July 9, 2020 | By admin

Dynamics 365 Finance 2020 release notes

On the 8th July 2020, Microsoft announced the range of new features coming to Dynamics 365 Finance in October 2020. This forms part of Microsoft’s wave 2 2020 updates.

Microsoft has announced a wide range of new feature updates in this wave for Dynamics 365 Finance. This forms part of Microsoft’s 6 monthly updates on Dynamics 365 Finance and their commitment to continual enhancements across their full range of Dynamics 365 products. This article explores the latest features released for Dynamics 365 Finance.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance

Dynamics 365 Finance is Microsoft’s enterprise-scale ERP solution for finance leaders designed to support large or complex organisations to maximise financial visibility and profitability, automate and modernise global financial operations. It enables organisations to monitor performance in real-time, predict future outcomes and make data-driven decisions to drive business growth. It is cloud-based and is designed with inbuilt intelligence.

Dynamics 365 Finance 2020 release notes

Dynamics 365 Finance 2020 release notes outline several enhancements focused on automating common tasks to reduce the number of processes that finance users complete manually. It also introduces Asset leasing to enhance the core capabilities of Finance.

These powerful new capabilities will be released between October 2020 to March 2021.

Collection management

Automatic collection task creation includes the setup of rules based on invoice attributes including payment predictions, value and due dates to enable your collections agents to focus their activities on tasks with the higher return. Touchless email reminders for customers offer the ability to automatically submit email reminders to customers with a list of overdue invoices, therefore, encouraging payment before the debt is assigned to a member of your collections team.

Updates to invoice quantities

As part of the supplier purchase order invoice screen, you will be able to update the invoice quantity field to match the product receipt quantity from within the workflow process. This will eliminate posting errors once the invoice is approved and reduce the need to apply corrections and resubmit invoices back through the workflow for approval.

Supplier invoice automation

Several new capabilities have been applied to the supplier invoice process to support more automation for your accounts payable team. New analytics and metrics provide managers with details of the number of invoices received over a 30-day period. This feature highlights a percentage of invoices that failed to process through the workflow without any manual intervention and the reasons an invoice failed.

Asset leasing

New asset leasing functionality supports organisations in their confidence to illustrate compliance with accounting standards for IFRS 16 regarding leased assets. As part of this functionality, organisations can remove the need to carry out manual calculations offline and manage the following tasks direct within Dynamics 365 Finance:

  • Calculation of schedules such as future lease payment, lease liability amortisation, and right-of-use asset depreciation
  • Automatic classification of leases as either operating or finance, for ASC 842 purposes
  • Complete lease information management such as commencement date and transfer of ownership options
  • Automatic generation of journal entries for the initial recognition and subsequent measurement of the lease liability and right-of-use asset
  • Automatic lease modification and termination for GASB 87 purposes
  • Cash-flow forecast management
  • Parallel reporting
  • Preparing required quantitative note disclosures.

Globalisation and electronic reporting formats

Microsoft has also invested in supporting their product globalisation by delivering further localisations for Hong Kong, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. There are also simplified means of configuration to support global localisations.

New capabilities for Dynamics 365 Finance for Public Sector organisations

Associate 1099 default value to main account

This enables organisations to assign a 1099 box number directly to a main account to ensure consistency in the reporting of payments as part of the 1099 Tax statement.

Delegation of multiple purchasing work items

Through work items, users can now select multiple work items for approval of purchase requisitions, purchase agreements, purchase orders and supplier invoices for delegation to other users. By removing limitations on delegating work items one at a time, you can reduce clerical errors and improve efficiency.

Restrict the ability to edit accounting distribution on vendor invoices

A new setup form is available to allow organisations to maintain restrictions on editing financial dimensions. Financial dimensions can be edited on supplier invoices created from purchase orders. This reduces the effort and maintains accuracy when processing supplier invoices.

These new powerful capabilities are free to organisations who hold an active subscription to Dynamics 365 Finance. The features can be applied in an automatic update from October 2020 through March 2021. Dynamics 365 Finance users can also benefit from the wave 2 updates in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and the Power Platform.

Get in touch and we will be glad to help your organisation transition through and harness the power of these changes.