Financial Management

An introduction to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Financial Management

From cashflow and account schedules to insurance coverage and reconciliation, Dynamics 365 Business Central software allows you to manage all of your finances from one place.

The Dynamics 365 Business Central feature will enable you to take control of your financial data, streamlining the processes involved with getting real-time financial visibility into the performance of your business. 

Benefits of Dynamics 365 Financial Management

The feature brings your business multiple benefits for to streamline your financial management;

• Expansion into the global market: The business central feature supports multiple currencies, exchange rates, consolidations, intercompany transactions, and localised tax regulations.
• Confidently make more profitable financial decisions: The feature allows you to connect reports, charts, and Power BI data from across all of your accounting, sales, purchasing, and inventory teams in order to get more accurate insights, thus making financial decisions with confidence.
• Quicker and streamlined financial closing and reporting: Reduce your month and year-end closing times with the connected general ledger available in the feature, as well as through other features helping to streamline the process; accounts receivable, payables, and fixed assets data.
• Quickly and easily monitor financial performance: Using built-in reports, such as Excel, or Microsoft Power BI, as well as unlimited data dimensions you are able to get real-time financial data. This will include information on cash flow, financial patterns, identifying trends, all of which will help to improve business planning.

Within the software you will recognise early on that at its core, the Business Central is primarily a financial management software solution. Whilst offering a whole host of other benefits for your business, the financial management element of the software will be your most commonly used function.

Dynamics 365 Business Central puts functionality at the forefront of its design. It enables financial transactions and information to be smoothly connected in a multi-currency and multi-company capacity. 

What to expect from the financial management software

Not to brag, but the list is pretty lengthy, so let’s break it down so you can see the extent of what we can offer.

Features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central financial management software includes;

• Credit control
• General ledger
• Consolidation
• Purchase ledger
• Sales ledger
• Cash book
• Fixed assets
• Liquidity 
• Inter-company trading
• Multi-dimensional analysis 

What can you do with BC’s financial features?

The functionality aspect is important, but there are also the more complex requirements of a financial solution such as multi-currency and multi-company. Luckily, the financial management element of Dynamics 365 Business Central software provides executives with a deep insight into the business, producing data rich reports and analytics, helping to prompt strategic initiatives. 

From the simpler things such as tagging entries for quick categorisation, all the way to improving your businesses ability to develop, modify and control your budgets - there’s not much that the features can’t do for your business. 

• Sales invoices can be raised against the general ledger, invoicing customers for non-stock tasks and activities including commissions and miscellaneous expenses. This can also be done for purchase invoices for non-stock purchases such as phone bills and utility expenses.
• The general ledger in business central can journal between any of the sub-ledgers, from the sales ledger, the purchase ledgers, cash books to the fixed assets ledger. What’s better is that you can save these journal entries as templates for repeated use in the future, with recurring journal entries taking care of monthly accruals and prepayment activities.
• The cost of goods can be automatically worked through to the finance system by valuing stock purchases at the time of purchase. The cost of goods sold is automatically released when a sales shipment is posted. There are several costing methods available dependent on the businesses preferences e.g. FIFO, LIFO and Standard/Average. 
• Whenever a transaction with some financial impact is recorded (e.g. when stock is bought or sold), the information will be posted into the general ledger to monitor the long term impact of the transaction. 
• The general ledger account structure is supported by a cash forecasting feature that takes information from the sales and purchase details held in the business central. You can then analyse it using a Jet Reports tool built into Microsoft Excel. The analysis process is made to be super easy from start to finish!
• And last but not least, the fixed assets tool provides for multiple depreciation books, each with several selected depreciation methods. These can be located by identifying the barcode on the products - a handheld application can be used to update the location and conditions of assets.