Dynamics 365 2023 Wave 1 Release Highlights: ERP

Twice a year, Microsoft announces new features and updates across their Dynamics 365 platform. Here, our team have picked out some ERP highlights from the 2023 Wave 1 release, bringing you the bits they think you should be keeping your eyes peeled for.

Dynamics 365 Finance

Core financials

The introduction of an archiving facility for General Ledger (GL) data will move data from ‘History’ to ‘Archive’. Don’t panic, though – it can be reversed back to historic if needed, and archived data can still be reported on using Power BI. The most notable benefit of this change is the significant reduction in storage capacity, meaning cost savings (plus, it’s better for the environment!).

Meanwhile, financial tags will bring additional reporting information against GL entries. These tags can be added during data entry, such as the accounts payable invoice entry stage. This then appears in the GL for reporting or reconciliation purposes, helping central finance functions. The use of tags is similar to financial dimensions, but with the added benefit of being able to use one-off values.

Wave 1 2023 also brings accounts payable automation to Dynamics 365 Finance. Enhancements to the previously introduced OCR and AI functionality, now mean non-PO invoices and journals can be processed. Enhancements to the matching process now mean the full end-to-end process can be automated. For the techies, administrators can introduce new models to increase the confidence score and aid the AI with its learning.

The recently introduced finance analytical reporting is also set to be enhanced with its own ‘hub’. Here, role-based security can be activated, and it’ll be easier for users to design and share reports.

Globalisation

Microsoft have extended their out-of-the-box localisations to more countries, with 51 countries/regions and 57 languages now represented. Building on the recently introduced Globalisation Studio, it’s now easier to update current practices as regulatory changes are made by governments.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Inventory and logistics

This year’s enhancements to the shipping containers will let users enter PO numbers. For the voyage, this processing can now be scheduled as a batch job and releases the user to move on to other work.

In addition, archiving functionality for inventory transaction and sales orders is being introduced, bringing with it storage and cost savings. However, archived data can still be reported on.

Meanwhile, product pricing is being enhanced for sales managers; the changes made will allow them to manage omnichannel selling prices by setting price attributes on customer, product, and order segments.

There’s also good news for finance teams, with two enhancements to help attribute freight costs at a more detailed level: multi-segment scheduled route can have the freight costs apportioned, while multi-voyage shipments can be assigned multiple cost type codes. These two changes can lead to more detailed analysis of the profitability of products/customer/region combinations.

Finance teams are also gaining the ability to set the item sales tax group at the released product variant level – a huge help where tax authorities have different rates for the same product. Setting the item tax rate will aid at the point of data entry for sales and purchase orders.

Manufacturing

Material availability is being enhanced to help production supervisors and schedulers, while maintenance teams now have a new mobile experience for asset management, with additional functionality leading to less downtime and reduced costs.

Planning

Manufacturers can now switch to Planning Optimization for master planning, significantly reducing the time required to run material requirements planning (MRP) jobs.

Dynamics 365 Business Central

Synchronise records between companies

Arguably one of the most exciting features about to make its way in to Business Central is the ability to synchronise master data records such as customers and vendors between companies, along with customer setup values. For Business Central customers with multiple legal entities, where they need the same data across a group of companies, this is a fantastic feature that often required either an ISV app or development to achieve the automatic synchronisation.

Power Platform

The new release includes further Power Platform capabilities which demonstrates the benefits of being part of the Dynamics 365 suite of applications. Users will have access to several new templates for Power Automate flows and will be able to embed Power Automate flows into conversations in Microsoft Teams, allowing for rich conversations with valuable insights.

Application

Accountants and finance officers will have better control over how they adjust exchange rates by previewing entries before they are posted and specifying a preference for details or summarising adjustment entry postings in the GL.

The Wave 1 feature release also includes flexibility in specifying substitute posting groups for certain non-standard transactions, and improvements to the Company Hub page, allowing admins to add user-specific settings. In addition, complex steps and tasks for intercompany posting setup have now been consolidated into a single page.

The audit process for general entries review has now been streamlined to allow users to reconcile and mark GL account entries as ‘reviewed’.

User experience

Users will be able to work more efficiently by dragging supporting files already at hand onto the file upload dialogue in Business Central, rather than navigating through folders in the file picker window.

Like other Microsoft 365 applications such as Word and Excel, users can quickly explore, navigate and activate any action in the action bar, navigation menus and other user interface elements by pressing the Alt key.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources

General

Wave 1 2023 will make it easier to integrate D365 HR with learning management providers to record each employee’s training activities. This will enable an end-to-end scenario of assigning online training to an employee for companies using a wide range of partner-learning management systems.

Features include:

• Setting up virtual courses with links to course content
• Viewing courses by type and status in the employee self-service workspace
• Mass assignment of courses from multiple systems
• Purpose-built learning APIs for integration

There is also a new integration between HR and Project Operations (non-stocked) that will help the resource planning function with new starters/leavers, as well as skills and certificate updates.

Leave and absence

With a new flexible management of employee leave feature comes:

• Open-ended leave, allowing employees, managers and HR to submit leave requests with an estimated return date while creating a leave request, with the ability to confirm return date at a later point in time
• Return to work notice, enabling organisations to require documentation from employees when returning to work after a specific type of absence
• Inclusion of weekends and holidays, providing organisations with the flexibility to include weekends and holidays as part of employee leave requests for certain leave types
• Hide leave balances, giving organisations the flexibility of hiding leave balances for certain leave types
• The are also additional enhancements to flexibility of managing and approving leave of absence requests and in mandating attachments

Benefits management

Redesigned bulk actions enquiry will simplify the user experience by providing bulk editing capabilities in benefits management.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations

This wave brings a number of enhancements to improve project operations processes for non-stocked environments, including:

• Importing project plans from the Microsoft Project desktop client (for the techies, the API is open, so this can also be achieved from other external sources)
• Project budgeting and forecasting to help project managers create and monitor against budgets or latest forecasts

There are also enhancements to improve project operations processes for stocked or production environments, including:

• Subscription billing introduced to the projects module
• Functionality to cancel a PO receipt with item requirements – this will reverse the item packing slips, as well as the project transactions
• Project invoices can be approved in bulk; this applies to both scenarios
  

Dynamics 365 Cross-App Capabilities

Finance and Operations

Dual-write

There are lots of updates in this space, with more countries available and installation improvements from Microsoft Dynamics Life Cycle Services (LCS), as well as performance improvements.

Dataverse

Simplified access to the Microsoft Dataverse via Finance and Operations apps will enable greater use of Power Platform capabilities within F&O.