Once you see what’s new and planned for accounting and finance users in Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 1, you may not jump for joy like I did, but I think you will at a minimum be very happy with the problems that are being solved.  I am so excited to see that this list includes tweaks needed to make some of the more recently introduced features more usable. You might even say the updates will take some functionality all the way to the finish line!

Anyone can get a list of the enhancements scheduled for rollout between April 2022 and September 2022 by clicking here.  I prefer to think of the improvements as problems solved, so here is my list of a few of the current Business Central problems and the improvements that will solve them.  Remember, some of the functionality will be provided automatically, while others will require being enabled through Feature Management.

1. Making unnecessary payments to a vendor that is also a customer

If you work with an entity as both a customer and a vendor, you may have inadvertently paid their vendor balance without considering the amount they owe you as your customer. After this update, you will be able to link the customer and vendor records to see the balance as a customer on their vendor card and the balance as a vendor on their customer card. Most importantly, a new action named Net Customer/Vendor Balance on the Payment Journal will create payment journal lines for the net balance of these linked entities. No more overpayments!

2. Deferrals require posting outside allowable posting date range

I couldn’t wait to share the Deferral feature (to recognize revenue or expenses in future periods upon posting the initial transaction) when it was first introduced. However, I soon realized that for many it was controversial. Why? Unfortunately, to post a deferral the Allow Posting To date must be open to future dates allowing for any posting not just the deferral. With this release, Allow Deferral Posting From/To fields will be added to General Ledger Setup. This allows posting dates to be opened for deferrals only, while still disallowing other entries from being posted.  (A related change, Beginning of Next Calendar Year has been added as an option for Start Date in Deferral Schedules.)

3. Financial reporting by location requires Dimensions be manually set on transactions