Earlier this month (July 2024) Microsoft released their plans for updates to all Dynamics 365 applications, including Business Central. They will be coming from October 2024 as part of the Business Central 2024 Wave 2 update. Many of these features will be available for public preview in September with general availability in October. However, Microsoft do make it very clear that delivery timelines may change and some projected functionality may be delayed to future releases. This blog explores the new application, AI, reporting and user experience features coming to Business Central later this year which we think are most relevant to our customers.
We will be holding a webinar in October (click here to open the booking form in GoToWebinar) highlighting the features in the Business Central 2024 Wave 2 update that will be most relevant to our customers.
Application enhancements
Individual application improvements include:
- Use new reports and demo data for financial reporting – With this update, the list of standard reports for financial reporting is being expanded to include five new reports. These include: Trial Balance, Balance Sheet (both detailed and summary) and Income Statement (both detailed and summary).
- Manage subscription billing and revenue and expense recognition – This update includes a new subscription module that allows users to easily manage subscription contracts in Business Central.
- Export posted sales invoices to Shopify – This improvement to Business Central’s Shopify connector allows users to export posted sales invoices to Shopify as orders by using a new report.
- Replenish items for projects – Business Central is making it easier for users to ensure that they have the items needed to kick off a new project or keep an existing one running smoothly. The Project Card page will include the ability to create purchase orders for the items by choosing the Create Purchase Order action. Afterwards, users can review and edit the orders before they send them out to vendors.
- Reconcile payment transactions in Shopify with invoices – The Shopify connector also allows users to easily manage their online sales and payments in one place. With this release, Business Central increases the options for processing imported payment transactions.
- User directed put-away and pick warehouses with projects – This release continues to improve Business Central’s project management features and allows businesess to use warehouse activity with projects to help drive an effective flow through the warehouse.
- Capture data from e-docs with Azure AI Document Intelligence – Microsoft is introducing a new modern OCR service in Business Central that uses state-of-the-art technology to seamlessly handle and process imported e-documents.
- Add invoice and receipt documents with e-documents in bulk – Another accounts payable improvement in this release is Business Central’s new ability to handle the import of multiple files which will drastically decrease the time it takes to import e-documents.
- Import/export product info using Shopify Metafields – Metafields are a flexible way to add and store addition information about a Shopify resource such as a product. With this release, Microsoft is adding the ability to import and export data stored in metafields into Business Central. They are also providing an extensibility model that allows developers to map standard or custom fields, attributes or other related entries in Business Central to metafields in Shopify.
Copilot and AI innovation
This wave expands on the first set of Copilot capabilities in Business Central.
- Suggest number series with Copilot – Users will be able to use Copilot for faster creation and updates of number series on the No. Series page.
- Chat with Copilot and learn to use installed add-on apps – With this wave, Business Central is introducing chat: a conversational experience where users can get assistance from Copilot to find data, get unblocked or learn new skills.
- Complete bank account reconciliation faster – Business Central’s bank account reconciliation feature is being enhanced with AI-powered transaction matching, AI-powered G/L account suggestions and built-in demo data to make it easier to experience and demonstrate this Copilot capability to others.
- Create product information faster – With this improvement, Copilot can help users add items by suggesting data from similar items. It can suggest variants, units of measure, substitutions and dimensions.
- Summarise any record with Copilot – Copilot, with this wave, provides users with a concise and textual summary of any record, even for data from custom tables.
- Experience enhancements to Analysis Assist – With this update, Microsoft improves the reliability of Analysis Assist and gives Copilot the capability to draft analysis tables using any fields from the list, including columns that may be hidden on the page.
- Start using Copilot without having to set things up – New or upgraded versions of Business Central, after Wave 2 has been applied, will have the Copilot and AI capabilities already switched on and users will be able to access Copilot capabilities without any administrative set up.
- Create sales lines easily – With this improvement, in addition to the Find product and Find document by reference skills, Copilot can now combine them. It can first find documents, and then search for products on document lines.
Reporting and data analysis
Business Central already comes with many options for reporting, business intelligence (BI) dashboards, and data analysis. This release wave adds new reports for finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, and projects.
Specifically, the following Power BI reports are available:
- Finance: 14 reports
- Sales: 12 reports
- Purchasing: 13 reports
- Inventory: 7 reports
- Manufacturing: 11 reports
- Projects: 6 reports
User experience
TVision is here to help
If you want to know more about Microsoft Business Central and how TVision can help you implement it in your business successfully, 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 2024 Wave 2 updates will affect your business, contact us.
