Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central October Wave 2 Release: Functional Overview

Each year, Microsoft issues two major releases to ensure that there are constant improvements to Business Central

There are interesting enhancements coming in the product’s 2020 Wave 2 release, on both the functional and technical sides. Here, we explore some of the functional changes.

Company Hub

Accountant Hub, for external accountants, is planned to be deprecated in the latest release and in its place will be a Company Hub. Any data currently used in the Accountant Hub will need to be migrated to the Company Hub, so action will need to be taken ahead of this change to ensure a smooth transition.

Company Hub will be available for all users to gain KPI and task overviews for the companies to which they have access, across tenants, to increase efficiencies when working with many companies.

Global VAT Reporting

Group VAT reporting is planned to be introduced in this October’s release. Given that the VAT structure of small to medium businesses (SMBs) can be complex and require reporting at the group level, this news is most welcome. Based on the information provided to date, this will focus on ‘inter-group communication’, so it will be interesting to see whether intercompany transactions are utilised, consolidating VAT entries the same way as G/L entries or a new method entirely to allow VAT statements to be created at group level.

Consolidation file format support for D365 Finance

As mentioned above, business structures can be complex, and Business Central can assist with this. A common scenario is a subsidiary of a company which uses Business Central, but the consolidation of accounts is completed in Dynamics 365 Finance or Supply Chain Management. To reduce the need to transform file downloads, file format options for a Business Unit in Business Central will include options for Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management.

Auto-resolve Common Data Service conflicts

Business Central data can be synchronised to the Common Data Service. Bidirectional synchronisation, where data can be updated in either Business Central or the Common Data Service and the other system will update, can cause conflicts. This functionality will be enhanced to compare data at the mapped field level, rather than the row level, to reduce the number of conflicts to handle.

Bank Reconciliation Improvements

It is sometimes required to correct posted bank reconciliations and currently there are a variety of workarounds to accomplish this. Functionality to cancel a posted bank reconciliation is planned for the October release. With this new cancel functionality any required corrections, including correcting mistakes, can be actioned and the reconciliation reposted.

Along with this enhancement comes changes to employee ledger payments within the Payment Reconciliation Journal. There will now be the ability to have one-to-many matching, preview posting and separate number series and document numbers. New guides are also being provided to assist with these improvements, including setup recommendations.

Copy Journal Function

To assist with the task of posting accruals and reversing journals, there will be a new feature to allow for Journals to be copied with opposite signs and different posting dates and/or document numbers. This will be available in the General Journal and G/L Register pages. A real time-saver!

Notify Users of High Risk Changes

Currently, where a user has modification access to a table, they can amend the values within it. On modification, this can be recorded in the Change Log to keep track of these changes; however, it is sometimes important to be immediately informed of the changes that have happened, such as when amending bank details. This is planned in the next release where a list of fields will be able to be defined and notifications sent when they are modified.

Track Packages

Business Central has the ability to call into the online service which most shipping agents provide. In the next release, this will be available on additional sales documents to allow for items to be tracked more efficiently.

The new pages where this functionality will be added will be the Posted Sales Invoice, Posted Sales Credit Memo and Posted Return Receipt.