Microsoft has released the latest information on what is new and planned for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for 2022.
All of the updates are from their 2022 release wave 1 and are planned to release from April 2022 through September 2022. As with any pre-release information, delivery timelines may change and projected functionality may not be released but we will aim to keep this blog post updated with any changes or amendments.
In the 2022 release wave 1, Microsoft are delivering updates based on the most popular requests for improvement. They’ll invest in better reporting and several improvements to the supply chain area. There’s a whole host of updates and improvements, but we’ve pulled out a few of the key ones and split them up into different categories to help you find the ones most important to you.
Accounting Functionality Updates
Blocking deletion of G/L accounts – available April 2022
Though relatively rare, changing business needs might require you to make a change in your chart of accounts that involves deleting one or more accounts. To safeguard accounts from accidentally being deleted, the ‘Block Deletion of G/L Accounts’ toggle has been added to the ‘General Ledger Setup’ page.
Auto-accept transactions for intercompany journals – available April 2022
New fields in the ‘Intercompany Setup’ page mean that you can set up the company for automatic creation of received intercompany transactions from intercompany partners, posted through the intercompany general journal.
Payment reconciliation journal – Preview Posting enabled – available April 2022
The payment reconciliation journal has been improved with the following capabilities:
- View fields for debits and credits on the footer of journals
- Preview before posting
Allow the sell-to and bill-to customers to be different for jobs – available April 2022
Support has been added for projects where the party that is receiving a service is different from the party that is paying the bill.
‘Sell-to’ and ‘Ship-to’ field groups have been added to the Jobs page. Existing jobs will be updated automatically, and these new fields will inherit values from the respective fields in the ‘Bill-to’ group that was already available.
Additionally, the ‘Your Reference’, ‘External Document No.’, ‘Payment Terms Code’, and ‘Payment Method Code’ fields are added to jobs and will be respected when you create invoices.
Block VAT and General Posting Setups – available April 2022
To support you in getting started fast, Business Central will show you notifications if you are missing general ledger (G/L) accounts in posting groups or posting setups, such as the ‘VAT/Tax Posting Setup’ page or the ‘General Posting Setup’ page. You can turn this on or off using the G/L accounts missing in posting group or setup notification in the ‘My Notifications’ page, which is part of the ‘My settings’ page.
Change default company bank account on sales and service documents – available April 2022
Companies today use multiple bank accounts at different banks, which reduces the costs of handling financial transactions, limits currency risks, and so on.
You can now set default bank accounts for companies, and for individual currencies, by choosing ‘Use as Default for Currency’ on the ‘Bank Account’ page.
Check documents and journals in while you work – available April 2022
If you administrator enables the ‘Feature: Check documents and journals while you work’ feature on the Feature Management page, Business Central will validate the data you enter on documents and journals while you work.
More control over deferrals posting – available April 2022
You can define periods during which you allow people to post deferrals for specific users on the ‘G/L Setup’ page, and for users on the ‘User Setup’ page by entering dates in the ‘Allow Deferral Posting From’ and ‘Allow Deferral Posting To’ fields. This lets people post deferral entries in a future period, even though the Allow Posting From/To fields block other entries.
Integrations and Connections Updates
Shopify connector – available April 2022
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is teaming up with Shopify to help our customers create a better online shopping experience.
Sync sales orders both ways in Business Central and Sales – available May 2022
You can now synchronize sales orders between Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales in both directions. For example, if a customer changes their mind about the product or quantity they ordered in Sales, you can automatically process the change to the order in Business Central by archiving the sales document and creating a new one. The same is true for changes in Business Central. For example, when prices, tax amounts, or expected shipment dates change, the changes are automatically synchronized to Sales. That helps keep your sellers up-to-date with the latest changes and the status of quotes and orders.
Find out more about Business Central and Sales here.
To enable synchronization of sales orders in both directions, choose the ‘Bidirectional Synch of Sales Orders’ field on either the ‘Dynamics 365 Connection Setup’ page or in the ‘Set up a connection to Dynamics 365 Sales’ assisted setup guide.
Enhancements to Microsoft Teams integration – available April 2022
- Easier app acquisition
- More workspace
Outlook add-in – add email attachments to Business Central records – available April 2022
The Outlook add-in now offers the option to copy email attachments to the record displayed in the add-in.
Share a file through OneDrive – available April 2022
To share a report from the Report Inbox or to share an attachment to a record, you can now choose the Share action. This action copies the file from Business Central to OneDrive for Business, then displays the file sharing dialog in Business Central with numerous options.
Reporting Updates
Bank Account Statement report – available April 2022
Bank reconciliation is a critical accounting task for most businesses because it helps make sure that everything is registered, and that the cash positions are correct. The ‘Bank Account Statement’ report on the posted bank reconciliations has been modified so it now shows a more detailed snapshot of the bank information as of the time when the bank reconciliation was posted. New fields, ‘G/L Balance’, ‘Outstanding Payments’, and ‘Checks’, make it easier to validate and audit.
New capabilities for financial reporting with account schedules – available April 2022
The presentation of financial reports is an important part of how people consume them. Financial reports can be generated using new capabilities for account schedules:
- You can print the Account Schedules report a landscape format.
- You can control how the number zero is printed (as “0”, “-“, or (blank)). When skipping zero-lines you can now keep Headers, Begin-totals, and End-Total in order to keep the schedules structure legible
- When you define account schedules, you can use G/L account categories as the Totalling filter for columns, and define whether to hide columns that don’t contain content
- The Account Schedules Overview now supports 15 columns to support viewing budgets for 12 months + a total
- You can export and import account schedules to or from files, which makes it easier to reuse them between companies
- Headings (Begin-totals) are now kept when printing to keep the structure of the account schedule. You can also choose to print lines marked as Show=No, which makes validating the account schedules easier to do when you’re designing them
New pages for report layout administration – available April 2022
A new page, ‘Report layouts’, provides users with an overview of the different available layouts for reports. Both built-in layouts and layouts that are uploaded by the user are listed here. On this page, the user can export layout files and upload new versions of report layouts.
‘The Report layout’ selection page has been changed to make it easy to set the default layout to be used for a report.
Use Excel to design layouts for reports – available April 2022
Excel layouts work the same way as Word and RDLC layouts in that they can be edited and saved back again into Business Central.
With Excel layouts for Business Central reports, users can now create and edit report layouts simply by using the full palette of capabilities in Excel such as sliders, diagrams, charts, and pivot tables.