related to areas such as finance, human resources, supply chain management, manufact uring, customer relationship management (CRM), and more.
What is Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Business Central is an end-to-end solution that streamlines and integrates operations across key business areas, such as finance (AP/AR), supply chain management, manufacturing, customer relationship management (CRM), and human resources. The solution ensures intuitive user experience, it is easy to use and quick to implement.
It is an innovative business platform that can easily scale up or down on demand, just in time. The platform can be augmented with new features by simply adding new modules from Microsoft AppSource, mostly it does not require any code changes.
Business Central stores data in a central database, which means everyone refers to a single source of truth. The cloud native version of business central is part of Microsoft 365 suite, meaning it’s fully integrated with Microsoft eco-system, which includes Office 365, SharePoint, Power BI for Business Intelligence and Power Automate for workflow automation.
Snapshot of Features Available in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Finance Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Dynamics 365 Business Central streamlines the handling of finance processes, such as posting financial transactions, generating financial statements, managing inventory and manufacturing costs, fixed assets, and bank accounts.
Chart of Accounts
The chart of accounts (COA) is the heart of any financial accounting system. The system comes with a comprehensive list of COA, which can cater for a large spectrum of transaction posting scenarios. This means in no time the finance system is up and running.
Process Payments
Payment processing is a breeze in Dynamics 365 Business Central. The system can run automatic bank reconciliation, simply import the bank statement files and transactions will be settled automatically, in accordance with the rules that you would have defined.
Budgets
The budgeting features are available for costs, sales, purchases and general ledger accounts. The company can do yearly budgeting and carry out and extensive analysis.
Cash Flow Forecast
For companies, to ensure a deeper insight into cash availability, improved cash flow forecasting is a must. As part of Dynamics 365 Business Central, the cash flow forecast functionality enables users to calculate real time estimated cash flows which includes AP/AR, SO/PO. The system can analyse possible implications of planned loans or investment based on expense and revenue information. With in-built Azure AI and machine learning tools using historical revenues and expenses, users can generate cash flow forecasts.Show More...
Dimensions
Dimensions is a very powerful concept in Business Central. It allows for complex analysis of transactions by categorising transactions in different dimension (categories) , for example department wise, region wise or any other category you may want to define. These dimensions (categories) can be assigned to financial transactions via G/L accounts, customers, items, vendors, jobs or resources and numerous dimension values can be created for each dimension defined.Show More...
Fixed Assets
You can get an in-depth look into the fixed asset management by monitoring fixed asset transactions, such as appreciations, disposals, acquisitions, depreciations and write-downs.
Customer Relationship Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Contacts
A comprehensive contact management functionality is available in Business Central. The contact can be an individual or company and a customer or a vendor. Through this functionality system can record quotes for contacts, manage duplicate contacts and synchronize contacts with customers and vendors.
Segmentation
Customer segmentation is critical in creating relevant marketing campaigns. The Dynamics 365 Business Central facilitates contact segmentation. Users can create segments based on type of data collected, as well as record segmentation criteria and reuse them for various marketing campaigns.
Opportunity Management
It is easy to lose sales if leads are not nurtured. In Dynamics 365 Business Central users can track sales opportunities, classify sales activities into different stages and manage sales opportunities based on unified data. The Business Central provides tools that enables linking sales quotes directly to opportunities and effectively manage sales channels and your customer journey.
Campaigns
In Business Central user can plan campaign out based on customer segments. All campaign related activities such as preparing catalogues, launching promotions and special offers and arrange marketing events. Business Central can capture contact responses to campaigns as interactions, which helps with nurturing leads. Interactions include (phone calls, invites and emails) and documents (sales quotes, orders, reminders, invoices, and many others).
Supply Chain Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Sales and Purchase Order Management
With workflow automation in Dynamics 365 Business Central you can automate monitoring and control of the entire purchase process. The system can measure inventory and create replacement purchase orders automatically based on the forecast and required minimum quantity levels. System can apply price and discount rules based on delivery timeframes. You can implement advanced workflow and approval structures to enhance control over purchase costs and expenses. The invoicing process is quick and simple and can be linked to the sales order. Moreover, you can define prices and discounts in a sales document for specific lines and set up an invoice discount, so the discount percentage is linked to the document amount. Dynamics 365 Business Central provides various sales and purchase documents to choose from that best respond to your business needs.Show More...
