Microsoft has announced the 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations
Microsoft has officially rolled out the 2024 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (F&O), a suite of powerful enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications that help businesses optimize their financials and supply chain management. The D365 F&O suite is comprised of two core applications: Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. In this blog, we’ll dive into the key updates and enhancements released as part of the 2024 release wave 2 for these applications.
Dynamics 365 Finance
Copilot & AI enhancements for financial reconciliation and invoice automation
The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Finance brings several key AI-driven enhancements with a focus on improving reconciliation processes and automating invoice exception handling. Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant, is being integrated into various finance workflows to streamline operations, reduce manual intervention, and resolve issues proactively. These updates aim to improve the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of tasks that typically require significant time and effort from finance teams.
Key updates for Dynamics 365 Finance include:
- Reconcile with subledger to general ledger reconciliation agent: Copilot proactively identifies discrepancies between subledger and general ledger, providing options for resolution and eventually automating the resolution process. The update focuses on accounts payable, accounts receivable, tax, and bank subledgers, with additional subledgers like fixed assets and inventory to be included in future releases.
- Correct receipt matching errors in vendor invoices with Copilot: Copilot assists AP clerks by analyzing and resolving receipt matching errors directly in the pending vendor invoice list, eliminating the need for navigation across multiple pages.
- Get batch log summarization of sales invoice processing: Copilot now provides AI-driven summaries of batch logs, helping users quickly understand what transactions are outstanding or failed and the reasons behind those failures.
- Use Copilot for vendor invoice exception handling: Copilot helps identify and resolve various invoice exceptions, such as receipt matching, prepayment application errors, and duplicate invoice issues, reducing manual work and enabling the finance team to focus on higher-level tasks.
Business performance planning enhancements
The 2024 release wave 2 introduces several new features to Business Performance Planning within Dynamics 365 Finance, making it easier for organizations to integrate financial forecasts with operational drivers, track changes to planning data, and streamline the planning and forecasting process. These updates are designed to enhance decision-making capabilities, improve transparency in change management, and reduce the time required for planning implementation. The integration of Copilot for automated assistance is another highlight, offering users guided workflows and AI-driven insights.
Key updates for Business Performance Planning in Dynamics 365 Finance include:
- Create drivers and formulas in business performance planning: This feature allows decision-makers to tie financial forecasts to operational drivers, creating powerful calculation logic to generate financial outcome scenarios with minimal manual setup, streamlining the process and maintaining change history across multiple scenarios.
- Track change management in business performance planning: The new tracking feature improves transparency by providing a comprehensive audit trail of changes made to cube data, showing what was changed, who made the change, and when, with the ability to filter and report on changes.
- Create dimensions and cubes using Copilot in Business Performance Planning: Copilot assists users by recommending configurations for dimensions and cubes based on existing Excel spreadsheets, reducing the time spent on planning model configurations and making the process more efficient.
- Generative help in business performance planning application: Copilot’s generative help offers users quick, summarized answers to questions about product features, referencing Microsoft Learn content for further guidance and supporting tasks like searching and summarizing content, offering prompt guides, and providing relevant links.
Unlock actionable insights that drive strategic decisions
The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Finance introduces significant updates to Business Performance Analytics, providing organizations with powerful tools to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive informed decision-making and enhance operational efficiency. This release includes new features that make it easier for users to create, manage, and share reports, while also offering fine-grained security and extensibility to customize reporting and analysis to meet specific business needs.
Key updates for Business Performance Analytics in Dynamics 365 Finance include:
- Business performance analytics app: This app provides easy access to all reports, enabling users to create new insights, securely share them, and manage report access. It also integrates with Power BI and Excel for comprehensive reporting.
- Data models: Pre-built, detailed data models cover key business processes like Record to Report, Budgeting, Order to Cash, and Procure to Pay, making it easier to create personalized reports and gain deeper operational insights. It also supports cross-ledger and multi-currency analysis.
- Curated prebuilt reports: Ready-to-use reports are available at launch, covering areas such as financial performance, vendor transactions, and sales details, giving users immediate access to essential information.
- Dimensional security: The platform offers detailed security controls, ensuring data and report access are tailored to user permissions. This helps simplify compliance by filtering data automatically.
- Extensibility with Fabric: The Extend to Fabric feature allows users to integrate Business Performance Analytics data with their own datasets, enabling a more customized and relevant analytical experience.
