Dynamics Profile: A Microsoft MVP and AX/365 expert champions financial precision, community engagement

Whatever else are its mission and goals, ultimately, a company must determine if it is making a profit; that is why it is important for companies to understand Microsoft Dynamics AX/365 for Finance and Operations.

That's according to first-time MVP Ludwig Reinhard, a Dynamics 365/AX consultant at Sycor, a Microsoft partner in Germany. Reinhard specializes in finance and accounting projects, and received his MVP award on June 1. He blogs on finance and controlling with Dynamics 365 and has self-published two books on the topic.

"To analyze [profitability] you first have to set up your structures, which means your accounts and so-called financial dimensions," says Reinhard, who has a PhD in finance. "Those are then used in project accounting or in production and define how you accumulate the costs, how you can analyze them to assess whether you are profitable or not. If you do these set ups wrong, you won't know if you are profitable or not or you will know it too late."

Set up structures right, rather than fix them later

It is crucial to set up accounts and finance dimensions right from the beginning, as fixing them later will require some very painful changes in the setup, says Reinhard.

And, "If you have to change something every month, it's not a good outcome for finance managers if they can't compare the data they get with the previous months and they have ...