Microsoft Dynamics 365 deploys two major release waves per year—one beginning in April, the next in October. In addition, Microsoft often will note key future investment areas and offer organizations early access to new features throughout the year. In this article, we’ll highlight what’s coming in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance 2023 release plans.
Organizations are starting to dedicate more employee time to value-added activities versus repetitive, manual tasks. To automate more tasks and respond to users’ most popular requests for improvements in Dynamics 365 Finance, Microsoft is planning to release new features and capabilities in 2023, including:
- General ledger enhancements
- New accounts payable functionality using optical character recognition (OCR) and artificial intelligence (AI) technology
- More multicountry content and out-of-the-box functionality for the Globalization Studio
General Ledger Enhancements
Included in the Dynamics 365 Finance general ledger category are financial dimensions.
To track and maintain financial information, you can set up a chart of accounts. A chart of accounts is a collection of accounts that define a financial framework. To further track the transactions in these accounts, you can add segments known as financial dimensions.
In February 2023, Microsoft will launch the general availability of the financial dimension service add-in. This provides a microservice for Dynamics 365 Finance environments running version 10.0.30 or greater. It can provide improved performance when using the data management framework to import a general journal that has 500 or more lines and contains only ledger account types and offset account types. The “general journal” entity can generate the dimension combinations that are specified in the ledger account string field on the journal lines more efficiently by taking advantage of the microservice architecture.
Another new general ledger feature becoming available in February 2023 is the Optimize year-end close service add-in. This feature helps Dynamics 365 Finance users accelerate their year-end close by moving heavy year-end processing to a microservice. With a heavily automated year-end close, the time savings can help enable each finance team to make necessary adjustments in a timely manner. In addition, the Optimize year-end close service can provide visibility into the progress of the year-end close process.
This may become an unparalleled enterprise resource planning (ERP) product feature, allowing users with a high volume of transactions to scale their financial reporting.
Updated source document functionality also has become available. The free text invoice batch posting process improvement feature helps increase posting performance efficiency. When this feature is enabled, posting uses a pattern that self-manages the batch posting workload across a fixed number of threads, instead of assigning a fixed number of documents across an unlimited number of threads. Initially, this feature will impact only free text invoice batch posting with more source documents to be supported in future releases.
New Accounts Payable Functionality
AI and OCR technology is powering the new invoice capture feature, with general availability launching in February 2023. AI technology has enabled OCR services to read different invoice formats from different vendors. The invoice capture feature allows users to digitally transform the invoice-to-pay process within their accounts payable departments—helping deliver better spend control, faster cycle times, and paperless processing.
Globalization Studio Updates
Microsoft continues to advance Globalization Studio’s no-code/low-code capabilities and multicountry content for tax calculation, electronic invoicing, and electronic reporting.
One notable update falls under the Tax Calculation service. New functionality can help users set up tax codes for tax groups and item tax groups faster. This feature enables the batch input function of tax codes with advanced operators, which include:
- Is
- Is like
- Begins with
- Ends with
2023 Release Schedule
Check out the full 2023 release schedule for Dynamics 365 Finance below.
*Denotes a major release.
Also, review the full list of version 10.0.31 (February 2023 release) updates to help your system run smoothly and efficiently.
How FORVIS Can Help
Now that you’ve seen what’s coming in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance 2023 release plans, the Business Technology Solutions Team at FORVIS can help you keep your system operating efficiently. FORVIS is a Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner and 2022 recipient of the Microsoft Inner Circle Award. We provide analysis, design, implementation, upgrades, training, and support services for Dynamics 365 Finance and other Microsoft Dynamics business applications. Use the Contact Us form below to get in touch.