Enable payments in advance with prepayment sales invoices
The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Finance introduces the prepayment sales invoice feature, designed to streamline the invoicing process for customers who make advance payments. This feature allows businesses to efficiently manage prepayments by issuing invoices before the delivery of goods or services, ensuring that payments are collected upfront and accurately tracked in the system.
By incorporating prepayment sales invoices, organizations can improve cash flow management and reduce financial risk. Payments made in advance are recorded and linked to specific sales orders, and once the final invoice is issued, it is reconciled with the prepayment invoice. This process simplifies the financial operations surrounding advance payments and enhances operational efficiency.
Other top features from the Dynamics 365 Finance 2024 release wave 2
For a full list of new features and updates, you can review the official Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance 2024 release wave 2 documents. In addition to the features listed above, here are a few other noteworthy updates:
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Copilot enhancements in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
The 2024 Release Wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces several updates to Copilot, leveraging artificial intelligence to streamline operations across demand planning, quality assurance, and user guidance. These features enhance decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and offer deeper insights into supply chain activities.
- Efficient demand planning with Copilot: Copilot assists demand planners by providing in-product guidance and actionable insights, helping them explore trends and anomalies using natural language. It improves forecast accuracy and enables better decision-making.
- Follow-up questions for continuous learning: Copilot now offers an easier way to continue conversations by suggesting follow-up questions based on previous queries, making it faster to gather additional information and enhancing the learning experience.
- Trace and solve quality issues with Copilot: Copilot applies AI to quickly gather and summarize relevant data when quality issues arise, allowing quality assurance professionals and production managers to trace problems and improve efficiency. It helps track manufacturing activities by batch/serial numbers and identifies correlations to resolve issues faster.
Enhanced vendor rebate management
The 2024 Release Wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces enhanced flexibility for managing vendor rebates. Vendor rebate management clerks can now resubmit and edit vendor rebate deals, while source transaction vendors have the ability to reconcile their company output, such as accounts payable invoices. These updates streamline the process, offering greater control and efficiency when managing vendor rebates.
Key capabilities include:
- A new workflow for resubmitting vendor rebate deals
- Enhanced posting profiles for reconciling transactions by purchased-from vendor
- Improved rebate output for vendor invoices, consolidating multiple ledger lines into a single vendor line
Streamline contract lifecycle management in source to pay with flexible integration
The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces flexible integration with external contract lifecycle management (CLM) systems, enabling businesses to manage contracts with suppliers more effectively. This integration simplifies the creation and management of contracts, ensuring purchase agreements are correctly applied to operations, including terms and pricing.
Key capabilities include:
- Seamless integration of purchase agreements and non-disclosure agreements with external CLM systems
- Automated application of contract terms and pricing in the source-to-pay process
- Use of master data from Supply Chain Management for consistent contract handling
- Streamlined contract lifecycle management, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing manual intervention
Approve POs and requisitions on the go with mobile device support
The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces a mobile approval experience, making it easier for users to approve purchase requisitions and purchase orders directly from their mobile devices. This update adds flexibility and efficiency to approval workflows, allowing users to respond to procurement tasks, such as requisition and order approvals, while on the move.
With this feature, users can view all their assigned approval tasks and due dates within the app. They can open the details of each requisition or order and make informed decisions without having to switch between contexts. Once fully informed, users can approve, reject, request changes, or delegate tasks, all from their mobile devices. This enhancement improves procurement processes by streamlining approval tasks and ensuring quicker responses, increasing both efficiency and responsiveness.
Other top features from the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 2024 release wave 2
For a full list of new features and updates, you can review the official Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 2024 release wave 2 documents. In addition to the features listed above, here are a few other noteworthy updates:
Want to learn more?
The updates and enhancements outlined above represent just a glimpse of what Microsoft has planned for Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations in the 2024 release wave 2. These new features are designed to empower businesses with greater efficiency, flexibility, and insight across their operations. To maximize the value of these innovations, it is highly recommended that organizations collaborate with a trusted Dynamics 365 consultant. A knowledgeable partner can help review the full list of updates, identify those most beneficial for your specific needs, provide tailored training, and ensure your system continues to perform at its peak. By leveraging expert guidance, you can unlock the full potential of these advancements and keep your business ahead of the curve.
