7 differences between Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics Business Central
In this webinar, our Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central experts walk through seven interesting differences between Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. These seven aspects include:
- Role Center Page and Searching
- Navigating Pages
- Saving Filtered Lists
- Lookup Flexibility
- The Power of Microsoft Excel
- Lots of Love for Journals
- Configuration Packages Replaces Integration Manager
1. Role Center Page
What is a role center page?
A role center page is a page designed to do the work you do every day more efficiently by putting the information you interact with easily accessible. Dynamics 365’s strength is its role-tailored experience, allowing users to focus on the job that matters to them. The Role Center is an essential aspect of the role-specific experience. The best part is that this page is customizable and can be personalized to suit your needs.
For Dynamics 365, the Role Center serves as your entry point and home page. You can create several various Role Centers, each tailored to the targeted users’ profile. Role Centers, for example, could target multiple levels of an organization, such as business owners, department heads, and department-specific employees.
Four features of the Role Center Page.
- Menu Bar- Across the top of the screen are specific menu items with dropdowns to help you navigate throughout Business Central.
- Bookmark Bar – With one mouse click, you can quickly access any page in Business Central by bookmarking it, and it will show up in this area for you to use.
- Actions tile – The actions tile will allow you to quickly take action, like generate a Purchase Order or generate a report.
2. Navigating Pages
When you try to find something but not on your Role Center Page, there are a few tools to help you navigate to where you need to go.
Lookup
Your new best friend in Business Central! Click on the magnifying glass to search for anything you are looking for inside of Business Central. As you type in what you are looking for, Business Central will provide suggestions to help you more quickly find what you are looking for in the program.
Pop-out Window
You can pop out windows in Business Central as you can do in Microsoft GP. These windows can be resized and moved anywhere on your computer monitors.
Bookmark
Click the banner icon in the upper right-hand corner to bookmark any page.
Dimensions
In Business Central, a dimension is a term that describes an analysis category. For analysis, Dimensions are used to group and categorize data. Dimension Values make up dimensions. A Dimension Value is a “subcategory” or “tag” that can be applied to data to make analysis more meaningful. For any Dynamics GP user this is very similar to a segment in your reporting tree.
3. Lists
Filter Lists
When you have set a filter on a list, and you want to keep the filter for later, you can save it as a view. Views are variations of the list that have been preconfigured with filters. You can define and save as many views as you want per list. The views will be available the next time you open the list from any device or browser. Similarly, if you no longer need a list, you can easily remove it by clicking the vertical ellipse and choose “remove.”
Personalize your list view
When you are in the list view, you can personalize the order of the columns or hide columns that are not as relevant to what you need. Similar to Microsoft Excel, you can also freeze panes to help when scrolling across your data.
4. Lookups
As you begin typing in a field, Business central will deliver a list of suggestions. Unlike in Dynamics GP, Business Central will search the entire entry, not just the first letters or numbers in that record, not just the field.
5. The Power of Microsoft Excel
Open a list to Excel
You can open any filtered list in Business Central to open in Microsoft Excel in a matter of seconds. To do this, you will click “Page” and “Open in Excel.” Business Central will export your list and format it in a nice excel file for you. This feature is ideal when you don’t plan to make changes to the data.
Edit in Excel
In Microsoft GP, to edit a large number of fields, like a salesperson code, would require a macro to be set up or for a Sequel query to be set up, requiring hiring a developer to make this kind of change. However, in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, you can use Edit in Excel to quickly do this task.
This functionality provides you a direct connection from Microsoft Excel to Business Central and provides you with access to all of the master record fields. You can now make changes in Excel and publish the changes back to Business Central very quickly.
Paste data from Excel into Business Central
You can copy one or more rows (records) from a list or a single field on a page and paste what you copied into the same page, another page, or an external document (like Microsoft Excel and Outlook email).
In short, to copy, you press CTRL+C (cmd+C in macOS) on your keyboard. To paste, you press CTRL+V (cmd+V in macOS). In addition, there are several other keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting that help you save time when entering data.
What can I copy and paste?
You can copy and paste this type of data:
- Copy one or more rows in Business Central to the same list or any list with identical columns.
- Copy one or more rows in Business Central and paste them into Excel or other applications.
- Copy one or more rows in Excel and paste them into a Business Central list.
- Copy the value of a particular field in Business Central and paste it anywhere.
When pasting into Business Central, each row is checked to ensure that each column’s values are valid. If a column contains a value that is not valid, the pasting is stopped, and an error message is displayed. To avoid this, make sure that the columns have good values before you paste them.
6. Sales and Purchase Journals
One of the most underused tools in the Business Central software is the Sales and Purchase Journals. These are a way to create quick purchase or sales documents without going through the field-by-field process you follow when creating them manually. Ask yourself, “Do I need a document created for this sales/purchase entry?” as a straightforward approach to think about using sales and buy diaries. Unfortunately, that response is an emphatic “yes” for the vast majority of AP or AR entries. On the other hand, sales and buy diaries can save you much time if you need to make an account adjustment or quickly record a transaction that doesn’t require a document.
7. Configuration Packages
Configuration packages are an easy and powerful tool for importing new records into Business Central.
Data migration is a critical and challenging step to perform. Most of the time, you are using a shared database across the organization in every ERP system. As a result, an organization must shift data (a set of data) from outdated systems to newer databases in a secure manner. Thankfully, Microsoft Dynamics Business Central includes a configuration package capability to create and import data quickly.
It can be used to upload almost all kinds of data, including
- Customers
- Vendors
- Items
- GL accounts
- Dimensions
- Journal entries
- Transactional data