Here are the application areas that have been improved:

Assisted setup helps move the task of adjusting item costs to the background

To optimize the experience, most features in Business Central are turned on by default. However, as data accumulates over time, that might impact performance. To reduce the load on the application, it’s often helpful to use job queue entries to move tasks to run in the background.

However, creating the job queue entries can be tricky, even for an experienced consultant, so we’re introducing an assisted setup guide to make the process easier for adjusting item costs. On the Inventory Setup page, when you turn off the Automatic Cost Posting toggle, or specify Never in the Automatic Cost Adjustment field, an assisted setup guide becomes available, and can help you on each step of the way.

Automatic creation of lot and serial number information cards

Some industries not only need to track lot and serial numbers, they also need additional information about them. To support that, Business Central offers the Lot No. Information and SN Information pages, where you can add notes, such as information about the quality of a lot, and block the use of numbers if needed. These pages are often extended for specific industries. You can create these pages to add details directly while you create item tracking lines. Alternatively, if you create lot and serial numbers in bulk, you can add details automatically when you post inventory transactions.

To create an information card when you post journals or documents, go to the Item Tracking Code page and turn on the toggle for Create SN Info. on posting or Create Lot No. Info on posting. For even more control, go to the Item Tracking Lines page and use the New SN Information Card or New Lot Information Card actions. If you create serial numbers in bulk by using the Create Customized SN or Assign Serial No. actions, you can enable Create SN Information and an information card will be created for each tracking line.

Bank reconciliation improvements

The big thing here is that the bank reconciliation report, known as the test report for bank reconciliation, is now also available for posted bank reconciliations (bank statements). We really needed this.

Also, from the Bank Acc. Reconciliation page you can now cancel a bank reconciliation that was posted with mistakes, and then from the Bank Statements page you can run a new bank reconciliation report.

Changes in synchronization between contact and customer

Microsoft is changing the way data is synchronized between customer cards, contacts of type Company, and contacts of type Person.

Business Central continues to keep in sync any customer record and contact record that are linked through the Business Relations action. Similarly, we continue to propagate data from contacts of type Company to linked contacts of type Person, while respecting the settings from the Marketing Setup page.

New in this release wave is that the contact selected in Contact Code and Contact Name on the customer card will no longer be used for sync. These fields contain the default contact of type Person for the specific customer to be used in documents. While you still can add a contact of type Company, there is not much sense in it. We recommend using the Link to existing action from the contact card instead to register the connection between a customer and a contact of type Company.

Note that fields on the Address & Contact FastTab of the customer card are related to the customer, not the contact person. They’ll no longer be updated when you choose a new contact in the Contact Code or Contact Name fields.

After all, in most cases, you wouldn’t want Business Central to copy private email from the specified contact of type Person to the customer card, and then synch it to the contact of type Company, or to other contacts of type Person that are linked to the same company.

To highlight this new behavior, we reorganized fields on the Address & Contact FastTab on the customer card, isolating the Contact Code and Contact Name in a separate group.

Define lot sizes for various stages of production

Companies have more flexibility when they define lot sizes and can use the sizes when calculating duration times for production orders.

In addition to the ability to specify lot sizes on routing lines, you now can also set lot sizes on the following pages:

• Routing version. See Routing Version Lines (page 99000767)
• Planning worksheet. See Planning Routing Line (page 99000830)
• In various production orders directly. See Prod. Order Routing (page 99000817)

By default, the Lot Size field is hidden on these pages. However, you can easily add it by personalizing the pages.

Dimension corrections (for G/L entries)

This is huge – If you make a mistake on which dimensions you selected on a posting, you can now correct dimensions for general ledger (G/L) entries. For one or more G/L entries, you can change the dimension values, add dimensions, or remove them.

On the General Ledger Entries page, the Correct Dimensions action lets you correct dimensions on posted entries by editing the dimension value, adding new dimensions, or removing them. Importantly, administrators can also lock dimensions for corrections, specify that corrections must respect closed accounting periods, and view a change log for a given G/L entry in order to revert the entry to its original value.

More control over settings for default dimensions

Consistent and accurate dimension value attributes on operational and financial transactions ensures great insights from business data in Business Central. With this feature, your controllers and finance and accounting users have greater control over prerequisites for recording any transaction that must include dimension value attributes that will later be used in business analysis and reporting.

Instead of allowing users to pick just any dimension value, when the dimension Value Posting is set to Code Mandatory, using Allowed Dimension Values in the Default Dimensions page, users can now pick from a predefined list of allowed dimension values that controlling, finance, or accounting departments choose as valid for particular master data, documents, or transaction posting in Business Central.

For example, your company wants to track customer revenue by geography using the AREA dimension, as shown in this example in the Business Central documentation. Your finance department sets all customer revenue transactions to include an AREA dimension value by choosing Code Mandatory in the AREA dimension’s Value Posting column in the Default Dimensions page.

Continuing the example, you have a customer that has operations both in North and South America, but not in the Pacific area. For such customers, you choose Code Mandatory in AREA dimension’s Value Posting column in the Default Dimensions page, and then, in the Allowed Dimension Values field, you choose North America and South America only.

This way, Business Central checks the dimensions values and requires the order processor to specify an AREA dimension value, and that the dimension values that the order processor picks are either North America or South America when they post sales invoices and other transactions for this customer.

Payment reconciliation journal improvements

The payment reconciliation journal now supports applications against employee ledger entries, have preview posting enabled, separate number series, and user-defined document numbers. It will now be possible to select multiple lines to transfer differences to a journal.

Simplified bank statement file import

For bank statement imports, users can now take a regular flat file (.csv, .txt), and map the file’s columns to fields in Business Central. With this new capability, users can configure the import of flat file and comma- or semicolon-separated transaction formats, so that they can more easily import files they have produced or manipulated to fit with the mapping that they have configured.