Microsoft Dynamics 365 deploys two release waves per year:
- Release wave 1 covers features releasing from April through September
- Release wave 2 covers features releasing from October through March
Here we’ll provide an in-depth look at several Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 wave 1 release highlights.
Business Central is a business management platform that connects finance, operations, sales, and service to help teams adapt faster and deliver results. In this release, Microsoft responded to users’ most popular requests for improvement, including general ledger enhancements and several new reporting and data analysis features.
Review General Ledger Accounts Faster
To help speed up the closing process, you can use the new G/L Review action. For auditors and accountants, this is an important update. It can help bring increased flexibility and efficiencies to an often long and tedious process.
During the process of closing a period, it’s often necessary to go through all the transactions in the general ledger account and check if they’re correct. Now, the system can help you turn big chunks of general ledger data into more manageable pieces. Here’s how it can work:
- On the General Ledger Entries page, use the G/L Review action to review entries and mark them as complete.
- If you’ve migrated a large number of general ledger entries, you can limit the number of entries to review. On the General Ledger Setup page, specify the date from which to show entries in the G/L Reviewed Date field. Entries before that date are considered reviewed.
- If you have a small number of old G/L entries that don’t need to be reviewed, you can run the “Set old G/L entries to reviewed” background job to mark them as reviewed in bulk.
In addition, the G/L Review action doesn’t require double-entry bookkeeping to review all entries for a given transaction.
Avoid Document Number Errors When Posting Item Journals
To help avoid errors and save time related to ordering document numbers when you post item journals, you can use the Renumber Document Numbers action before you post.
When you click on the Renumber Document Numbers option (highlighted in blue below), the system will automatically populate the required document number field on the line. In addition, if related journal lines were grouped by document number before you used this action, they’ll stay grouped but might be assigned a different document number.
Preview Item Journals Before Posting
To help reduce errors upfront, try the new Preview Posting action to review the types of entries that’ll be created when you post item journals or other inventory documents.
By doing this, you can see how item journals will affect:
- Item entries
- General ledger entries
- Value entries
- Warehouse entries
Help Warehouse Teams Find More Information Quickly
In 2023 release wave 1, more filters have been added to Create Inventory Put-away/Pick/Movement documents. In addition to the source document type and number, you now can filter by location, item, job task, production order line, and date. The extra filters can help your warehouse team find more information quickly and help you be more specific about the actions to take in the warehouse.
Tailor the Shopify Connector
You can tailor the Shopify Connector to better meet the needs of your business. Previously, the Shopify Connector was nonextensible, but now Microsoft is offering a few points of extensibility. However, Microsoft is keeping the number of points to a minimum so they can follow Shopify’s rapid development without introducing breaking changes.
Extensibility refers to the ability to extend a software system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. An extensible software system has the following characteristics: flexible, configurable, customizable, upgradable, and integrated.
With added extensibility, your Business Central developers can extend Shopify capabilities within Business Central with reduced risk of system updates failing or workflow disruption. Additional information can be found in this repository.
Synchronize Shopify Returns & Refunds
The integration between Shopify and Business Central is important so you can synchronize as much business data as possible between the two systems. This helps make it easier to keep your financials and inventory levels up to date in Business Central. Now, returns and refunds that were recorded in Shopify can sync to Business Central automatically—no more toggling between systems to make the same bookkeeping entry.
Expand VAT Functionality
Value-added tax (VAT) is a consumption tax that’s assessed on products at each stage of the production process. If your organization ships or sells internationally, the updated VAT functionality in Business Central can help you calculate deductible and nondeductible VAT amounts. You can configure VAT so it isn’t deducted for purchases under certain conditions, including:
- The type of goods or services purchased. VAT is fully or partially nondeductible by the provision of the law on goods.
- Partially deductible prorated VAT. VAT is prorated according to the ratio between sales operations for which VAT is owed and all operations performed. VAT exceeding this ratio can’t be deducted.
VAT deductions can be configured on the VAT Posting Setup page.
Simplify SAF-T Compliance
Many countries require that you report financial data and provide a set of SAF-T exports. The new Audit file export extension helps make it easy to set up, generate, and export SAF-T in Business Central. The extension can help you:
- Set up and map the chart of accounts to SAF-T standard accounts.
- Map VAT setup to SAF-T VAT/Tax or SIE codes.
- Control how dimensions are exported in SAF-T or SIE files.
- Export of SAF-T or SIE files directly or by using the Job Queue.
Find additional information about this feature from Microsoft.
How FORVIS Can Help
We hope the Business Central 2023 wave 1 release highlights we’ve covered will help you move forward with confidence. Though if you’re feeling uncertain about release wave changes and keeping your system running smoothly and efficiently, the Business Technology Solutions team at FORVIS can assist. We are a Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner and 2022-23 recipient of the Microsoft Inner Circle Award. We provide analysis, design, implementation, upgrade, training, and support services for Business Central and other Microsoft Dynamics business applications. Use the Contact Us form below to get in touch.