I spent most of my career in Finance and Operations and managed to blissfully avoid Business Central right up until I couldn’t. These are the things I learned, mostly in the order they hit me during a real implementation.
If you got here from one specific post, there’s a decent chance the rest of this list is your next three problems.
Getting it live
Unless you’re a consultant, you don’t go live with a finance system very often. I wrote these down while it was fresh.
- An easy approach to a Business Central go-live. What I’d actually do again, and the parts I’d skip.
- How to integrate Mercury bank with Business Central. The Yodlee connector, including the accounts I couldn’t get it to cover.
- How to use multiple currencies in Business Central. Selling in more than one currency without making a mess of the ledger.
Consolidations
I assumed this needed a third party. It doesn’t, and that surprised me enough to write twice about it.
- Personalization in Business Central. My first week in the product after a career in Finance and Operations.
- How to easily consolidate companies in Business Central. Consolidation is a standard feature. No add-on required.
Making the documents look right
The out of the box business documents leave a lot to be desired. Unlike Finance and Operations, this part is actually approachable.
- Quickly add fields to an invoice. Adding a couple of fields to the stock invoice layout, with a short video.
- How to find which fields to use when customizing report layouts. Working out which field is the one you actually want before you build the layout.
- How to customize Business Central (maybe). Word based report layouts, and why I went that direction.
Small things, whole afternoons
Each of these is one checkbox or one field. Each one cost me real time.
- How to find the VAT business posting group field on a customer card. A checkbox the documentation never mentions. Sixty seconds, once you know.
- The extension is not available for your country. A perfectly good extension refusing to install because of a localization mismatch.
- How to find the company ID (GUID) in Business Central. The GUID you need before a Power Automate flow will do anything useful.
Working through one of these right now? Grab 20 minutes on my calendar. No pitch, just a conversation. I answer every message personally.
Rather write? Email me.