What is Business Central?
Wow, it has been a couple of years since I wrote a blog! We’ve been quite busy delivering projects and services for Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics NAV and our business has grown organically over these very fast four years. Anyhow, let’s get on with the topic at hand!
Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a well-known ERP system which has been around for years and years. It has gone through many versions, the latest being NAV 2016, NAV 2017 and NAV 2018.
In April, 2018, Microsoft released Business Central. This is a replacement for NAV. No further NAV versions would be created and so NAV 2018 is the last version of NAV that will ever exist.
Basically, Microsoft renamed Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Now that is a mouthful, so we just called it “Business Central”.
Business Central does not have version numbers, per say, but is just referred to with release dates, such as the “April 2019 Release” or the “Oct 2019 Release” and so on.
Microsoft aggressively updates the product with monthly service packs (fixes mainly) and bi-annual updates).
One of the advantages of Business Central is the flexibility in licensing and deploying it. Here’s the breakdown:
Business Central can be licensed in several ways:
1) Perpetual licensing - one time purchase plus annual maintenance fee for the rights to service packs and upgrades.
2) Subscription licensing - lease the software and pay on a quarterly or annual basis.
Business Central can be deployed in several ways:
1) On-premise
2) Private cloud - this could be any cloud provider of your choice.
3) Microsoft Cloud (SaaS) - on the Microsoft cloud you will receive automatic updates.
There are pros and cons to each deployment method which I will cover in a another blog. It’s good to be blogging again, it is something I enjoy and shouldn’t neglect for so long. Look forward to seeing you at the next one.
Cloudy with a Chance of ERP?
The weather forecast today is cloudy with a 85% chance of ERP. Yes, here I go again, "borrowing from a movie title", but I can't help myself - my nine-year old son loves the movie and that's the end of that.
Should you run your business in the cloud? You probably are already to some degree and almost daily, a new cloud solution materializes in the ether. We are becoming more dependent on cloud-based services - banking, word processing, spreadsheets, payroll services, on-line tools and so on. ERP is undergoing the same evolution, though it has unique challenges. It is not a question of if, but when.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV is rapidly evolving and users are successfully running NAV in the cloud and with the release of Dynamics 365, Microsoft is clearly stating its intentions - cloud ERP is where we're going.
The main problem that needs to be solved is customization, though Microsoft is making great strides in this area. Customization may be a "feared" word with negative connotation, but I'm not one to mince words. Businesses are unique and therefore customization is often necessary to support a business in running efficiently. Being able to customize the software and at the same time receive automated updates and upgrades is the end-goal.
One school of thought states to change your business to satisfy the software. Wrong-headed approach in my humble opinion. Structure does not monitor function. Function monitors structure. In other words, your customers and your ability to satisfy your customer's needs are paramount. Everything else should be aligned in that direction.
Microsoft's latest release, NAV 2017 has some compelling features, leveraging Office 365. The In-Office 365 experience is a magical one. Here's a scenario - a salesperson receives an email from a new contact. Without ever having to leave Outlook, a contact is created and a Sales Quote is created and emailed using NAV in Outlook. Another scenario - your accounting department receives an email requesting a copy of an invoice. Within Outlook, with a single click, the invoice pops in view and is then sent to the customer by email. This is a game changer in increasing efficiency. Switching software and searching for documents takes time and this all but eliminates that time.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV has never been so cloud-enabled with deep Office 365 integration, improved Web client and continued improvements in supporting customizations without affecting the base product. Add to this the already excellent native phone and tablet apps for Android and iOS.
Embrace the cloud, but be smart about it. Research it and find a trusted partner who can advise you and steer you away from any pitfalls. There are many companies providing cloud hosting services, some are poor, many are mediocre and a very, very few are stellar. This can make all the difference in the world as you want your ERP experience to be fast, reliable and efficient. A lot of things need to come together properly to make this a reality.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Top Ten Product Highlights
Having implemented our company internally on NAV 2016 and wrapping up a good sized NAV 2016 implementation from start to finish, we have a few opinions to share. NAV 2016 is by far, the best version of NAV to date, as it should be. Microsoft has put a lot of hard work into the product and it shows. Here are our top ten product highlights: (note: some of these features may have been introduced prior to NAV 2016.)
