8 Accounts Payable Differences Between Dynamics GP & D365 Business Central
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Is your business moving from Microsoft Dynamics GP to Microsoft D365 Business Central? If you are an accounts payable accountant, we’re sharing these eight differences between Business Central and GP with you in mind. For a more general look at the differences between BC and GP, check out our previous post: GP vs Business Central: Key Differences
- Workflows and Approvals: D365 BC provides customizable workflows for AP processes, such as invoice approval. While this is more advanced than GP’s native workflow system, most companies with high invoice volume use a third-party Accounts Payable app for more robust processing capabilities.
- User Interface and Navigation: Business Central looks and feels more updated... It’s no secret that GP’s interface feels a bit “old school” at this point. The downside to the upgrade is that GP users will have a bit of a learning curve after migrating. Menus, and navigation are different, requiring AP accountants to adapt to new processes for working with their financial data.
- Search is Awesome! The search functionality in business central is remarkably good, allowing quick access to AP invoices or quick vendor look-ups. You can also just search for functionality you need so you don’t have to go crawl menus.
- Dimensions: Vendor data in Business Central is organized using dimensions and offers dimensions like tags that help categorize vendors by customizable attributes, allowing for better reporting and analysis. Learn more about Dimensional accounting in our other post: Understand Dimension in BC vs. Segments in GP
- Power Automate: Business Central is ready to Integrate easily with Microsoft Power Automate for eliminating repetitive tasks. This will require configuration.
- Purchasing Order Processing: The purchase order (PO) matching process in D365 BC is more effective out of the box, supporting 2-way and 3-way matching out-of-the-box.
- Reporting and Analytics: Business Central is ready to integrate easily with Microsoft Power BI for more advanced reporting. It also comes equipped with more built-in financial reporting capabilities like easy-to-build dashboards.
- Tax Management: Tax calculation and VAT/GST handling are more advanced in BC. AP managers dealing with international vendors may see a notable difference in managing tax configurations.
You may like: Microsoft AIM Migration Program for Dynamics GP Users
Conclusion
Learning the interface and getting used to dimensions will be the most significant change for most AP accountants when switching from GP to BC. However, the search feature will help you quickly get up to speed without too much difficulty. In many ways the advanced features in Business Central will enhance your daily work, but they will also require adaptation.
