Dynamics 365 Business Central Tips and Tricks: Save Keystrokes and Time in Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud Part I

In this series of bi-monthly blogs, Western Computer shares our expertise with tips and tricks to help users work more efficiently in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Based on our more than 30 years in business—with 1,250+ solution implementations, including more than 350 in the cloud—we share the expertise we have accumulated to enable users to work as proficiently as possible. You can also subscribe to these blogs in our LinkedIn newsletter.

Are you looking for ways to work more efficiently in Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud? As you work through ledgers, journals, sales orders, purchase orders, and other pages, do you sense you might be wasting time?

It all comes down to reducing those keystrokes and mouse clicks. The less time you spend working through forms and inputting data, the more time you can focus on tasks that improve cash flow and give your executives the accurate, real-time financial data they need to run the business.

To help you and your accounting team save keystrokes and time in Dynamics 365 Business Central, I presented a webinar co-sponsored by the Dynamics User Group and MSDynamicsWorld. As members of these groups know, the Business Central community is a friendly place with lots of great resources and ideas to share.

Here are three areas of Business Central where I demonstrated how your accounting team can save keystrokes and work more efficiently:

Approval Workflows

Approval workflows save time by automating the process behind the scenes. Business Central provides several pre-built workflows you can adjust to the way your business handles approvals of new customers, sales orders, purchase orders, credit limits, and other transactions. You can also create custom approval workflows.

As users receive approval requests in their Role Center view, they have three choices: They can approve, reject, or delegate the approval to another user. A substitute can be defined to proactively set up automatic delegation when an approver is out of the office. The Approval Administrator can provide further backup with a view into the status of all approval requests and who is responsible for any open requests.

Within a workflow, you can set restrictions, such as blocking an invoice from being posted until the new customer or vendor has been approved. Another neat trick is setting up approver chains, which are helpful when some items can be approved by lower-level employees while others require approvals by managers or higher.

For example, if it’s an approval for a Purchase Invoice, you can allow frontline personnel to approve up to $5,000 while requiring managers to approve if the request is for more than $5,000.

Personalized Views

Personalization saves time by allowing each user to set up their preferences for how they view Business Central pages. These adjustments include what fields are visible, the order in which fields are shown and whether or not to include the field in the Quick Entry path. The personalizations that are applied are only seen by that user—no one else is affected.

You can hide unnecessary fields to create more space to view the fields that matter most to you. For example, if your organization only transacts in US dollars, you can hide the Currency Code in the General Journal. You can also bring back fields and columns if the information you need to see changes. If you manage transactions for multiple businesses, you don’t have to set up personalization in each company - the personalized views you create will be applied to all companies within the same Business Central environment.

Another helpful capability comes from personalizing the line area on document pages. This includes where you place the <Freeze Panes> column and removing fields from the Quick Entry path whose values are populated by default.

Corrections to Posted Documents

When there’s a need to correct a document that has already been posted, Business Central gives you three options: <Cancel> for negating a document, which I refer to as the un-do button; <Correct> for revising a document; and <Create Corrective Credit Memo>, which is based on the original invoice and allows a user to choose the Posting Date, lines and amounts to be credited.

For example, use <Cancel> for an invoice posted to the wrong vendor. Since you won’t receive a credit memo, the invoice just needs to be backed out. The cancellation will create a credit memo to negate the posted invoice, apply it to the posted invoice and post the credit memo.

When data is wrong, such as an incorrect amount on one line within a document that has many lines, use <Correct>. This will automatically create a credit memo to negate the posted invoice, apply it to the posted invoice, post the credit memo, and bring the data from the posted invoice into a new invoice page. If using this feature on a Posted Purchase Invoice, be sure to enter one or more characters in the Vendor Invoice No. field to differentiate it from the previously posted invoice.

With the <Create Corrective Credit Memo> for a customer, you begin with the data from the posted invoice and are able to modify the document prior to posting. This is useful when a correction is needed to a document that was posted in a period that is now closed because the credit memo’s Posting Date can be changed to a date within the Allowed Posting From and To Dates. You can also change the quantity and/or amount on the lines.

To Learn More 

To learn more about saving keystrokes and time in Business Central Cloud, check out Holly’s webinar where she takes you through screenshot demos and provides additional tips to work more efficiently. Also watch for more tips in upcoming blogs by Holly in this series on Dynamics 365 Business Central Tips and Tricks.

If you have specific questions, just contact Western Computer today. We’re here to help you reduce all those keystrokes and mouse clicks along with designing, deploying, and supporting your Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions. 

Western Computer offers deep expertise across the Microsoft technology stack, particularly in Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud. Our thought leaders can help you ensure your critical ERP application meets your business needs for today and beyond. For more information on how to make corrections in Business Central, or for help in designing, deploying or supporting your Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution, contact Western Computer today.