Dynamics 365 Finance: Wave 2 Fall Release Highlights

Microsoft recently announced the 2022 release wave 2 plan for Dynamics 365 Finance that covers new functions Microsoft plans to make available in October 2022. The solution enhancements support Microsoft’s continuing mission to help customers reduce or eliminate repetitive, manual tasks so employees can spend more time on activities that improve the company’s products and services.

The enhancements will also further integrate data across your systems to accelerate decision-making.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the updates to Dynamics 365 Finance to look for come October across the three key functional areas of your business:

Finance

Split billing will allow you to bill multiple customers from a single contract—with a billing schedule for each customer that also defines their responsibilities. There are also enhancements to subscription billing, with recurring contracts that enable you to generate quotes using pre-existing reports from your billing schedule. Along with generating the quotation report, Dynamics 365 Finance will store data in quotation tables so your sales team can reprint quotations.

Another finance feature to look for is vendor payment advice forms that you can print in both <Approved> and <Sent> status. Previously, you could only print a payment advice with a status of <Sent>. Now, after posting a vendor payment journal in the action pane, you can print payment advice forms with either a payment status of <Sent> or <Approved>.

And when working in advanced bank reconciliation, you have the option to select the posting date of transactions. You can select the bank statement line booking date with separate voucher numbers as the posting date of new transactions. Or, if the accounting period is closed, you can select the bank statement import date with the combined voucher number for the posting date for new transactions.

Supply Chain Management

Optical character recognition (OCR) will allow you to automate the recognition of vendor invoices and streamline your overall accounts payable processes. Also look for an improved Supply Chain Insights—the AI-powered predictive and prescriptive analytics feature in Dynamics 365 Finance that assesses risks and recommends the best actions.

To further implement measures to optimize the resiliency, sustainability, and efficiency of your supply chain, new features in this tool to look for include improved data mapping, ingestions, audit, and export capabilities. You can also expand your risk signals with real-time weather events.

Other new features include multi-tier visibility with enhancements to supply and demand analytics. You can also extend the Supply Chain Insights data set to create Power BI reports. And by integrating case management with Teams, your internal supply chain teams can collaborate easier to work through any vendor issues.

Inventory and Logistics

If you use the Dynamics 365 Finance warehouse management processes, you can now use the inventory visibility function to make soft reservations and allocate inventory. Soft reservations let you track omnichannel sales demand in real time to avoid overselling while inventory allocation lets you reserve on-hand inventory for your most important channels and customers.

You will also be able to streamline access to on-hand inventory lists that you can filter based on relevant criteria. Dynamics 365 Finance stores and updates the filtered lists locally to support quick access and on-demand data exports to internal and external systems.

Another new feature is the ability to track soft reserved quantities within allocations. You can monitor real-time consumption within allocated quantities for different stores and online markets. This supports promotional events and new product launches so you can make immediate reallocation and replenishment decisions.

Enhance Support for Global Operations

Dynamics 365 Finance also continues to augment your capabilities in global markets. For example, there’s electronic invoicing to prevent tax evasion—a service that’s now mandated by tax authority agencies in many countries, including France, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. You can also tap into localization and automated continuous regulatory compliance for 44 countries and regions along with translations for 52 languages—made easy through the no-code/low-code Microsoft Globalization Studio.

To learn more about what’s coming in October, check out the Microsoft 2022 release wave 2 plan for Dynamics 365 Finance announcement.