Welcome to Dynamics 365 Business Central
Business Central is a business management solution for small and mid-sized organizations that automates and streamlines business processes and helps you manage your business. Highly adaptable and rich with features, Business Central enables companies to manage their business, including finance, manufacturing, sales, shipping, project management, services, and more. Companies can easily add functionality that is relevant to the region of operation, and that is customized to support even highly specialized industries.
Overview
Business Central is fast to implement, easy to configure, and simplicity guides innovations in product design, development, implementation, and usability. In the navigation panel to the left, you can find information about using Business Central in your company.
The following sections point to key articles that can help you get familiar with Business Central.
Business Processes
1. Getting Started
2. Setting up Business Central
3. Working with Business Central
4. Administration
5. Business Process Walkthroughs
6. Application Design Details
7. Customize Business Central
Business Functionalities
- Finance
- Sales
- Purchasing
- Inventory
- Project Management
- Fixed Assets Overview
- Relationship Management
- Human Resources
- Production Planning
- Assembly Management
- Manufacturing
- Warehouse Management
- Service Management
- General Business Functionality
- Local Functionality
1. Getting Started with Dynamics 365 Business Central
In Business Central, some things will be familiar to you, and other things might be unfamiliar. For some quick, nice-to-know tricks, see:
• Find things
This topic describes how Tell Me can help you quickly go to things like actions, pages, or reports, find information about how to complete a particular task, and discover additional apps and consulting services for Business Central.
- Finding an Action on the Current Page
- Finding a Page or a Task
- Finding a Report or Archived Information
• Searching, Filtering, and Sorting Lists
Sorting makes it easy for you to get a quick overview of your data. For example, if you have many customers, you could sort them by Customer No., Currency Code, or Country Region Code to get the overview you need.
To sort a list, you can either:
- Choose a column heading text to toggle between ascending and descending order, or
- Choose the drop-down arrow in the column heading, then choose the Ascending or Descending.
Searching at the top of each list page, there’s a Search action that provides a quick and easy way to reduce the records in a list and display only those records that contain the data that you’re interested in seeing. To search, just choose the Search action, and then in the box, type the text that you’re looking for. You can enter letters, numbers, and other symbols. In general, search will attempt to match text across all fields. It doesn’t distinguish between uppercase and lowercase characters (case insensitive) and will match text placed anywhere in the field, at the beginning, end, or in the middle.
• Entering Data
- Working with editable fields
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Accelerating Data Entry Using Quick Entry
- Mandatory Fields
- Finding Data As You Type
- Copying and Pasting FAQ Fields and Lines
- Filtering Line Items
- Focusing on Line Items
- Switching the Focus On and Off
- Multitasking Across Multiple Pages
- Entering Quantities by Calculation
- Entering Dates and Times
2. Setting Up Business Central
Business Central includes standard configurations for most business processes, but you can change the configuration to suit the needs of your organization. For example, your chart of accounts is prefilled with a number of posting accounts ready for use. You can, of course, change the chart of accounts to suit your needs.
Some functionality, either general or for specific business processes, can be set up manually in addition to the assisted setup guide. The following lists some of functionality that you can set up manually.
To: |
See: |
| Set up payment methods, currencies, and the chart of accounts, and define rules and defaults for managing financial transactions. | Setting Up Finance |
| Set up your own and your vendors’ bank accounts and enable services for importing and exporting bank files. | Setting Up Banking |
| Configure the rules and values that define your company’s sales policies, register new customers, and set up how you communicate with customers. | Setting Up Sales |
| Configure the rules and values that define your company’s purchasing policies, register new vendors, and prioritize your vendors for payment processing. | Setting Up Purchasing |
| Configure the rules and values that define the company’s inventory policies, set up locations if you keep inventory in multiple warehouses, and categorize your items to improve searching and sorting . | Setting Up Inventory |
| Set up resources, time sheets, and jobs to manage projects. | Setting Up Project Management |
| Configure how to insure, maintain, and depreciate fixed assets, and how you record the costs of fixed assets in your company books. | Setting Up Fixed Assets |
| Define the general rules and values for warehouse processes and the specific handling at each location. | Setting Up Warehouse Management |
| Prepare production BOMs and routings to define how end items are produced, and prepare machine or work centers to perform the required operations. | Setting Up Manufacturing |