Item Availability
Sales processes can be managed effectively if efficient tools to track item availability in multiple locations over time are put in place. In the case of stock shortages identified while processing sales orders, Dynamics 365 Business Central generates appropriate notifications, so you can intervene immediately – create a replenishment order or offer a substitute item.
Sales and Inventory Forecasting
Dynamics 365 Business Central combined with predictive analytics tools can calculate sales and inventory forecasts more precisely by using historical data. The system can create replenishment order when stock levels low or reduced to zero in the forecast chart.
Item Substitutions and Nonstock Items
In Dynamics 365 Business Central you can link similar items so substitute can be offered if the requested item is out of stock. Dynamics 365 Business Central enables you to set up and offer customers non-stock items. By adding a non-stock item to the sales document, you can create this item in the items list.Show More...
Warehousing
Dynamics 365 Business Central supports handling of warehouse receipts, warehouse shipments, put-aways and transfers. Inventory picks are used in assembly, manufacturing, and shipment processes. You can track inventory transfers including pick-ups and put-aways through bins. The warehousing functionality also facilitates the assembly of items for sales orders and warehouse orders.Show More...
Inventory Movements
The inventory tracking functionality empowers users to collect information about locations where an item was moved, as well as its value in transit and at subsequent locations in the transfer process.
Locations
With Dynamics 365 Business Central, users are well equipped to manage inventory in various locations such as warehouses, production plants, distribution centres, showrooms, retail outlets, or service cars.
Project Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Jobs
The job is equivalent to a project in Dynamics 365 Business central. You can manage resource usage, billing, timesheet for both fixed cost or times-and-material type jobs in the Business Central. You can set up jobs with task line times items, task budget and actual cost, resources used with planned and delivery schedules. The system can automatically calculate job completion rate based on the task completion or hours billed. Consumption of resources, both man and machines can be tracked and reported at the job level. As the cost and price is applied at the resource level, it can calculate the project profitability. This cost transaction can be posted to the G/L to monitor company performance. Once a task is completed you can invoice customer directly from the Job to reflect the transaction in company sales.Show More...
Time Sheets
Users can register time worked in Dynamics 365 Business Central which approvers can review, amend, decline, or approve. Staff can enter the time spent on specific tasks and projects. The time sheet administrator manages the time sheet set up. They can create time sheet based on the job planning lines. The time sheet administrator or project manager can post the time consumption for a relevant task. Upon approval, all expenses and sales revenues are posted in the profit and loss account, whereas work in progress is included in the balance sheet.Show More...
Resource Capacity and Availability
A resource is a person or a device that can be tracked individually or as part of a resource group. Resource groups and their price can be set up. In Dynamics 365 Business Central, the resource management is handled based on a capacity defined by the user. By tracking the resource usage, you can gain a comprehensive overview of both the capacity and availability of resources.Show More...
Service Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central - Premium license only
Dynamics 365 Business Central has well laid out and comprehensive service process, which includes service and product supply chains and the delivery of services such as repairs. With Service Management, users can respond promptly to service requests, plan and schedule repairs, track repair statuses, monitor and invoice repair costs, handle warranties, set up and use service contracts, optimize inventory levels for spare parts.
Service Items
Dynamics 365 Business central captures and maintain a list of equipment or items that entity can service or repair as service item. Through this functionality you can capture all service item related data such as contract information, component management, BOM reference and warranty information.
Service Orders
In Dynamics 365 Business central the users can create Service orders for an equipment or services. A service order can contain a repair request or a regular maintenance activity. These requests can come from the customer or from the system through automation of contract or by a staff.
Planning and Dispatching
In Dynamics 365 Business Central service orders can be planned before allocation. The functionality allows user to take into consideration factors like regional zones, staff skills, staff availability, inventory levels and order priorities. Once planning is complete then the job can be assigned to the staff member.
Service Contract Management
In Dynamics 365 Business central you can capture contract Ts and Cs, performance and quality criteria and activities. To better manage the contract, you can automate contract renewal notices and create quotes. System maintains a contract history including labour and items consumed over the period.Show More...
Warranty
The Service Management module empowers users to manage warranty information concerning service items, spare parts, response times, discounts and service levels.
Service Price Management
The functionality enables users to define, maintain and monitor service prices. Users can also set up price calculation structures with all the parameters related to service delivery.
