Finance is an important business domain in Microsoft

The new and improved features in Dynamics NAV 2016 enhance the user experience for accountants and bookkeepers. The following are some of the main points I would like to emphasize in this section:

• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 reporting enhancements
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Preview Posting
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Positive Pay
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 North America document totals
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Deferrals
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 works natively with Azure SQL

I will try to explain these points with some basic examples.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Reporting enhancements

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, we have several reporting enhancements. All these enhancements were included because of an increasing demand from Microsoft partners, and in order to reduce the implementation cost and time. Most of the reporting enhancements were initially separately developed on demand by Microsoft partners, but because of the increasing demand by the end users, these enhancements are included in this release.

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, a new feature called Report Enhancements updates the existing reports, and helps you create new reports.

Note

There are basically two releases which we will be taking into consideration here: NA Release (North American Release) and W1 (Worldwide Release).

The North American report updates include updating the paper size of all the reports to letter size when printing.

You can see wider reports in the W1 report since the updates include changing the 25 report to landscape orientation. This helps us to visualize the report better. Most of us have faced this issue where the user wants to see the landscape view of most of the journal reports.

Benefits for the users

We can now view more content displayed on the 25 report, which is now in landscape orientation. Hence, it is expected that most of the clients can directly start using these reports in North America in particular.

All reports in the North American installation default to letter-sized paper when printing. This has been done by keeping in mind the common working style of North American users. In my experience, almost all of my American Clients want the paper setup to be letter-sized.

The following screenshot displays the printer setup page where we can select the paper property and other options:

In addition, the new Vendor Pre-Payment Journal displaying invoices/credit memos per vendor is present in the system by default. The following is a screenshot of this report:

Here, in the Account Schedule report given in the next screenshot, you can see the contents are better visualized in the landscape view:

These are simple, but wise, decisions made by Microsoft in order to make the new release more meaningful. These small modifications and features make a lot of difference, and reduce the number of modifications for any implementation.

Word forms and e-mail

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, you can create multiple custom report layouts using Microsoft Word. It also allows you to assign specific e-mail addresses to document types, enhancing the user experience. This is one of the most striking features, as most clients want reports to be more compatible with the e-mail features.

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, Microsoft Word forms for customer statements and for the North America vendor remittance reports enable you to easily create multiple custom report layouts.

You can simply use these layouts to be assigned to a particular customer by document type, a specific report, and an e-mail address for that document. For example, if a statement needs to be sent to the receivables department, but the invoice needs to go to Sales, you can have different e-mail message destinations. This feature is something you can use to impress clients during a sales demo:

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Preview Posting

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, you can review the entries to be created before you post a document or journal.

This is made possible by the introduction of a new feature called Preview Posting, which enables you to preview the impact of a posting against each ledger associated with a document.

In every document and journal that can be posted, you can click on Preview Posting to review the different types of entry that will be created when you post the document or journal.

Benefits of Preview Posting

You can understand the system state prior to posting, which might affect the transaction and the related ledgers. It also reduces errors in posting, and the user can have confidence in the posting setup. In prior versions, we had test reports, which gave somewhat similar ideas, but this gives you the real perception before the posting process has been carried out. This can be a very useful tool while you are trying to test the posting setup in live companies.

To launch the preview, click on Preview Posting in the Posting group on the ribbon for the document:

The Preview Posting window opens first, providing a list of all the ledgers that will be affected. From here, you can drill into the details for each ledger to see the impact against the ledger.

In the following screenshot, you can clearly see how the system actually posts the values temporarily so as to give you the real scenario without posting. These transactions are rolled back once the user exits the posting preview pages:

You can easily navigate through the ledgers, and see how it is going to impact the system and other data, as shown in the next screenshot:

You can click on the All Ledger entry on the number of entries link. It will navigate to the corresponding ledger entry view, as shown in the following screenshot:

The Preview Posting functionality is available for the following sections of documents:

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Positive Pay

Positive pay is one of the interesting features that have been implemented in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016. Bookkeepers can now use positive pay to ensure accuracy and reduce fraud. This is a totally new feature, which is called US positive pay. It basically enables users to send payment information to the bank to reduce fraud and minimize errors.

Note

Positive pay is a cash-management service used to prevent checks-related fraud. Generally, banks uses positive pay to match the checks that a company issues with those it presents for payment.

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you can create a file with vendor information and check number and payment amounts, which you can send directly to your bank using the Positive Pay feature. The bank then uses this file to verify any payments submitted against your account. If the payment isn't found, the payment isn't cleared.

Benefits of Positive Pay

With the use of the Positive Pay feature, you can create a Positive Pay file automatically from the system, for example, from the Payment Journal, and send it to the bank. The bank will not complete the payment if it is presented and doesn't match the positive pay information. There are many default formats which are available and can even be customized for your specific bank needs. Another advantage of Positive Pay is that it keeps a history, which includes detailed data. You can also use this history to recreate a positive pay file for your bank.

