Getting Started with Dynamics 365 Business Central
Business Central is a business management solution for small and mid-sized organizations that automates and streamlines business processes and helps you manage your business. Signing up is easy, and you can migrate existing business data from your legacy system. To help you with your subscription, contact FMT Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Partner for your Business Central.
When you sign up for the Business Central preview you get access to a demonstration company. The demonstration company contains sample data, but you can create your own sales documents, for example, or set up a bank account.
Get to know Business Central
In Business Central, some things will be familiar to you, and other things might be unfamiliar. In the demonstration company, visual guides explain core functionality and help you try out daily tasks like creating a sales invoice and viewing a report. If you leave a guide, for example, to explore Business Central on your own, but want to return to it, go back to the Role Center and launch the Getting Started tour. If you want more assistance, contact a Business Central partner.
For some quick, nice-to-know tricks, see:
For more information, see Working with Business Central.
When you are ready to start working and you want to look at some of the business processes that Business Central supports, see Business Functionality.
Before you can begin to use functionality, certain setup must be made. For more information, see also Setting Up Business Central. Note that some setup steps can be performed semi-automatically by using assisted setup guides.
For an overview of current capabilities and what is coming, take a look at Microsoft's release plan at Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Release Plan.
The Role Centers
The Role Center page is based on a role-centric design to give you fast access to the business process and intelligence tools that you need to do your job. For example, an accountant can monitor payments and approvals, and view finance performance charts. Check out the various Role Center by choosing the Settings icon Settings in the top right corner, choosing My Settings, and then the Role Center to explore. Sign in again to apply the change. For more information, see Changing Basic Settings.
Each Role Center provides a Setup and Extensions button. Here you have access to a list of assisted setup guides that can help you get started by setting selected areas up quickly. If an area is not covered by an assisted setup, choose the Manual Setup action to access setup pages where you can fill in setup fields for all areas manually. For more information, see also Setting Up Business Central.
On the Assisted Setup page, you will find the following with the Essential experience:
Trying things out in your own company
Thinking about subscribing? You can easily change from the demonstration company, and create and work in a company of your own. This is a great way to start toward a subscription. Setups for finances are provided; you just need to create or import your customers, vendors, and the products or services that you sell. After that, you're ready to post invoices and use business intelligence tools to analyze your business. You can use your company for free for a 30-day trial period. If you subscribe to Business Central during that time, you're already up and running. You can continue with the work you did during the trial.
To create a company to try things out, go to the My Settings menu in the top right corner, and change the company to My Company. Sign out of Business Central and then sign in again to apply the change. An assisted setup guide will help you provide basic information about your company. When that's done, explore the Role Center and find the Assisted Setup action.
Alternatively, you can work with a Business Central partner like FMT Consultants.
Getting answers to questions
If you are not sure how to do something in Business Central, you can hopefully find the answer either from reading the tooltip for the field that you are unsure of or by reading the content by opening the Learn more link in a tooltip (use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F1 ). You can also get to the documentation by choosing the related link in the Help and Support page.
All fields in Business Central are described in tooltips. You can access tooltips by choosing the name of the field. For example, in a page like the Customer Card, simply choose the name of the field to read the tooltip. In a list such as the Customers list, or the lines in a document such as a sales order, you have to choose the drop-down menu to the right of the name of the column and then choose the What's this? menu item.
If you have additional questions, we recommend that you ask the community or contact your reselling partner. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, FMT understands that your business is unique and won’t fit a pre-determined mold. We can help you select and implement the right solution for your business including Business Central, so you can get the maximum value out of your system. Give us a call today at 833-827-4276.
* The article was modified from the original article published by FMT Consultant’s partner, Microsoft.
Author: FMT Consultants
Date: July 17, 2019
