Check out these seven tips for using the features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations to improve the productivity of your finance team.
Originally published in H2 2018 D365UG/AXUG Magazine
ERP systems have evolved over the years, and as businesses have become savvier in their ERP usage, they demand more features for improving the productivity of their teams.
The most important business team for maintaining an ERP system is the finance and accounting team, as they perform the crucial task of maintaining the integrity of the system. Their financial statements and reports require accuracy and precision, as the very health of the organization depends on their insight and assessment.
Let’s take a closer look at which Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations features can aid in improving finance team productivity.
1. Global Entry Forms
With an increase in the shared services model, and thus a need to optimize human resources utilization, Dynamics 365 has taken this to the next level. Users can now seamlessly create purchase invoices for purchase orders, or enter a journal entry in other entities, avoiding the hassle of needing to switch between multiple legal entities/companies.
2. Exchange Rate Integration
Exchange rate maintenance in a global organization is a tedious process where Users need to create exchange rates every day/week/ month. Consider the possibilities of trading in different currencies, which adds additional complexity to the maintenance. With Dynamics 365, you can now seamlessly integrate with exchange rate providers such as OANDA, and thus reduce the burden on the finance/accounting teams for maintaining these rates manually.mics AX have a home in the cloud.
3. Localization
In a global ERP rollout, it is inevitable that there would be statutory requirements in each country/ region that need to be adhered to. With Dynamics 365, rich out-of-the-box localization features for different countries’ finance teams can now take control and generate reports that are specific to each countries’ regulatory/statutory requirements.
4. Built-in Audit Workbench
With organizations requiring tighter auditing controls around duplicate vendor invoices that are entered, organizations have been leaning on different systems to monitor high spenders, duplicate expenses, and to audit sample data. However, with Dynamics 365, you can use the built-in audit workbench to run sampling and provide additional controls and visibility to the finance team.
5. Budget Planning and Control
Dynamics 365 has built-in capabilities to plan your budgets with scenarios for monetary and quantity (for FTE counts, etc.) and have different levels of workflow
stages for approvals. Besides these, you can set up tighter control on the expenditure by using out-of-the-box budget controls for project cost control, purchasing cost control, etc., giving you more visibility into expenses, and allowing you to plan better for the future.
6. Management Reporter
Using Management Reporter—the financial reporting tool that is available out of the box in Dynamics 365—you can configure reports according to organizational requirements. With this tool, you do not need developers to develop a balance sheet, an income statement, etc. You can also choose to have these reports run by a schedule for a month or a week, where you can view them after execution; you can also have consolidated reports generated using financial reporting.
7. Aged Customer Balances Snapshot
Gone are the days where you would have to write custom queries to look up Customer aging data cross-company. With Dynamics 365’s aged balance
snapshot, you can look at Customer aging in a single view across legal entities. In addition, you can schedule a periodic job to update the aged balances, and the collections/AR team can look at this in a single view based on the aging definitions.