The following screenshot shows the screen where you can import and export the data for paycheck. Select the option Positive PayExport for exporting the data:

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 North America document totals

The American release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 includes document total information, which is very crucial for American users.

Benefits

American users can display the total tax, total amount excluding tax, total amount including tax, discount amount, and discount percent for unposted documents. In addition, the total information can also be seen after they enter transactions in Sales and Purchase order processing.

Sales order processing

As you can see in the Lines section shown in the following screenshot, we have a special card type subpage, which somewhat serves like a fact box, and presents calculated values of the line entries. This also prevents the use of small-level reports, which are generated just to calculate totals:

Similarly, you can see this in the Sales Invoice page. It is included in most of the similar documents in order to provide valuable information on the same page. This feature is highly appreciated by most of the clients:

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 Deferrals

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 allows the process of deferring revenues and expenses to relevant accounting periods. This allows flexibility in the operation when you are not authorized to recognize any transaction directly at that current moment.

Note

Deferrals means to defer or to delay recognizing certain revenues or expenses on the income statement until a later, more appropriate time. For example: annuities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annuity), charges (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee), taxes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax), income (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income), and so on.

Benefits

It enables additional financial functionality in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. This also reduces the time and effort required to defer revenues and expenses. It enables reporting on deferred amounts for customers, vendors, and account ledgers.

Set up deferral templates with the default settings used to build deferral schedules. The following screenshot shows how a deferral template can be created:

The next screenshot shows how the Item card can be set up for the deferral value. Define a default deferral template used for G/L accounts, items, and resources. Also, stockout warnings are generally turned off:

For each line item, you can view or modify the default deferral schedule, as shown in this screenshot:

Now open the Purchase Invoice document, and complete the header section. Also select the item which is created with the assigned Default Deferral Template code, here, Item 70105: Software Subscription:

Select the deferral code, and click on OK. The next screenshot will show the posting accounts. We can check this preview using the feature called Preview Posting, and by selecting G/L Entry from the window.

The amount is posted to the deferral account, and recognized over the defined schedule:

Note

View reports showing deferral balances by vendor, customer, and account.

There are three reports present in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 for this purpose: G/L (General Ledger), Sales, and Purchasing summary:

A sample preview of the Deferral Summary - Purchasing report is shown in the following screenshot. Here we can easily see the landscape report containing the summary of all the deferral transactions carried out up to the date specified in the report filter:

The deferrals feature is available on following documents:

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 works natively with Azure SQL

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 can be configured to use Azure SQL as a relational database-as-a-service, eliminating maintenance and reducing costs.

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, you can configure your Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance to securely connect to a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database running within a managed relational SQL database-as-a-service or Azure SQL Database.

Azure SQL Database is a relational database service in the cloud, based on the Microsoft SQL Server engine, with built-in mission-critical capabilities.

Benefits for the user

There are several benefits of working with Azure SQL natively. I have tried to categorize them in the following section.

Cost

This is a very cost-effective plan, as you can now be billed hourly at a fixed rate instead of paying for an SQL license upfront. It eliminates hardware costs and results in near-zero administrative costs. And you can adjust the number of subscriptions as per your need, making it a more dynamic service.

Administration

There is built-in support service for high availability, automatic backups, data protection, and fault tolerance; the database software is automatically patched and upgraded by Microsoft Azure. This is crucial if your system is performing slowly; in that case, the system automatically reinstalls all your components on a new instance, providing you with the feel of a newly installed one.

Service -level agreement and compliance

Working with Azure provides a database-level availability SLA of 99.99%; Azure certifications include ISO, HIPAA BAA, and EU Model Clause.

Business continuity

There are multiple built-in business continuity features included along with features such as point-in-time restore, geo-restore, and geo-replication.

Benefits for partners

Working natively with Azure SQL is is beneficial for Microsoft Partners. I have tried to analyze this with the help of the following perspective.

Predictable performance and scalability

It automatically adjusts performance and scale without downtime, uses monitoring and troubleshooting features for index tuning, and queries optimization, hence making it an ideal service even for the organizations with a huge data flow.

Setup and admin

It focuses on rapid application development rather than managing the infrastructure; Microsoft Azure takes care of the physical resources of the underlying SQL Server instance.

Simple migration path

It is very simple to use as you can upload and manage your existing database using Azure Portal, SQL Server Management Studio, or an API which is connected securely from Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016.

Familiar SQL Server tools and APIs

It can be accessed through REST API, PowerShell, Azure Portal, and SQL Server Management Studio. It is completely compatible with the SQL Server engine.

Note

REST Stands for Representational State Transfer, which is nothing but a web service (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service), which provides one-way interoperability between computer systems on the Internet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet). Web service APIs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface) that comply to the REST architectural constraints (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer#Architectural_constraints) are called REST APIs.