Less manual work, more time: How to automate your processes with Business Central

How much time does your team spend on daily routines? Find out which tasks Business Central handles automatically—and where you can cut down on manual work.

Even minor delays or errors can result in an invoice being held up, a shipment arriving late, or a team having to wait for important information. With automated workflows, you can ensure that your processes mesh reliably:

• You reduce errors because data rarely needs to be entered or transferred manually.
• You shorten processing times because the next step is triggered automatically.
• You create standardized procedures that all stakeholders can follow.
• You facilitate collaboration because information is forwarded directly to the appropriate people.
• You make more informed decisions because the necessary information is available more quickly.
• You can handle more tasks without having to increase staffing levels proportionally. Scaling becomes easy!
• You ensure compliance with regulations by firmly embedding internal rules and required checks into your processes.

The result: Your company becomes more efficient, reduces operating costs, and can respond more quickly to market changes.

The possibilities range from financial approvals to order and service management, as well as automated notifications and recurring tasks. Each of these automation features helps you streamline processes and lay the groundwork for your company’s sustainable growth.

How to Automate Your Sales Processes

Your sales team needs time to focus on customers and provide quality advice. If your teams are constantly entering the same data or creating documents by hand, that time is taken away from customer interactions. Business Central helps you automate these routine tasks, reduce errors, and serve your customers reliably and efficiently. Here’s what that might look like in your day-to-day sales operations:

• Create sales quotes faster: Using predefined templates, you can create quotes tailored to your customers with minimal effort.
• Approve discounts selectively: Standard discounts can be applied automatically. If a discount exceeds a specified threshold, it is automatically forwarded to sales management for approval.
• Automatically generate sales invoices: For recurring orders, the system can automatically generate invoices. This eliminates the need for manual invoicing during each billing cycle.
• Find similar items with Copilot: The integrated AI assistant can suggest similar items based on product descriptions or predefined attributes.

This allows your sales team to find suitable alternatives more quickly when a desired item is temporarily unavailable.

Automated Procurement You Can Count On

If materials are missing, production could come to a standstill in the worst-case scenario. Ordering too much ties up capital and warehouse space unnecessarily. That’s why it’s crucial for the purchasing department to ensure timely replenishment and keep track of inventory levels. Business Central helps you automate these processes, reduce supply risks, and better coordinate purchasing, warehousing, and production.

• Ensure timely replenishment: Based on defined minimum stock levels, the system can automatically trigger replenishment requests or purchase orders. This helps you prevent stockouts and delays in production or delivery.
• Approve orders selectively: Whether based on total value, product type, or a selected supplier—you determine when an order requires approval. Automated approval workflows help you keep track of budgets and document decisions in a traceable manner.
• Automatically generate purchase invoices: Microsoft Business Central can generate purchase invoices based on approved purchase orders and recorded goods receipts. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and simplifies further processing.

Keep Track of Inventory, Manage Replenishment

Your customers rely on promised delivery dates. For your team to meet these deadlines, they need to know which products are available and where inventory is running low. Dynamics 365 Business Central helps you automate inventory management and maintain a clear overview. This allows you to avoid excess inventory, reduce waste, and ensure your customers receive their goods on time.

• Automatic, Real-Time Inventory Updates

The system automatically updates inventory levels as soon as sales, purchases, stock transfers, or internal consumption are recorded. This allows you to keep track of your inventory at all times.

• Automatic Generation of Inventory Reports

The system can automatically generate inventory reports for internal audits, inventory reconciliations, or management analyses and send them to designated recipients.

• Automated Stock Transfers Between Locations

If your company operates multiple warehouses or locations, you can automate stock transfers based on the respective inventory levels.

• Batch creation of inventory units for items

You use stock-keeping units (SKUs) to manage items in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central by location and variant. The batch creation of these units simplifies your planning and procurement processes.

Invoices, Payments, Deadlines: Your Accounting Department Keeps Track of Everything

Your accounting department must meet deadlines, keep track of incoming payments, and ensure that the numbers add up. Recurring tasks take time and require your full attention every month. Business Central helps your team automate these routines, reduce errors, and reliably integrate internal policies and legal requirements into your processes:

• Automatically generate recurring invoices

For subscription services or long-term contracts, the system can automatically generate and send invoices at set intervals. This way, your team doesn’t have to manually trigger each billing cycle.

• Remind customers of payments in a timely manner

Automatic payment notifications before and after the due date help your customers keep track of outstanding invoices and ensure timely payments.

• Automatically calculate late payment interest

For late payments, late payment interest can be calculated according to the rules you’ve set. This reduces the workload on your accounting department when processing overdue receivables.

• Simplify bank reconciliation

You import electronic bank statements and let the system automatically match bank transactions to the corresponding open items. This eliminates the need for manual reconciliations and helps you verify incoming payments more quickly.

Automating Production Processes: Keeping Your Production on Schedule

Which order needs to be completed first? Is there enough material, and what capacity is available? Your production team has to coordinate many factors on a daily basis. Business Central helps them plan manufacturing processes, keep track of deadlines, and automate recurring steps:

• Automatically create production orders: The system generates the necessary production orders to fulfill your customer orders, taking current inventory levels and available capacity into account.
• Automatically prioritize orders: Based on defined rules, the system ranks orders by lead time, urgency, and profitability.
• Automatically initiate approval processes: Changes to recipes and work plans go through a defined approval process. The system automatically initiates the necessary reviews and approvals and documents the steps in a traceable manner.
• Automatically generate service invoices: The system issues invoices at agreed-upon intervals, such as monthly or quarterly, based on the terms specified in the respective service contract.
• Automatically schedule recurring service orders: Based on the specifications defined in the service contract, the system generates recurring orders for the respective devices or customers.
• Automatically renew service contracts: Upon expiration, the system renews the contracts according to the stored settings.

Service Your Customers Can Count On

Your customers expect maintenance appointments to be kept and service requests to be handled promptly. Business Central helps your service team digitize the processes behind the scenes and automate recurring tasks. This simplifies daily planning and frees up more time to focus on serving your customers.

Less data entry, fewer follow-up questions, and faster responses: The benefits of automated processes are immediately apparent in day-to-day work. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, you’ll see these benefits in several areas:

• More time for tasks that require human input

When repetitive tasks are automated, your team can focus more on customers, challenging decisions, and new ideas. This boosts efficiency and productivity.

• Fewer errors, reliable results

Automated processes follow defined rules. This ensures consistent workflows and reduces errors and discrepancies that occur during manual processing.

• Respond faster

Documents are processed more quickly, and information is available sooner. This allows your teams to make decisions faster and respond promptly to customer or partner inquiries.

• Track Workflows

Logged process steps show what happened and when. This creates transparency and facilitates audits and internal controls.

• Reduce operating costs

Less manual work and fewer time-consuming error corrections take the pressure off your teams. This allows you to make better use of existing resources and reduce the workload in day-to-day operations.

Creating one less invoice by hand, getting approval faster, automatically scheduling a maintenance appointment: It’s often the recurring tasks where automation makes the biggest difference. Your team saves time, processes become more reliable, and your customers get what they need faster.

With Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can gradually incorporate these time-saving measures into your daily workflow. This creates the conditions for your business to grow without an equal increase in administrative overhead.