Microsoft Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan

Microsoft’s recently published 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan is 404 pages of exciting announcements on new features for Dynamics 365 CRM, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, and Dynamics 365 Business Central.  These features will be released between October 2021 and March 2022.

Download the 2021 release wave 2 PDF

The 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan is a pretty hefty document.  If you don’t want to download and read through it, here is the Cliff Notes version for our D365 Business Central users and prospects:

For 2021 release wave 2, Business Central investments center on helping users get to productive usage faster, whether they are new or existing customers. Microsoft has expanded the built-in tours to cover more standard entities for better onboarding of additional business roles.   Microsoft also continues the Better with Microsoft 365 investment by bringing additional capabilities to the Business Central and Teams experience. Finally, and not least, Microsoft continues their rapid expansion to more countries and regions. In 2021 release wave 1, Business Central added 13 new countries and regions. In release wave 2, they expect to announce availability in more than 10 more countries and regions.

Some of the new features include:

Account Schedules.  Microsoft has added several new templates for account schedules to help users get off to a good start when using account schedules to create custom G/L reports. The ANALYSIS, REVENUE, and CASHFLOW account schedules are now available in demonstration and trial (setup data only) companies. The new account schedules are mapped to the chart of accounts that can be used for product demonstrations, but they can easily be adapted to any chart of accounts.

For Column Layout, there’s a new Budget Name field so that you can filter on a specific budget (or budgets) for that column. This way, you create account schedules that report on actual versus budget figures for both a budget and a forecast (which is a second budget).

Add Additional Columns.  Based on feedback from the user community, Microsoft has given users the ability to select additional fields and columns when personalizing various pages to gain more insight.

Add Non-Inventory Items on Requisition and Planning Worksheets.  You can process non-inventory lines in much the same way as other types of items. If you use requisition and planning worksheets as the starting point for purchase orders in your procurement process, you can manually enter lines for non-inventory items on the worksheets. Then, when you create your purchase orders, the non-inventory items will be included. This allows you to use the same procurement process for inventoriable and non-inventoriable items.

Bank and Payment Reconciliations.

The Payment Reconciliation Journal has been improved with the following capabilities:

• Separate number series.
• Posting preview.
• Ability to reverse the G/L register posted through the Payment Reconciliation Journal.

The Bank Reconciliation page has been enhanced with the following capabilities:

• Bank ledger entries are now filtered, so only ledger entries after the statement’s ending date are displayed, making it simpler to get an overview.
• The layout of the test report has been cleaned up, making it simpler to read. The report will also use the statement date as a filter for the G/L account as well as the bank account so that the focus is on the period being reconciled.
• When applying auto-matching, the user can decide to not overwrite any of the already matched entries, or to overwrite all.
• Many-to-1 matching is now possible, so many bank statement lines can be matched against one bank ledger entry. This will support scenarios such as a bank statement splitting up sales into payment methods for which you only posted one bank ledger entry.
• When you transfer differences to be posted in a general journal, the entries will be auto-matched when you return to the bank reconciliation, reducing the redundant manual step.

Locations for Non-Inventory Items.  Based on user feedback, Microsoft has aligned service items and non-inventory items with other types, such as G/L accounts, item charges, and fixed assets. As a result, you can now specify a location for these types of items in supported transactions, and the location will be copied in the item ledger, values, and job ledger entries. This is useful for reporting purposes and cases when there is one document, such as a purchase order, with multiple non-inventory items meant for different locations.

Production BOMs and Routes on Stockkeeping Units in Planning Scenarios.  Microsoft has increased the number of business processes that take into account the values in the Production BOM and Production Routing fields defined on SKUs. These include the following processes:

• Capable-to-promise called from sales orders.
• Planning worksheet, including the Calculate Net Change Plan, Calculate Regenerative Plan, and Get Action Messages actions.
• Order planning.

By default, the Production BOM and Production Routing fields are available on SKUs.

Enhancements To Working With Microsoft Excel.   The 2021 release wave 2 introduces the Share icon and menu in which users will find the Open in Excel and Edit in Excel actions. This applies to list pages, such as the Items list, and also to list parts that display a full menu, such as the Lines part on a sales order.

Lists that are embedded in a part on a page can now be exported to Excel. For example, you can export Sales Lines on a Sales Order, list parts on the Role Center, or lists in the FactBox pane. Similar to full-page lists, the Open in Excel action downloads a static copy of your list as an Excel file, applying your filters and sort order just as shown on screen.

From a report request page, users can export report data to Excel. The Excel file will only include the raw data, not the report layout.

Stay tuned for information on additional enhancements and new features in our October/Newsletter.