Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) is often the central transaction system for an organization. As such, it needs to be a trusted source of information for the daily operations and reporting. So, ensuring Business Central data is clean is essential to being a trusted resource.

Following his recent UST Education session, our CEO, Andrew Good, will explore the various Business Central resources and techniques to ensure your data starts and remains clean.

And that trusted data is based on a couple of critical areas:  

1. Ensuring the setup data is correct and keeping it clean, and when you have transactions, making sure that those flow through, have the information they need, and are gathering it as they proceed through the business.
2. Having the tools to fix issues when they arise.

This blog will address:

• The various data sources and techniques to ensure the data starts and remains clean.
• Tools to correct transactions when things go wrong.

Andrew will share some techniques to keep your static and transaction data clean. He'll also discuss correcting transactions if they go wrong in Business Central. Because we're going to review several different areas, we're not going to get into any area in depth, but you will walk away with a sense of how you can set things up and keep things under control.

Overview of Business Central: A Brief Introduction

Business Central is an all-encompassing business management solution designed to streamline operations and enhance efficiency for small to medium-sized enterprises. It integrates various business processes, providing finance, sales, customer service, and supply chain management tools. Business Central enables organizations to make informed decisions, improve productivity, and foster growth by unifying these functions.

Business Central has a rich history dating back to the 1980s. Over the years, it has undergone significant evolution, starting as a single-user version. As Windows evolved in 1995, Microsoft acquired The Vision and rebranded it as part of its suite of ERP solutions in 2005. The most significant evolution came in 2018 with the introduction of Business Central, a game-changer for businesses, and the simultaneous introduction of NAV to take it to the cloud.

This evolution is crucial for you to understand, as it sets the context for the current capabilities of Business Central.

The result was that Business Central was on premises for legacy customers hosted in the cloud through data centers and private hosting or as a software-as-a-service solution (SaaS), or the cloud as we now refer to it. In 2023, many things happened. The ecosystem has continued to grow from both a user and a partner perspective. Microsoft introduced AI to Business Central last year, and the ecosystem has exploded with apps that fill in the gaps with Business Central, which is good at providing base functionality.

The Flexibility of Business Central

Organizations may have unique needs related to multi-company manufacturing or specific needs such as Food and Beverage. For instance, a manufacturing company might need to track production across multiple locations, or a Food and Beverage company might require specific inventory management features. Some apps address these differences between the base product and your needs.

If we look at critical static data that you would have in Business Central, there's a lot of setup information, such as General Ledger sales, purchasing, manufacturing, inventory, and warehouse.

Then, you must consider those accessing the system, so user setup is essential. What permissions do they have within the system?

For example, we can start with Finance and consider various functional areas in the system. We have critical base data such as our chart of accounts and the dimensions used within Business Central posting groups. These are the background tables that record a payment from a customer. What balance sheet account has the payment hit? How does that flow into the General Ledger set up in the background so that users don't have to pick GL accounts on a transaction-by-transaction basis?

As we move away from Finance and look at some of the other operational areas of the system, we will have customers, vendors, items, and bills of material routings. We also have work centers, machine centers, and work center groups.

That makes for a considerable amount of data you want to store correctly initially and continually as time passes.

Your organization's chart of accounts might morph. You may need to adjust your chart of accounts by adding new accounts or dimensions. You may want to gather information in a more detailed fashion, so there might be several changes you wish to make related to dimensions.

The intent here is not to get into the dimensions in significant detail but from a Business Central perspective. You might have a typical chart of accounts where transactions flow and accumulate underneath those accounts in the General Ledger and its entries.

Dimensions are the ability of Business Central to stamp additional characteristics on each transaction. Those additional characteristics your team may have worked with when they had a segmented chart of accounts represent the various segments.

Business Central provides tremendous flexibility to accumulate data so that you can go back and look at how your organization is performing. But suppose you're going to analyze the data down the road. In that case, you want to ensure that people aren't adjusting a chart of accounts, changing an account number, adding new dimensions, or blocking dimensions without your control.

With these things under control, you start to have Clean Master Data or static data that you can trust.

Maximizing Efficiency with Microsoft Business Central

A robust ERP system like Microsoft Business Central is crucial in today's fast-paced business environment. This powerful tool helps manage static and transactional data, ensuring your operations run smoothly and efficiently. Here's how Business Central can benefit your business and why it stands out as a top choice for managing complex business processes.