| Establish standard services, symptoms, and fault codes and set up the service items, resources, and documentation needed to provide service to your customers. | Setting Up Service Management |
| Read best practices for setting items up for up inventory costing and supply planning. | Setting Up Complex Application Areas Using Best Practices |
| Improve the quality of implementation and shorten deployment time by using a toolset for setting up a new company using wizards, templates, worksheets, and customer questionnaires. | Setting Up a Company With RapidStart Services |
| Transfer customers, vendors, inventory, and bank accounts information from another system into Business Central | Importing Business Data from Other Finance Systems. |
| Use Business Central Outlook add-ins to see financial data related to customers and vendors or create and send financial documents, such as quotes and invoices. | Using Business Central as Your Business Inbox in Outlook |
| Get insights into your Business Central data with Power BI and the Business Central content packs. | Enabling Your Business Data for Power BI |
| Use your Business Central data as part of a workflow in Power Automate. | Using Business Central in an Automated Workflow |
| Make your Business Central data available as a data source in Power Apps. | Connecting to Your Business Central Data to Build a Business App Using Power Apps |
| Use dedicated Quickbooks migration guides. | Changing from a QuickBooks App to Business Central |
| Access your Business Central data from your mobile device. | Getting Business Central on Your Mobile Device |
| Do bulk invoicing of appointments created in Bookings. | Bulk Invoicing for Microsoft Bookings |
| Set up an SMTP server to enable e-mail communication in and out of Business Central | Set Up Email Manually or Using the Assisted Setup |
| Set up unique identification codes for records, such as cards, documents, and journal lines, to track them in the system. | Create Number Series |
| Set up and assign a base calendar to your company and its business partners, such as customers, vendors, or locations. Delivery and receipt dates on future sales order, purchase order, transfer order, and production order lines are then calculated according to the calendar’s specified working days. | Set Up Base Calendars |
3. Working with Business Central
When performing business tasks, you interact with data in different ways, such as creating records and entering data, sorting and filtering data, writing notes, and outputting data to other applications. For example, you can adjust the size and position of any page, expand the width of columns and increase the height of column headers, and change the sorting of data in columns. And if you want to use the horizontal scroll bar to view all columns on a list page or on document lines, you will see that there is a vertical freeze pane to restrict some columns from scrolling.
To: |
See: |
| Find a specific page, report, action, help topic, or partner extension. | Finding Pages and Information with Tell Me |
| Get an overview of pages for your role and for other roles and navigate to pages. | Finding Pages with the Role Explorer |
| Filter data in views, reports, or functions by using special symbols and characters. | Sorting, Searching, and Filtering Lists |
| Learn the many general functions that help you enter data in a quick and easy way. | Entering Data |
| Learn how to quickly copy and paste data including by using keyboard shortcuts. | Copying and Pasting FAQ |
| View or process data in specific date ranges. | Working with Calendar Dates and Times |
| See which fields must be filled in. | Detecting Mandatory Fields |
| Understand how the computer locale affects the user interface and the Help site and how to change the language. | Changing Language and Locale |
| Learn how to interact with Excel from practically anywhere in Business Central | Viewing and Editing in Excel |
| Attach files, add links, or write notes on cards and documents. | Manage Attachments, Links, and Notes on Cards and Documents |
| Change basic settings such as company, work date, and Role Centre. | Change Basic Settings |
| Get notified about certain events or changes in status, such as when you are about to invoice a customer who has an overdue balance. | Manage Notifications |
| Change which and where UI elements are shown to fit your preferences. | Personalize Your Workspace |
| Define, preview, print, or save reports and define and run batch jobs. | Working with Reports, Batch Jobs, and XMLports |
| Manage the content and format of reports and documents, including which data fields of a report dataset appear on the report and how they are arranged, text style, images, and more. | Managing Report and Document Layouts |
| Learn about features and capabilities that make Business Central readily available to people with disabilities. | Accessibility and Keyboard Shortcuts |
4. Administration
Central administration tasks are usually performed by one role in the company. The scope of these tasks can depend on the company’s size and the administrator’s job responsibilities. These tasks can include managing database synchronization of job and email queues, setting up users, and customizing the user interface. Entering the correct setup values from the start is important to the success of any new business software. Business Central includes a number of setup guides that help you set up core data. The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them.
