What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Expert Shares 8 New Release Advantages

Every release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central confirms its commitment to helping small and mid-sized businesses stay connected, work more efficiently and make better decisions faster. The 2022 Wave 2 release for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central includes new features and enhancements that will help you compete and thrive in a changing business landscape.

Technology Enables Resiliency

Businesses that endure uncertainty like inflation or the global pandemic typically have one thing in common: resiliency. Forbes highlighted the importance of technology as an enabler of resiliency in a recent article that stated: “By leveraging digital tools, I see organizations as more equipped to deal with the highs and lows of the industry and foster sustainable success…technology can be a huge driver in organizational resiliency.”

Let’s take a closer look at what’s new in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to help your company be more engaged, aware, and resilient.

Supply Chain Advantages of Dynamics 365 Business Central

Personalization: The new release gives you more data fields to choose from. Microsoft understands that different businesses and users require different data to execute their jobs. That’s why they launched Personalization to enable users to custom tailor the information on their screens. Users can easily drag and drop fields or columns from a list into the page. In just one example of Microsoft using community feedback to drive product improvements, they’ve launched additional fields and column choices on several pages so your teams can gain even more insight.

Track non-inventory items and services: Microsoft helps unify the procurement process by enabling you to manage more than physical inventory items. The launch of Wave 2 started in October 2022. You’ll be able to track non-inventory items (such as services) in a single system, allowing you to take full advantage of Business Central’s automation and record-keeping.

Item variant code on demand forecasts: An highly accurate demand forecast gives your business important insight into your market position. Ultimately, this helps decision-makers formulate their strategies for pricing and business growth. Microsoft has added the ability to include the right level of detail on item variants in demand forecasts which unlocks planning capabilities and reduces lead times for companies that don't have an inflow of sales orders or manage multiple, nearly identical items.

Automatic rounding to the base unit of measure: Some businesses have items that serve more than one purpose or may be sold, received, and consumed in different measures in sales, purchase, and production processes. Microsoft added an important automation to be able to handle items in alternate units of measure based on the process, and automatically convert those measures to the base unit of measure.

Assisted setup and data entry on mobile devices for time sheets: Business Central makes it easier than ever when employees create time sheets for the first time or add an employee or resource to record the time spent on tasks with assisted setup. Wave 2 makes it possible for your field teams to use their mobile devices (Android or iOS) to complete timesheet entries in an easy and productive way while on the go.

Easier, Faster Interactions with Business Parties

Business Central makes it much easier for your teams to interact with relevant business parties such as customers, contacts, vendors, salesperson/purchasers, employees, and users. In Wave 2, your teams can email any entities that have an email address.

Your teams will increase their efficiency by being able to generate these emails in a structured and professional way using Word templates inside Business Central. They can combine the Word text with information from Business Central in just a few clicks.

The Send Email action is now available on the Business Central entities that have an email address. Users can now compose and send their emails from any page that displays the entity they need to email. In this way, Business Central maintains the link between the entity to which the email is sent and the email itself, giving you an automated historical record of the emails that were sent to each entity.

The Word templates create the content of the email and can quickly inject recipient information by using the mail merge features in Word to add data from the entity in Business Central. This saves your team time because they can apply standard and personalized content to the business communication without having to re-enter the content manually.

Better Connection to Microsoft OneDrive

Dynamics 365 Business Central has made it easier to share reports from the Report Inbox and document attachments through OneDrive for Business when you need to send reports to multiple recipients. You can now choose the Open In OneDrive action to view reports from the Report Inbox or to open attachments in the browser. This action copies the file from Business Central to OneDrive for Business and opens the file using the online applications for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, or with OneDrive's file viewer for all other files, such as PDFs.

Reconciliation Journal Automation in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Microsoft made the important process of bank and payment reconciliations more efficient by providing an overview of whether the cash flow is accurate, and that all transactions have been accounted.

Payment Reconciliation now supports:

• Separate number series
• Posting preview
• Capability to reverse the G/L register posted through the Payment Reconciliation Journal

Bank Reconciliation now supports:

• Ledger entries are filtered so only ledger entries after the statement's ending date are displayed, making it easier to get an overview.
• The layout of the test report has been modified to make it simpler to read. The report now uses the statement date as a filter for the G/L account and the bank account to keep the focus on the period being reconciled.
• Users now have the choice to overwrite none or all of the matched entries when applying auto-matching.
• To support scenarios such as a bank statement splitting up sales into payment methods for which you only posted one bank ledger entry, Microsoft added a many-to-1 matching capability so many bank statement lines can be matched against one bank ledger entry. Entries will be auto-matched when you return to the bank reconciliation screen once you transfer differences to be posted in a general journal, eliminating this redundant manual step.

Rely on a Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Expert

Clients First consultants have direct experience in the industries we support. The Clients First Texas office is known for its vertical expertise in manufacturing, job shops, maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) for aviation or heavy equipment organizations. We have customers in other industries, too, including make-to-order/engineering job shops, project manufacturing, field services, and wholesale distribution.  

Nothing replaces a live presentation so please contact us to schedule a demonstration for your business. We support leading Cloud ERP solutions Acumatica and Microsoft and Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply and Dynamics 365 Business Central. In addition, we have experienced consultants supporting legacy ERP solutions like Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) and Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision). 

We’re a Microsoft Gold ERP Partner, a Certified Cloud Service Provider (CSP), and an Acumatica Gold Partner.

Email our office in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, or call  800.331.8382. We're based in Dallas, Texas while servicing companies worldwide.