Managing Static Data

Comprehensive Setup: Business Central allows you to manage extensive static data, including pricing locations, warehouse descriptions, and more. This static data forms the foundation upon which dynamic business processes are built.

Project and Service Management: Business Central integrates project management and service management functionalities, streamlining various aspects of your business operations.

Handling Transaction Data

Versatile Journals: Business Central offers a range of journals to manage different types of transactions. These include:

• Financial and General Journals: For recording standard financial transactions.
• Recurring General Journals: For repetitive financial entries.
• Fixed Asset Journals: For managing asset transactions.
• Sales and Purchase Journals: For sales and purchase-related entries.
• Manufacturing Journals: For consuming and outputting manufacturing components.
• Item and Warehouse Journals: For inventory adjustments and warehouse management.

Transaction Tracking: Sales orders, purchase orders, and production orders in Business Central automatically build and post journals in the background, ensuring comprehensive transaction tracking and accuracy.

Key Tools and Controls

Role Centers: Each user in Business Central is assigned a role, providing a customized interface relevant to their specific tasks. That ensures users have access to the tools they need without unnecessary complexity.

Workflows for Data Validation: Business Central's workflow functionality helps validate data setup for customers, vendors, and items. It ensures data integrity and smooth operations. For example, setting up a vendor approval workflow ensures no one can engage a vendor until their setup is fully approved, maintaining data accuracy.

Permissions Management: Business Central allows you to control user access through permission sets and security groups. That ensures that users have the appropriate access based on their roles, maintaining data security and compliance.

Dimensions and Data Integrity

Setting Up Dimensions: Business Central allows the setup of multiple dimensions to characterize transactions. These dimensions help categorize data meaningfully, enhancing reporting and analysis capabilities.

Default Values and Gatekeeper Rules: By setting up default values and gatekeeper rules, you ensure that all necessary data characteristics are present before posting transactions to the general ledger. That prevents errors and maintains data integrity.

Validation Rules: Business Central allows you to establish validation rules to prevent invalid data combinations. It ensures that only accurate and relevant data enters your system, simplifying reconciliation and reporting processes.

Benefits of Business Central

Integration with Dynamics 365: Business Central integrates seamlessly with other Dynamics 365 applications, offering a comprehensive solution for mid-sized organizations.

Enhanced User Experience: The intuitive interface and role-specific dashboards make Business Central user-friendly, reducing the learning curve and increasing productivity.

Scalability and Flexibility: Whether you operate on-premises or in the cloud, Business Central scales with your business needs, providing the flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions.

Optimizing Business Operations with Microsoft Business Central

Microsoft Business Central provides a robust ERP solution for businesses looking to enhance operational efficiency and ensure data integrity. This platform offers comprehensive tools to manage static and transactional data effectively, ensuring your business runs smoothly. Here's how Business Central can benefit your organization:

Ensuring Data Integrity

Defining Dimensions and Gatekeeper Rules

Defining dimensions and setting gatekeeper rules, essentially mandatory checks for data accuracy, are essential to maintaining accurate records. For example, if you're dealing with inventory, you might require an item type code for every transaction. By setting this as a gatekeeper rule, any transaction missing this dimension will prompt the user to correct it, ensuring consistency and accuracy. The advantage is that once set on an item, this information flows seamlessly into transactions, reducing the need for manual entry.

Master Data Management - Synchronizing Data Across Entities

If your organization operates across multiple legal entities, such as international branches, master data synchronization is vital. Business Central allows you to set up a parent company with standardized charts of accounts, dimensions, and other data. This data can then be synchronized across all local companies, ensuring consistency. For example, a client with 47 companies uses this feature to keep their data in sync, making consolidation processes much more efficient.

Correcting Data and Ensuring Accuracy

Dimension Corrections

Mistakes happen, and Business Central provides tools for corrections when someone records data incorrectly. The Dimension Correction tool, a feature that allows you to update previously posted entries, ensures your records remain accurate. This tool is crucial for maintaining the integrity of your financial and operational data, as it allows you to correct any errors without compromising the accuracy of your records.

