Use Dynamics 365 Sales from Business Central

If you use Dynamics 365 Sales for customer engagement, you can enjoy seamless integration in the lead-to-cash process by using Business Central for backend activities such as processing orders, managing inventory, and doing your finances.

Before you can use the integration capabilities, your system administrator must set up the connection and define users in Dynamics 365 Sales. For more information, see Integrating with Dynamics 365 Sales.

[!NOTE] These steps describe the process of integrating online versions of Business Central. For information about on-premises configuration, see Preparing Dynamics 365 Sales for Integration on-premises.

Integrating the applications lets you access data in Sales from Business Central, and in some cases the other way around. You can work with and synchronize data that both services have in common, such as customers, contacts, and sales information, and keep the data up to date in both applications.

For example, a sales person in Business Central.

Conversely, order processors in Dynamics 365 Sales as write-in products. For more information, see Handling Sales Order Data.

[!IMPORTANT]
Dynamics 365 Sales.

Coupling Records

The assisted setup guide lets you choose the data to synchronize. Later, you can also set up synchronization for specific records. This is referred to as coupling. For example, you can couple a specific account in Business Central. This section describes what to take into consideration when you couple records.

For example, if you want to see accounts in Dynamics 365 Sales.

You can also create (and couple) an account in Business Central**.

When you set up coupling between two records, you can also manually request current record, for example a customer, to be overwritten immediately by account data from Sales (or from Business Central record data.

In some cases you must couple certain sets of data before other sets of data, as shown in the following table.

Data What to couple first
Customers and accounts Couple salespeople with Dynamics 365 Sales users
Items and resources Couple units of measure with Dynamics 365 Sales unit groups
Items and resource prices Couple customer price groups with Dynamics 365 Sales prices

[!NOTE]
If your prices or customers use foreign currencies, make sure that you couple currencies to Sales transaction currencies.

In Dynamics 365 Sales, sales orders depend on information such as customers, units of measure, currencies, customer price groups, and items and/or resources. For the integration with sales orders to work you must couple customers, units of measure, currencies, customer price groups, and items and/or resources.

Fully Synchronizing Records

At the end of the assisted setup guide you can choose the Run Full Synchronization action to start synchronizing all Business Central while it runs in the background.

To check the progress of individual jobs in a full synchronization, on the Dynamics 365 Sales Full Synch Review page choose an record to view details. To update the status during synchronization, refresh the page.

From the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connection Setup page, you can get details about full synchronization at any time. From here, you can also open the Integration Table Mappings page to see details about the tables in Business Central and Sales that must be synchronized.

Handling Sales Order Data

Sales orders that people submit in Business Central if you select the Automatically Create Sales Orders check box on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connection Setup page. Alternatively, you can manually convert submitted sales orders from Business Central** action available on Sales Orders - Dynamics 365 for Sales page. On such sales orders, the Name field on the original order is transferred and mapped to the External Document Number field on the sales order in Business Central.

This can also work if the original sales order contains write-in products, meaning items or resources that are not registered in either app. In that case, you must fill in the Write-in Product Type and Write-in Product No. fields on the Sales & Receivables Setup page so that sales of non-registered products are mapped to a specified item or resource number.

[!NOTE] You cannot map a write-in to an item or resource in Dynamics 365 Sales.

If the description of the item on the original sales order is long, an additional sales order line of the type Comment is created to hold the full text on the sales order in Business Central.

Updates to fields on sales order headers, such as the Last Shipment Date or Requested Delivery Date fields, that are mapped in the SALESORDER-ORDER integration table mapping are periodically synchronized to Dynamics 365 Sales. For more information, see Introduction to activity feeds.

[!NOTE]
Periodical synchronization based on the SALESORDER-ORDER integration table mapping will work only when sales order integration is enabled. For more information, see Connection settings on the Sales Connection Setup Page. Only sales orders created from submitted sales orders in Dynamics 365 Sales are synchronized. For more information, see Enable Sales Order Processing Integration.

[!VIDEO https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2098170]

Handling Sales Quotes Data

Sales quotes that are activated in Business Central if you select the Automatically Process Quotes check box on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connection Setup page. Alternatively, you can manually convert activated sales quotes from Business Central** action on the Sales Quotes - Dynamics 365 Sales page. On such sales quotes, the Name field on the original quote is transferred and mapped to the External Document Number field on the sales order in Business Central.

Sales quotes go through many revisions while they are being finalized. Both manual and automatic processing of sales quotes in Dynamics 365 Sales.

When you choose Process in Dynamics 365 Sales later, and a sales order is created from it, the Quote No. is updated on the sales order and the quote is archived.

Handling Posted Sales Invoices, Customer Payments, and Statistics

After fulfilling a sales order, invoices will be created for it. When you invoice a sales order, you can transfer the posted sales invoice to Dynamics 365 Sales with the status, Billed.

When the customer payment is received for the sales invoice in Dynamics 365 Sales. Alternatively, you can have the scheduled jobs, Customer Statistics and POSTEDSALESINV-INV automatically run both of these processes in the background.

Handling Sales Prices

[!NOTE] In 2020 release wave 2 we released streamlined processes for setting up and managing prices and discounts. If you're a new customer using that version, you're using the new experience. If you're an existing customer, whether you are using the new experience depends on whether your administrator has enabled the New sales pricing experience feature update in Feature Management. For more information, see Enabling Upcoming Features Ahead of Time.

The steps to complete this process differ, depending on whether your administrator has enabled the new pricing experience.

[!NOTE] If the standard price synchronization does not work for you, we recommend using integration customization capabilities. For more information, see Customizing an Integration with Microsoft Dataverse.

Current Experience

In the current pricing experience, Business Central synchronizes sales prices that:

  • Apply to all customers. Default sales price lists are created based on the price in the Unit Price field on the Item Card page for the items.

  • Apply to a specific customer price group. For example, sales prices for your retail or wholesale customers. To synchronize prices based on a customer price group, do the following:

    1. Couple the items for which prices are set by the customer price group.
    2. On the Customer Price Groups page, couple the customer price group by choosing Related, then Dynamics 365 Sales, Coupling, and then Set up coupling. The coupling will create an active price list in Dynamics 365 Sales, and automatically synchronize all items for which the customer price group defines the price.

New Experience

The new pricing experience synchronizes price lists that meet the following criteria:

  • Allow Updating Defaults is turned off.
  • The price type is Sale.
  • The amount type is Price.
  • The product type on the lines must be Item or Resource.
  • A minimum quantity is not specified.

Business Central synchronizes sales prices that apply to all customers. Default sales price lists are created based on the price in the Unit Price field on the Item Card page for the items.

To synchronize price lists, on the Sales Price List page, choose Related, Dynamics 365 Sales, Coupling, and then Set up coupling.