Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is a comprehensive financial management solution that provides powerful capabilities for managing financial operations, tracking financial performance, and complying with regulatory requirements. The solution is highly configurable and can be tailored to meet the unique needs of different organizations. These features include Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Asset Leasing, Budgeting, Cash and Bank Management, Cost Accounting, Finance Insights, General Ledger, Sales Tax, and Public Sector.

Below are the main features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance:

Accounts Payable

• Allows user to manually enter vendor invoices or receive them electronically through a data entity. Once the invoices are entered or received, they can be reviewed and approved by using an invoice approval journal or the vendor invoice page.
• It supports invoice matching, vendor invoice policies, and workflow to automate the review process so that invoices that meet certain criteria are automatically approved, and the remaining invoices are flagged for review by an authorized user.

Accounts Receivables

• Helps businesses track customer invoices and incoming payments. Users can create customer invoices that are based on sales orders or packing slips. They can also enter free text invoices that are not related to sales orders.
• Multiple payment types can be received, including bills of exchange, cash, checks, credit cards, and electronic payments. If a business includes multiple legal entities, centralized payments can be used to record payments in a single legal entity on behalf of the other legal entities.

Asset Leasing

• Allows managing, tracking, and automating financial transactions for leased assets in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. Asset leasing complies with international accounting standards (IFRS 16) and US GAAP standards (ASC 842).
• It captures and processes information about the leases and helps generate journal entries throughout the lifecycle of the lease, from initial recognition, monthly journal entries, to impairment and termination of the lease.

Budgeting

• Provides components to support the resource planning cycle for a company, which typically consists of planning, budgeting, and forecasting activities. Budget planning documents are tightly integrated with Microsoft Excel. Users can configure unlimited monetary and quantitative scenarios and define a budgeting organizational hierarchy to support both top-down and bottom-up budgeting methods.
• After a budget is established and approved in the application, it can be converted to a budget register entry. Budget register entries provide tools for maintaining the budget and for keeping amounts traceable through budget codes. Budget register entries let users revise original budgets, perform transfers, and carry forward budget amounts from the previous year.

Cash and Bank Management

• Cash and Bank Management feature is used to maintain the legal entity’s bank accounts and the financial instruments associated with those bank accounts, such as deposit slips, checks, bills of exchange, and promissory notes. Users can reconcile bank statements and print bank data on standard reports.

Cost Accounting

• Cost Accounting feature lets users collect data from various sources, such as the general ledger, sub-ledgers, budgets, and statistical information. They can then analyze, summarize, and evaluate cost data, so that management can make the best possible decisions for price updates, budgets, cost control, and so on. The source data used for cost analysis is treated independently in Cost Accounting, and updates in Cost Accounting do not affect the source data. It incorporates many international accounting standards and rules.

Financial Insights

• Finance insights provide configurable and extensible solutions to help users intelligently predict their company’s cash flow, predict when they may receive payment for outstanding receivables, and generate a budget proposal that can help speed up the budgeting process.
• These features use intelligent machine learning templates to build models using data users provide (including data from a third party, such as consumer report information from a bureau). These intelligent capabilities inform decision-making and help users take action to respond effectively to current and anticipated business challenges.

Procurement and Sourcing

• Users can create and manage purchase orders, requisitions, requests for quotes, and requests for proposals. You can use procurement and sourcing to establish and manage purchase agreements, and to create and manage vendor catalogs. Procurement and sourcing include functionality for vendor collaboration, vendor evaluation, and procurement categories.

Project Management and Accounting

• Project management and accounting provides functionality for project planning, project budgeting, cost tracking, and project invoicing. You can create project quotes, and then use these quotes to create projects. You can create project work breakdown structures (WBS) and define project tasks and milestones. You can also use project templates to create projects that have similar characteristics.
• You can track project costs by using cost categories, and then apply those costs to project transactions. Project transactions can be invoiced to the customer or posted to the general ledger. You can use project management and accounting to manage project resources, including workers, equipment, and inventory. You can use timesheets to track the time that workers spend on project tasks, and then apply that time to project costs.

Public Sector Budgeting

• The Public sector budgeting functionality lets you create budget plans that help you manage financial resources for your organization. Budget planning can include the creation of multi-year budget plans, and the ability to copy previous budget plans. You can use budget control to monitor actual spending against budgeted amounts. You can also create budget cycles to help you manage the budget process.
• Public sector financials include functionality for fund accounting, grant management, encumbrance management, and financial statements. You can create financial statements, such as balance sheets and income statements, to show the financial position and performance of your organization.
• Fund accounting is used to track resources and expenditures for funds that are earmarked for a specific purpose. Grant management is used to manage grant funds, and to ensure that grant funds are spent in accordance with grant requirements. Encumbrance management is used to reserve funds for future expenditures, and to ensure that budgeted funds are not overcommitted.

Dynamics 365 Finance provides a variety of tools for creating, managing, and distributing financial reports. Financial reports are used to analyze and summarize financial data and provide insights into the financial performance of the organization.

The reporting tools in Dynamics 365 Finance include: Financial reporting – a web-based report designer that enables you to create and customize financial reports. Financial reporting includes a drag-and-drop interface for designing reports, a powerful report wizard for creating reports quickly, and options for sharing reports with others.

In conclusion, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is an advanced enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that provides a range of features to support businesses with their financial management processes. With features such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting, fixed assets, and vendor collaboration, Dynamics 365 Finance provides a complete suite of financial management tools. Workflow and reporting capabilities provide powerful automation and analysis tools that can help organizations streamline their financial operations and gain insights into their financial performance. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, Dynamics 365 Finance is a powerful financial management solution that can help you optimize your financial operations and achieve your business goals.