A first look at the Business Central 2023 Wave 1 Update

Late last month (January 2023) Microsoft released their plans for updates to all Dynamics 365 applications, including Business Central, coming from April 2023 as part of the 2023 release wave 1 update. Many of these features will be available for public preview in March with general availability in April (although Microsoft do make it very clear that delivery timelines may change and some projected functionality may not be released). This blog explores the new or updated features that will most affect the user experience of Bevica, which is powered by Microsoft Business Central.

We will be holding a webinar in April highlighting the features we think will be the most useful to our customers.

Application enhancements

In the 2023 release wave 1, Microsoft are continuing to modernise their financial and operational processes to give their customers more advanced features as they grow their businesses.

Individual application improvements include:

• Adjusting exchange rates easily – This update gives accountants additional control over how they adjust exchange rates. At the same time, partners can now extend and customise the exchange rate adjustment to meet the needs of specific industries or markets
• Use different general ledger accounts for payables and receivables – This improvement will allow businesses to post payable and receivable transactions to a different general ledger (G/L) account than the one that is specified on the customer or vendor posting group.
• Avoid document number errors when posting item journals – To avoid or fix errors related to the order of document numbers when users post item journals, this enhancement will allow them to use the Renumber Document Numbers action before they post.
• Company Hub now allows admins to add user-specific settings – The improved Company Hub lets admininstrators control which users can see which companies and which metrics. In addition, users can easily define which companies they want to use, in which order, and which metrics display in their personalised view on Company Hub.
• Define content of created warehouse documents with filters – With this update, users can provide more information for the business’s warehouse team by defining filters on fields on source document lines when creating inventory put-away, pick, and movement documents.
• The 2023 Wave 1 Update includes a range of improvements to intercompany (IC) posting:
  • Intercompany setup can be managed on one page that includes intercompany partners, an intercompany chart of accounts, and intercompany dimensions.
  • Bank transactions are now handled on the IC General Journals page.
  • End-to-end flows are improved so that duplicated data doesn’t require manual attention in the ‘no-changes’ cases.
  • The experience when working with the intercompany inbox and outbox is smoother and Role Centre cues are added to give an overview.
  • IC general journals are included on the G/L Register page.
• Preview item journals before posting – The new Preview Posting action will help users avoid mistakes. They will be able to review the types of entries that will be created when they post item journals or other inventory documents before the user commits the changes to their database.
• Review general ledger accounts faster – During the process of closing a period it’s often necessary to go through all transactions for a G/L account to ensure they’re correct. The G/L Review action makes the review process faster and easier.
• Set up and sync master data across companies – With this enhancement, Microsoft makes it easy to move one company’s setup to another company in the same Business Central environment. You can also synchronise master data between the companies.
• Ship and receive non-inventory items on warehouse documents – This improvement will allow warehouse employees to shop and receive non-inventory items, such as insurance or cost, on sales or purchase orders along with the physical goods on the orders.
• Shopify connector becomes extensible – Up until now, the Shopify Connector has been nonextensible. With this update, Microsoft is offering a few points of extensibility.
• Synchronise returns, refunds from Shopify.
• Undo transfer shipments – Sometimes users post incorrect quantities on transfer orders. This new feature lets users undo the quantity posting, make the necessary corrections, and then post the correct quantity.

Improved Integration with the Power Platform

The 2023 release wave 1 update improves Business Central integration with Power Platform to increases productivity. Enhancements include:

• More sample Power Automate templates and Power Apps to get new users started.
• New approval workflow experience with Power Automate template – With this release, Business Central online customers who use Power Automate to run document approvals are able to do so more easily.
• Remove modification limits for triggering flows – Until now, there were limits to the way that Power Automate flows and Dataverse Virtual Tables were triggered when multiple rows were changed during a short period of time. Microsoft have now removed those limits, and updated the way the Power Automate connector communicates with the Business Central API layer to open up for more advanced scenarios.
• User Power Automate to post an adaptive card or link to Business Central record.

Improved user experiences

The 2023 release wave 1 also brings improvements to Business Central’s user experience that will help users enter, update, and analyse data across Dynamics 365. These enhancements include:

• Add existing table fields to optimise pages – In this wave, Microsoft is unlocking all table fields so that users can add them to their pages to personalise their workspace, without having to resort to extensions.
• Access actions and navigation menu efficiently with keyboard
• Get unblocked using actionable error messages in select application areas
• Tailor action bar to users’ document lines needs.

Legislation

Business Central 2023 release wave 1 includes a set of legislative capabilities to help organisations meet the regulations set by government agencies.

• Non-deductible, partly deductible VAT expands functionality –With this update, users in all relevant regions have improved VAT functionality with non-deductible and partly deductible VAT enabled.
• Audit file export eases SAF-T compliance – SAF-T (Standard Audit File for Tax) is an international standard for the electronic exchange of accounting data from organisations to a national tax authority or external auditors. This update enables future extensions to additional audit files exports, so you can easily set up what you want to report to auditors.

In this blog we have concentrated on those updates that will directly improve the user experience of Business Central. In addition, there are improvements to Development, Onboarding and Governance and administration.

TVision is here to help

If you want to know more about Bevica, how it is powered by Microsoft Business Central and how TVision could help you, please feel free to contact us to arrange a demo to see how it could be the perfect ERP to help you overcome your business challenges.

If you are already a TVision customer and want to know how and when these Business Central 2023 wave 1 updates will affect your business, contact us.