With proper hardware and configuration, NAV 2016 is snappy and responsive and is likely the fastest version-to-date.
The NAV tablet and phone apps work great and configuring screens is a snap.
End-users can configure Orders, Invoices and the like using Microsoft Word. This works quite well and users are easily trained on how to do this.
Bank reconciliations are very easy to perform. It is basically a matching game and nearly as fun as playing Tetris.
Security has always been a time consuming and cumbersome process to set up in the past. Not so in NAV 2016. Security can now be quickly and easily set up.
Company management – creating and copying companies has never been easier.
Improved integration with Excel, Word and Acrobat has markedly enhanced the user experience.
The development environment is the best-to-date. The development environment auto-predicts while you type, assisting the developer in writing code. It is almost as good as having the code written for you!
The upgrade tools continue to impress. The tools do an excellent job of merging customizations and converting data and run very quickly.
A huge technological leap was the addition of Events. This allows developers to make code changes in such a way so that the impact of the customizations on upgrades is dramatically reduced.
What to Avoid:
Don’t recommend the use of Extensions at this time. (Allows for non-code modifications to be loaded at run-time). In testing, we were able to corrupt the database and had to restore from backup. We’ve noticed a number of patches to this area in cumulative updates.
Don’t bother installing every cumulative update. They are released monthly and is far too often to be upgrading a production system.
NAV Reporting Writing 101 - where to get your data
When one is new to report writing in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, one may wonder what tables to pull data from. There's a bountiful number of tables in NAV and so meandering through the list can be daunting. Here's my shortlist of favorite tables to pull data from when reporting:
17 G/L Entry - this is the table for pulling general ledger data.
21 Cust. Ledger Entry - this table stores invoices, credit memos, payments, etc. for customers. It does not contain line item detail. The aged accounts receivable report utilizes this table and several standard sales reports by customer pull from this table. Good for pulling overall sales data by customer which could include items, G/L accounts, fixed assets and resources. Although it contains fields for Profit, it is not reliable for profit data related to items. See 'Item Ledger Entry' below for more details.
25 Vendor Ledger Entry - this table is similar to the Cust. Ledger Entry, but is for vendors. It is utilized by the aged accounts payable report and several standard purchasing reports by vendor pull from this table.
32 Item Ledger Entry - this table stores all item related transactions (purchases, sales, adjustments, credits, etc.). It is quite versatile as inventory, sales and purchasing reports can be written using this table. It stores the customer/vendor no. as well, so it can be used to create sales/purchasing reports by customer/vendor. Note that it will not contain sales and purchase transactions related to G/L accounts, resources, or fixed assets. Therefore, if you compare sales reports that drive off the customer ledger vs. the item ledger, you will likely not get the same results. Table 5802 Value Entry is related to the Item Ledger and is useful when more detail is needed particularly relating to costs.
The Item Ledger is also affected by the Adjust Cost - Item Entries* process, so is the recommended table for getting the most accurate item cost and profit data vs. relying on the Profit fields in the Cust. Ledger Entry.
Tables I do not recommend writing reports where item costs or margins are important include:
113 Sale Invoice Line, 115 Sales Cr.Memo Line, 123 Purch. Inv. Line, 125 Purch. Cr.Memo Line
This is for two reasons: 1) you have to read two tables to get the full picture (e.g. invoice and cr.memo lines) 2) More importantly, they are not updated by the Adjust Cost - Item Entries process so it will not contain the most accurate item costing data.
Happy report writing!
*Adjust Cost - Item Entries process - this process is recommended to be run on a daily basis if you have inventory. This MSDN link describes this process in detail.
Professsional Services Powertrain Feature Comparison
We've just released our feature comparison chart so you can see at-a-glance some of the differences between our Professional Services Powertrain solution vs. the standard NAV 2016 product. You can download by clicking below:
Professional Services Powertrain Feature Comparison Chart