Audit Trails and Transaction Reversal

Business Central maintains a sequential ledger for all transactions, providing a complete audit trail. If a transaction is incorrect, you can reverse and replace it, ensuring transparency and accuracy in your records. For instance, if a sales transaction was recorded incorrectly, you can use the Transaction Reversal feature to reverse the entry and replace it with the correct one, maintaining the accuracy of your records. This feature is particularly useful in maintaining compliance and accountability.

Practical Tools for Data Management

Workflows for Data Validation

Workflows in Business Central help validate data setup, ensuring the correct configuration of customers, vendors, and items in the system. For example, a vendor approval workflow prevents using a new vendor until the setup is fully approved, maintaining data integrity from the start.

Permissions and Security

User access control is essential for data security. Business Central uses permission sets and security groups to manage user access based on their roles, ensuring users have the appropriate access while maintaining data security.

Real-World Applications

Managing Complex Transactions

For businesses involved in manufacturing, Business Central handles complex transactions like production orders. A release production order allows you to manage the production process, from component consumption to final output. This feature ensures that you can track and record all aspects of production accurately.

Keeping Data Clean

Timely Review and Validation

Regular review and validation of transactions are crucial for data accuracy. With Business Central's proactive approach, you can set up workflows and validation rules to ensure all necessary data characteristics are present before posting transactions. This proactive approach empowers you to prevent errors and maintain the integrity of your data.

At Liberty Grove, we have one client in the manufacturing area where about three different departments touch a given item (or four!), so the engineering department sets up the new item. When they're ready for approval, it goes from engineering to the production department to purchasing, and then ultimately, finance reviews everything and completes the approval process.

So, in that case, the client has four levels of approval before that item is used. That focus on control has paid dividends since they implemented a rigorous process and control in and around the item approval process.

At Liberty Grove, our CRM system spans both countries that we work in, and we have one CRM entity, but in the background, we have two legal entities for the transactions. One of the ways to set up a template effectively in Business Central is to set up a recurring journal.

You can establish setup templates in Business Central for customers and items, allowing you to have different types of customers, such as service or parts customers. You can set up templates, and they will populate your typical choices.

And lastly, timely review of transactions. You can resolve an issue and revisit the business process if you find it. Root cause analysis is crucial. Consider this technique when you're running into problems in your system.

Keeping Business Central Current

Microsoft updates Business Central significantly twice a year and in a minor way another ten times a year, meaning there is a monthly update to your system when you're in the cloud. It's in the background, and Microsoft manages it. Additionally, you can schedule when to upgrade your sandbox, which is your test environment, versus your production environment.

Microsoft's learning environment has evolved significantly, and there are a couple of tools related to workflows. In addition, there are tools for dimension corrections and master data management available in Microsoft Learn.

The principles and the concepts of clean data apply to any system you're working with, whether it be CRM or accounting. If you have control of your static data and limit access to those who can access, approve, or change it, you know your transactions are trustworthy. You're in an excellent spot to move forward, consider your techniques for dealing with exceptions when they occur, and make necessary changes.

Conclusion

Microsoft Business Central offers a comprehensive solution that meets all your needs for managing complex business operations. With its robust tools for data management, synchronization, and correction, you can ensure data integrity and operational efficiency.

Business Central is a powerful tool designed to manage complex business processes efficiently. By ensuring accurate static and transactional data, providing robust controls and workflows, and offering flexible user permissions, Business Central helps businesses maintain data integrity and operational efficiency.

Investing in Business Central means embracing a future-proof solution that supports informed decision-making and drives business success.

Is Your Business Central Data Clean and Optimized?

Liberty Grove can help you make the most of Business Central to ensure your organization's productivity, efficiency, and profitability.

Contact Liberty Grove for a complimentary consultation on how its experts can help you ensure your data in Business Central is clean and easy to analyze and understand so you can make informed business decisions.

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About the author

Liberty Grove Software is an established Microsoft Partner that focuses on providing customers with sales, service, and support for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central/NAV solutions and training and upgrades.

Over more than 25 years, Liberty Grove has assisted hundreds of customers with businesses ranging from small to mid-sized to Microsoft Partners in implementing, training, customization, and upgrading Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions.

The organization is one of only a few companies worldwide that Microsoft recognizes as qualified to provide Business Central/NAV Upgrade Service Centers.