Microsoft Dynamics 365 2023 Release Wave 1Missed These Features?

7 Top New Features From Business Central 2023 Release Wave 1

One of the many benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central being a true cloud accounting system, is the automated updates that happen twice annually. Each year, in April and October, Microsoft roll out their major updates. They are continuous, touchless updates that provide new features and functionality and eliminate the need to do expensive upgrades every few years.

Administrators can set a maintenance window for each environment that determines when Microsoft is allowed to update that environment too, so you have greater control of when they happen unlike many other systems.

What’s new?

The 2023 release wave 1 improves support for managing multiple companies, including improvements to the intercompany features. This release reduces the time it takes to onboard customers by creating seamless onboarding experiences that are supported by quality content from Microsoft. It will help organisations stay compliant with various government regulations by providing features that automate regulatory tasks, so organisations can focus on their primary business. For example, we’ll add support for non-deductible VAT. Usability is always a focus, and in this release they’ll boost efficiency when working with lists of records. You can personalise columns by adding any field from the table, use bulk actions on multiple rows, and get more comprehensive views to work faster and smarter.

Here’s seven of our favourite updates that you might have missed from Dynamics 365 Business Central from 2023 Release Wave 1.

1. Improved Accounting Processes for Multiple Companies
   In the financial management area, Microsoft have focussed on making it easier to manage accounting tasks for multiple companies in an intercompany setup. The Intercompany Postings feature has been improved to make it easier to set up, get a better overview and make the intercompany transaction processes more seamless and flexible. Intercompany posting lets you manage accounting activities for a group of companies. Setting up the workflows and relationships between the companies can be complicated, so to make it easier to get started they’ve consolidated the various steps into a single page. Plus, they’ve added a validation that helps you find things you might have missed in your setup.

   In the latest release you can:

   • Manage your intercompany setup on one page that includes intercompany partners, an intercompany chart of accounts, and intercompany dimensions.
   • Companies will be able to subscribe to data from another company. Tables and fields can be defined for total control over the synchronisation. Changes in the main company are immediately pulled to the receiving companies by the job queue. This functionality is a game changer for organisations that share the same metadata across two or more companies.
   • Handle bank transactions on the IC General Journals page.
   • IC general journals are included on the G/L Register page.
   • The experience when working with the intercompany inbox and outbox is smoother, and the Handled Inbox now lets you open documents.
   • Role Center cues are added to give an overview.
   • New Business Central customers can search for Intercompany Setup to find the new setup page. Existing customers with upgraded tenants can turn on Feature Update: Automatically accept intercompany general journal transactions on the Feature Management page to make the page available.

 

2. Copilot Capabilitity
   The 2023 release wave 1 introduces the first Copilot capability: AI-generated product descriptions, adding to Microsoft’s catalogue of AI-powered features such as cash flow forecasting and late payment prediction. Great products deserve great marketing, but authoring compelling product descriptions for dozens or even hundreds of similar products for your online store requires time, skill and creativity. Business Central accelerates time to market with AI-generated product descriptions, right from where you manage your inventory. We’ve streamlined the end-to-end process, starting from uploading a picture to Business Central, to AI-powered suggestions for marketing copy based on your product attributes such as colour and material, to publishing that to your online store with just a few clicks.
   • Start with a picture: Create a new item record by uploading a picture. Business Central analyses the image and automatically suggests a matching category from your list of item categories. Customers who configured categories with templates and default attributes benefit from all of these being automatically assigned, reducing manual data entry.
   • Author marketing copy: The new Marketing Text area, reachable from the Item card actions or FactBox, is where users author a customer-ready, rich-text product description that can be used in any marketing activities.
   • Get AI-powered suggestions: Business Central uses Azure OpenAI and GPT technology to suggest a compelling product description based on the item’s attributes, category and name (description). Get more suggestions or append them to your draft to author the perfect description. Review and edit before saving.
   • Customise suggestions: Use the Create with Copilot window to adjust various language parameters such as the format, tone of voice, and quality to emphasize. Choose precisely which attributes should be included when text is generated.
   • Publish to Shopify: Customers who connect Business Central to Shopify using our extension now benefit from new actions on the item card and list.
     • Send the item directly to your Shopify store to start selling immediately. This follows your store settings and may include information such as the item picture, marketing text, inventory, and price.
     • Navigate to the corresponding product on your Shopify store, as your customers would experience it.

 

3. Define An Invoice Posting Policy For Various Users
   Different companies often have unique processes for invoices and shipments. For example, processes can vary from one person posting everything on a purchase order to multiple employees, each working with their own pages. A new setting on the User Setup page lets you specify how each user can process invoices. This will enable companies to define user posting process activity from the single user setup screen. 1) Allowed to Ship, Invoice or to Ship and Invoice. 2) Prohibited to only Ship or receive. 3) Mandatory to Ship and Invoice or Receive and Invoice.

 

4. Use Advanced Warehouse Functionality Without The Complexity
   You can use several features that were previously available only for locations that use directed put-away and pick, which added advanced processes, without adding unneeded complexity. Zones, movement worksheet, calculated Bin Replenishment task, Bin Capacity Policy, Warehouse class check and Special equipment in warehouse documents will all become available without setting up directed put-away and pick. This is a really amazing new addition, which you can find out more about here.

 

5. Post Multiple Transfer Orders At Once
   Instead of posting individual transfer orders one by one, you can select multiple non-posted documents in a list to post them immediately or in a batch according to a schedule, such as at the end of the day. For example, this can be useful if only a supervisor can post documents created by other users, or to avoid system performance issues that might happen if you post during work hours.

 

6. Demo Tool For Trialling Warehouse and Inventory Scenarios
   Microsoft are great when it comes to demo data and scenarios – and now it’s extended to include warehouse and inventory scenarios so you can see it in play. The Contoso Coffee app is an extension that provides a demo tool and a related set of demo data for warehousing scenarios. The extension can be installed in any environment used in conjunction with Cronus or My Company.

 

7. Updates To The Shopify Integration
   Three updates are scheduled to take place in the next update. Two of which we think will be of interest to users:
   • Price synchronisation for Shopify: A Sync Prices action has been added to the Shopify card which utilizes the following settings to define what prices are shown to the customer:
     Customer Price Groups, Customer Discount Groups, Allow Line Discount, Prices including VAT, VAT Business Posting Groups and Currency Code.
   • Improvements to Shopify Connector: Users can now use item and customer templates instead of configuration templates. Making it easier to create item and customers from list pages or convert contacts to customers.