Manufacturing Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central - Premium license only
Bill of Material (BOM), Routing and Production Capacity
In Dynamics 365 Business central you can capture bill-of-material and routing, which provides a single view of product manufacturing process. Bill-of-material list contains information regarding components, partly finished product and finished product. You can enter different capacity setups to cover machine centre, work centre and production department.
Production Orders
Product order presents a manufacturing process in action. It starts with a production order, picking up components from the warehouse, using raw materials, manufacturing a product, registering consumption and the final product in the production journal (optionally), and storing finished products in a warehouse.
Through Production orders Dynamics 365 Business Central captures information regarding the types and quantities of products to be manufactured, components used, the routing steps or operations required to process the components into the finished products. It also takes into consideration the work and machine centre capacity.
Demand Forecasting
In Dynamics 365 Business Central you can convert forecasts into production plans and reconcile them against the actual sales. Any forecast changes can be applied to existing production plans so production can be managed effectively.
Production Planning
Dynamics 365 Business Central offers three scenarios that trigger production planning. Running the full planning worksheet – This is the most elaborated planning process. This takes into consideration all information about inventory, demand and supplies that are available in the system. This is used for main production planning.
Plan for New Demand Order by Order – This planning task can be performed on the Order Planning page, which displays all new demand along with availability information and suggestions for supply. It provides the visibility and tools needed to effectively plan demand from sales lines and component lines and then create different types of supply orders directly.
Create Production Orders from Sales Orders – Create one-to-one production order from a sales order to cover the exact demand of that sales order. This is a simplified planning function that is used to create production orders directly from sales orders. You may use this option in make to order scenario.
Manage Load on Work and Machine Centres
In Dynamics 365 Business Central you can view the shop floor load as a result of planned and released production orders. This enables you to compare requirements to actual capacity of the centre. You may opt for unlimited capacity to override capability limitation or use limited capacity option to plan for a defined capacity.
Centre calendars
In Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can set up machine centre and work centre calendar, which enable better production planning and cater for scheduled downtimes.
Bill of Material (BOM), Routing and Production Capacity
In Dynamics 365 Business central you can capture bill-of-material and routing, which provides a single view of product manufacturing process. Bill-of-material list contains information regarding components, partly finished product and finished product. You can enter different capacity setups to cover machine centre, work centre and production department.Show More...
Production Orders
Product order presents a manufacturing process in action. It starts with a production order, picking up components from the warehouse, using raw materials, manufacturing a product, registering consumption and the final product in the production journal (optionally), and storing finished products in a warehouse. Through Production orders Dynamics 365 Business Central captures information regarding the types and quantities of products to be manufactured, components used, the routing steps or operations required to process the components into the finished products. It also takes into consideration the work and machine centre capacity.Show More...
Demand Forecasting
In Dynamics 365 Business Central you can convert forecasts into production plans and reconcile them against the actual sales. Any forecast changes can be applied to existing production plans so production can be managed effectively.
Production Planning
Dynamics 365 Business Central offers three scenarios that trigger production planning. Running the full planning worksheet – This is the most elaborated planning process. This takes into consideration all information about inventory, demand and supplies that are available in the system. This is used for main production planning. Plan for New Demand Order by Order – This planning task can be performed on the Order Planning page, which displays all new demand along with availability information and suggestions for supply. It provides the visibility and tools needed to effectively plan demand from sales lines and component lines and then create different types of supply orders directly. Create Production Orders from Sales Orders – Create one-to-one production order from a sales order to cover the exact demand of that sales order. This is a simplified planning function that is used to create production orders directly from sales orders. You may use this option in make to order scenario.Show More...
Manage Load on Work and Machine Centres
In Dynamics 365 Business Central you can view the shop floor load as a result of planned and released production orders. This enables you to compare requirements to actual capacity of the centre. You may opt for unlimited capacity to override capability limitation or use limited capacity option to plan for a defined capacity. Show More...
Centre Calendars
In Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can set up machine centre and work centre calendar, which enable better production planning and cater for scheduled downtimes.
Human Resources Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central
In Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can keep detailed records of your employees. You can register and maintain employee information, such as employment contracts, confidential information, qualifications, and employee contacts. You can also register employee absences, which allows you to analyse registered absences as necessary. You can monitor employees’ expenses by using employee ledgers and the suggest employee payments functionality in the payment journal.