Authored by Steve Dyble
Senior Dynamics 365 Consultant
The 2024 Release Wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Business Central brings a comprehensive set of upgrades aimed at enhancing business operations, data analysis, and platform integrations. These enhancements streamline processes, offer greater flexibility, and boost efficiency across various business areas. Below are the standout features and improvements in this latest release:
Shipping Information Mapping
One of the key updates is the ability to precisely map shipping charges from Shopify. By utilising G/L accounts, items, or item charges, businesses can customise their shipping processes for better financial accuracy. This ensures that shipping fees align with organisational financial strategies, improving both flexibility and precision in financial reporting.
Enhanced Ad Hoc Analysis for Fixed Assets, Projects, and Services
The release introduces revolutionary capabilities for real-time data analysis. Users can group, summarise, and pivot data on fixed assets and projects without needing formal reports. Pre-built queries allow for streamlined access to key insights, enabling businesses to analyse transactions against asset classes, locations, and depreciation schedules to better understand asset performance and project viability.
Expanded Out-of-the-Box Power BI Reports
Business Central now offers an enriched collection of embedded Power BI reports covering finance, sales, inventory, and projects. With 14 reports for finance and 12 for sales, along with others for areas like manufacturing, these reports provide actionable insights directly from the system, driving better decision-making and business performance.
Simplified Income Statement Creation
The update includes customisable templates for income statements, simplifying the process of generating comprehensive financial reports. This enhancement breaks down revenues, expenses, and profits, giving businesses the insights needed to track their financial health more accurately and efficiently.
Subscriptions and Revenue & Expense Recognition
Business Central now offers enhanced management of subscriptions and automates revenue and expense recognition processes. The system supports different recognition methods, whether time-based or usage-based, ensuring compliance with financial standards. Organisations can accurately recognise revenue and expenses over time, improving financial reporting and long-term management.
Faster Project and Service Management
Handling projects has become faster and more streamlined with this release. Users can now create project sales invoices directly from the Project Card page, improving project billing efficiency. Additionally, important project actions, like Assembly Orders and Pick Lines, are now accessible from the Project List page, making work-in-progress management more user-friendly and efficient.
Powerful Ad Hoc Analysis for Projects
Project management sees a significant boost with new real-time data analysis capabilities. Users can group, summarise, and pivot project data on the fly, without needing formal reports. The system’s out-of-the-box queries allow organisations to drill down into project transactions and financial data, providing valuable insights for quicker and better decision-making.
Seamless Integration with Field Service
Business Central integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365 Field Service, improving service task management, work orders, and financial transactions. This synchronisation enhances invoicing processes, consumption tracking, and customer satisfaction, ensuring more efficient service delivery and financial oversight.
AI-Enhanced Bank Account Reconciliations
The introduction of Copilot’s AI-driven transaction matching greatly reduces manual effort in bank account reconciliations. This feature streamlines the reconciliation process, allowing bookkeepers to focus on higher-value tasks while maintaining accurate financial records.
Speeding Up Product Information Creation with Copilot
Copilot also accelerates the process of creating product information by suggesting marketing text and product details based on historical data. This feature helps businesses launch new products more quickly and stay competitive by delivering relevant information that differentiates products in a fast-paced market.
Simplified Sales Line Creation
Copilot further improves sales document creation by accepting various inputs such as free text, files, and prompts. This reduces manual entry and errors, enabling businesses to complete sales documents more quickly and generate revenue faster.
New Integration Configuration Templates for Dataverse
The release introduces pre-configured templates for setting up integrations between Business Central and Dataverse. These templates simplify the connection process, reducing manual setup and improving data accuracy, ensuring smoother data synchronisation across systems.
Drag and Drop Multiple Files to Cards and Documents
Business Central now supports the attachment of multiple files to cards and documents via drag-and-drop functionality. This improvement significantly enhances document management, saving time and increasing productivity when handling critical records.
Enhanced Data Search in Lists
The enhanced data search functionality makes it easier for users to locate relevant information within lists. This faster, more intuitive search experience increases productivity by reducing the time spent searching for records, allowing quicker access to data.
Column Resizing Without Personalisation
Users can now resize columns within lists even when personalisation is not enabled, providing more control over how data is displayed. This added flexibility enhances data readability and usability without requiring full personalisation settings.
Faster Insights with Generated Analysis Tabs
Business Central offers quicker access to insights through generated analysis tabs, allowing users to interpret data without needing to create formal reports. This results in faster, more efficient decision-making driven by real-time data.
Real-Time Fixed Assets Ad Hoc Analysis
Ad hoc analysis for fixed assets has been significantly improved, enabling businesses to group, summarise, and pivot data in real time. Pre-built queries provide quick insights into asset performance, allowing businesses to analyse entries by asset classes, locations, and depreciation schedules for faster, more informed decision-making.
More Embedded Power BI Reports
Business Central now includes a wider range of embedded Power BI reports for finance, sales, inventory, projects, manufacturing, and more. These reports help organisations easily track performance metrics and visualise key indicators without needing external tools.
Allowing Multiple Users to Post Warehouse Entries Simultaneously
To optimise warehouse operations, the latest release allows multiple users to post warehouse entries simultaneously. This enhancement reduces bottlenecks, ensuring smoother operations during high activity periods.
External Notifications for Job Queue Failures
The system now sends external notifications for job queue failures, enabling proactive issue resolution. This ensures smoother workflows and minimises disruptions, helping maintain operational efficiency.
Greater Flexibility in Managing Environment Updates
Administrators have enhanced control over environment updates, giving them the ability to manage when and how updates are implemented. This ensures updates do not interfere with daily operations, offering greater control over the system environment.
Shopify and eDocument Integration Improvements
The release includes several updates to Shopify and eDocument integration, improving synchronisation of orders, invoices, and financial data. These updates enhance financial reporting accuracy and help businesses remain compliant with local regulations while streamlining eCommerce operations.
The 2024 Release Wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Business Central delivers a robust set of features that streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and provide deeper insights. From faster project management to AI-driven financial processes, these updates enable businesses to optimise workflows and make better-informed decisions across all areas of operations.
Contact our team for further information.