To: |
See: |
| Define who can sign in to Business Central by creating users on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center according to the product licenses. | Create Users According to Licenses |
| Assign permissions to users, modify permission sets, and group users for easy permission management. | Assign Permissions to Users and Groups |
| Add users, manage permissions and access to data, assign roles. | Manage Profiles |
| Manage user settings, such as company, role, language, region and time zone. | User Settings |
| Set up printers and specify which reports to print on which printers. | Set Up Printers |
| Classify data sensitivities for fields so that you can respond to requests from data subjects related to their personal data. | Classifying Data Sensitivity |
| Respond to requests from data subjects related to their personal data. | Responding to Requests About Personal Data |
| Set up a new business unit using templates | Creating New Companies |
| Track all direct modifications that users make to data in the database to identify the origin of errors and data changes. | Logging Changes |
| Enter single or recurring requests to run reports or codeunits. | Using Job Queues to Schedule Tasks |
| Manage, delete, or compress documents | Deleting Documents |
| Expose pages, codeunits, and queries as web services. | Publishing a Web Service |
| As a part of creating Connect apps between Business Central and 3rd-party solutions through REST APIs, define templates that are used to populate empty properties on an entity when you create a POST action through an API. | Configuring API Templates |
| Encrypt data on the Business Central server by generating new or importing existing encryption keys that you enable on the server. | Managing Data Encryption |
| Connect Dynamics 365 Sales with Business Central to obtain seamless integration between customer relations and order processing in the lead-to-cash process. | Integrating with Dynamics 365 Sales |
| Change which fields and actions are shown in the user interface to fit your company’s business processes and extend the solution with apps. | Customizing Business Central |
| Monitor usage and troubleshoot sessions. | Environment Telemetry in the Business Central administration center |
| Manage user sessions, including canceling a session if the user is blocked. | Managing Sessions |
5. Business Process Workflows
This selection of workflows provides step-by-step, end-to-end business processes that you can perform using the CRONUS International Ltd. demonstration company. The walkthroughs consist of multiple procedures, some of which would normally be performed by one user, while others incorporate several different user roles. In order to simulate the working environment, some of the walkthroughs contain setup steps necessary to complete the exercises as described. These steps can provide insight into the kind of information users need to share with their company’s IT professionals. The walkthroughs are complete scenarios and should be performed from beginning to end for the greatest benefit.
To: |
See: |
| Set up a marketing campaign. | Walkthrough: Conducting a Sales Campaign |
| Use prepayments to manage part payments for sales and purchases. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Setting Up and Invoicing Sales Prepayments |
| Set up approval users, when and how the users receive notification about approval workflows, and then modify and enable the relevant approval workflow. | Walkthrough: Setting Up and Using a Purchase Approval Workflow |
| Put received items away in basic warehouse configurations. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Receiving and Putting Away in Basic Warehouse Configurations |
| Put received items away in advanced warehouse configurations. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Receiving and Putting Away in advanced warehouse configurations |
| Plan supply orders to fulfill demand manually. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Planning Supplies Manually |
| Plan supply orders to fulfill demand automatically. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Planning Supplies Automatically |
| Assemble and ship items that are customized on the sales order. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Selling, Assembling, and Shipping Kits |
| Plan a project, from start to finish. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Managing Projects with Jobs |
| Report on the costs of a project. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Calculating Work in Process for a Job |
| Pick items for shipment in basic warehouse configurations. Requires complete sample data | Walkthrough: Picking and Shipping in Basic Warehouse Configurations |
| Perform defects management. Requires complete sample data | Perform defects management. Requires complete sample data |
6. Design Details
This content contains detailed technical information about complex application features in Business Central. Design details content is aimed at implementers, developers, and super users who need deeper insight to implement, customize, or set up the features in question.
To: |
See: |
| Learn how the planning system works and how to adjust the algorithms to meet planning requirements in different environments. | Design Details: Supply Planning |
| Understand mechanisms in the costing engine, such as costing method and cost adjustment, and which accounting principles they are designed for. | Design Details: Inventory Costing |
| Learn about central principles behind advanced and basic warehouse features and how they integrate with other supply chain features. | Design Details: Warehouse Management |
| Learn about historic and the current design of item tracking functionality and how it integrates with the reservation system to include serial/lot numbers in availability calculations. | Design Details: Item Tracking |
| Learn about the General Journal Posting Line feature, including recent simplifications to the design of code unit 12. | Design Details: General Journal Post Line |
| Learn about the design for storing and posting dimensions, including code examples on how to migrate and upgrade dimension code. | Design Details: Dimension Set Entries |
7. Customize Business Central
There are different ways to customize the application to give your Company access to the features, functionality, and data that you need most, in a manner that bests suits your Company and your daily work. Those who see the changes will depend on what you do, as described in this table.
What you can do |
Description |
Who sees the changes |
More information |
| Change users’ workspace by customizing their assigned role. | Change the user interface for a profile (role) so that all users of that role see a customized workspace. Control and manage users’ personalization by disabling the ability to personalize pages and clearing any page personalization. | All users in a specific company. | Customize Pages for Profiles |
| Change which UI elements are visible. | The Experience setting determines how much of the functionality is displayed in the user interface. Choose between Essential and Premium. | All users in a specific company. | Change Which Features are Displayed |
| Enable colours on Role Centres to signal importance. | Set up Cues that appear on users’ Role Centres to include an indicator that changes colour based on the values in the Cues. | All users in a specific company. | Set Up a Coloured Indicator on Cues |
| Install an extension | Extensions are like small applications that add functionality, change behaviour, provide access to new online services, and more. For example, Microsoft provides an extension that provides integration with PayPal Payments Standard. | All users in all companies. | Customizing Using Extensions |