In the November update to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Business edition, Microsoft has made the following new capabilities available: the Accountant Hub in public preview, cost accounting, prepayments, Microsoft Flow, alternative order address, and new “how to” videos.
Dynamics 365-Accountant Hub is in public preview
The Accountant Hub for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business edition is now available in public preview. With the Accountant Hub, accountants can access their clients’ data, effectively manage accounting processes and tasks, and improve their financial insights.
Accountants also get an overview of all assigned tasks from all companies, including visual indications for tasks that are overdue. The company details page now shows cues for pending tasks and allows users to drill back to those tasks from the page.
Microsoft Dynamics MVP James Crowter, who noted that all the “lovely features” in this update should come to Dynamics NAV 2018 on Dec. 1, called out user tasks in particular as a favorite.
Cost accounting
Cost accounting enables users to get a better understanding of the cost of doing business, i.e., analyzing what types of costs are incurred, where costs occur, and who bears those costs. With cost accounting, users can allocate the actual and budgeted costs to operations, departments, products, or projects so they can analyze the profitability of each entity within their companies.
Users can set up cost accounting under “Setup & Extensions.” Then once it’s set up, the module is available in the accountant role center or by using the search function.
Prepayments
Prepayments offer users peace of mind by allowing them to invoice and collect deposits from customers, or remit deposits to vendors, so they can be sure that each payment is posted against an invoice. Additionally, users can define prepayment requirements for a customer or vendor for every item, or just for certain items.
Microsoft Flow
Users can now manage flows from different environments within Dynamics 365. On the “Manage Flows” page users will find a list of environments from Microsoft Flow that they can access. Once a user makes a selection, it will be remembered until a new environment is chosen. Additionally, users can define which Microsoft Flow environments they want to display and manage within Dynamics 365, offering flexibility to work with different environments, e.g., a test and a production environment. Microsoft Flow templates for general journal batches and general journal lines have also been added.
New product videos
With this update, Microsoft is introducing the following new videos under “Business Assistance’ on the role center:
- Accessing all features in getting started
- Analyzing data using account schedules in reporting & BI
- Working with locations and transfer orders in warehouse management
- Working with VAT under finance and bookkeeping
Alternative order address
Purchase orders now support alternative order addresses so purchasers can now choose from four different address options when they place purchase orders. The default option automatically fills the ship-to fields with the company address or customer address in case of sell-to-customer orders.
Choosing location address enables the purchaser to select from a list of company locations, while the customer address option automatically fills the fields with the customer address for drop shipments. In addition, the purchaser can choose a custom address for one-off shipments.
Documentation full application scope
Help for this update contains descriptions of advanced functionality, which may not be visible in all users’ versions of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business edition. That’s because the full application scope, which will be generally available in Spring 2018, is only available for preview by users accessing through the Sandbox option.
To support users with Sandbox access, Help now describes the full application scope, meaning that until Spring 2018, users can see descriptions in Help that they may be able to access. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” Microsoft stated.