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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Formerly Dynamics NAV

Overview

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Dynamics NAV) is one of the ERP products in the Dynamics family. The technology is based on the Navision product acquired by Microsoft in 2002. This product is the best-selling Microsoft ERP platform, and…

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 66 features
  • Role-based user permissions (20)
    9.0
    90%
  • Accounts payable (20)
    9.0
    90%
  • Standard reports (21)
    5.1
    51%
  • Custom reports (20)
    5.1
    51%
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Pricing

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Unavailable

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Dynamics NAV) is one of the ERP products in the Dynamics family. The technology is based on the Navision product acquired by Microsoft in 2002. This product is the best-selling Microsoft ERP platform, and is often used by companies in the…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Cetec ERP?

Cetec ERP offers manufacturing web-native ERP As A Service for $40/user. Its design and delivery provide manufacturers with a platform built to increase both capacity and efficiency. The vendor states that companies will run faster on Cetec ERP. By providing a single, integrated platform that can…

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Product Demos

Microsoft Power BI Demo | Tensoft

YouTube
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Features

Payroll Management

Provides for pay calculation and benefit plan administration, in addition to managing direct deposit, salary revisions and payroll tracking.

7.6
Avg 7.2

Customization

This addresses a company’s ability to configure the software to fit its specific use case and workflow.

8
Avg 7.2

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

9
Avg 8.1

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

5.1
Avg 7.0

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting

Financial management solution, including capabilities for general ledger and configurable accounting

8.8
Avg 7.6

Inventory Management

The ability to track and manage the flow of goods or materials into and out of an inventory.

8.7
Avg 7.9

Order Management

The ability to process orders, and track them from quote to cash.

7.9
Avg 7.8

Subledger and Financial Process

Revenue management solution including capabilities for subledgers and financial processes

8.4
Avg 7.4

Project Financial Management

Project financial management solution including capabilities for project budgeting, cost control, billing and contract management.

8.7
Avg 7.6

Project Execution Management

Project execution management solution including capabilities for project scheduling, resource management, and team member task management.

7.7
Avg 6.8

Grants Management

Grants management solution for higher education, public sector, or non-profits with capabilities for managing financial awards for program and project funding

9.7
Avg 7.6

Procurement

Procurement management solution with capabilities for sourcing, contracting, procure-to-pay and supplier management

8
Avg 7.0

Risk Management

Risk management solution with capabilities for managing controls, assessing control effectiveness, certifying controls, and addressing deficiencies

9.6
Avg 6.5

Logistics

Logistics solution with capabilities for transportation planning, transportation execution, trade compliance, customs management, warehouse management and warehouse workforce management.

7.7
Avg 6.9

Manufacturing

Manufacturing solution for managing manufacturing processes and costs.

7.1
Avg 7.5

Supply Chain

Supply Chain Planning solution with capabilities for planning, performance monitoring, change responses and execution.

9.5
Avg 7.2

Product Lifecycle Management

Product Lifecycle Management solution with capabilities for innovation management, product development

9.3
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Video

Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Integrations

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Competitors

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Dynamics NAV) is one of the ERP products in the Dynamics family. The technology is based on the Navision product acquired by Microsoft in 2002. This product is the best-selling Microsoft ERP platform, and is often used by companies in the manufacturing and distribution verticals.

Infor ERP, NetSuite ERP, and Sage 300 are common alternatives for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Reviewers rate Credit card processing and Primary and Secondary Ledgers and Journals and Reconciliations highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(202)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-6 of 6)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We're a manufacturing company with multiple sales umbrella companies. We use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to place the order to the manufacturing facility, receive parts required to completed manufacturing and keep track of all accounting GL/AP/AR.

We enter PO's after we sell to the client by the sales department admin, then the manufacturing admin does the requisition, the procurement department keeps track of all the parts orders to ensure we can complete the building of the equipment by the required time promised to the client, and the accounting keeps track of all income, expenses and other costs. It helps us streamline our procedures and ensure that all departments see the big picture of what is happening in the company.
  • Lot/Serial tracking, due to our parts being imported worldwide, and in order to ship to clients and clear customs, this helps a lot.
  • Reporting in the platform, this helps us a lot in our weekly management meetings so everyone can help present and make sure everyone is aware.
  • Getting information from the old NAV, if you're transitioning not everything is easily available.
  • Some of the 3rd party software we use are not integrated or required customization which added to the cost.
Since we required a lot of our employees to be mobile the use of the app makes it very convenient to make sure that everyone gets the admin side of their work completed in a timely matter. Also, since we have been using Office 365 for 3 years it was nice to have a platform that integrated into that.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
NAV is used across the entire organization from purchasing, engineering, production, accounting, quality, shipping, customer and technical service, sales, and marketing. The implementation of NAV was intended to replace disparate systems that were not integrated to improve the integrity of data throughout the entire organization. The goal was to get all product and financial data into a single platform, so we had the assurance the same data could be accessed by users across the organization, doing away with old systems and spreadsheets.
  • Automate the creation of bills of materials for production. We can now generate a BoM from a sales order.
  • Organization of all data pertaining to thousands of parts, assemblies, and finished goods. Engineering and purchasing have a common portal.
  • We can create sales orders from quotations instead of re-entering them (this did require some bolt-on software). Less redundant work with fewer entry errors.
  • Accounting can provide reports based on specific criteria stored in NAV. We can pull better and more detailed intelligence.
  • It doesn't work out of the box. It requires consultants and experts to make it work. This makes it far more expensive to get up and running and maintain than originally anticipated.
  • Additional software purchases are needed for full functionality. For example, it doesn't offer a product configurator which was an expensive purchase that needed to be made separately.
  • It is difficult to get data into NAV from old systems. Now, for sales data prior to the implementation of NAV, we have to go back into the legacy system.
NAV has all the basics but lacks depth. When evaluating NAV be sure it does everything you want it to do out of the box as customizing it is very expensive and difficult. Be sure it has all of the functionality you need up front and that your data set is clean and all the fields you need are included. Our company is a diverse, two division operation and a lot of manipulations were necessary to make it work for the two businesses that provide different products and services. It would likely be well suited for smaller wholesale or retail operations, but if you are a more than moderately complex manufacturer, there may be other options. It is driven by Microsoft which in itself adds complexity.
Akos Krommer, CISA, ACDA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MS Dynamics NAV is used across my company for different purposes, like financial reporting, accounting, and basically to fully manage our business through the whole sales cycle. One of the biggest problems that it solves for me pretty much in a great way is accounts receivable and expense tracking and reporting on the monthly sales performance.
  • It is really great to use for financial reporting and generating invoices for clients.
  • Cloud capabilities of the system
  • Automation of several features (notifications, etc.)
  • Integration with many 3rd party tools
  • Permission setup can get quite complicated.
  • Requires lots of training to get fully confident with the software.
  • Sometimes it can get really slow, which makes the whole user experience bad.
MS Dynamics NAV can be a fantastic tool for small or middle-sized businesses, however, for very large organizations, I must say, other tools on the market are far better and can handle business problems much better. In my opinion, it works especially well in the manufacturing, distribution and professional services industry.
Thayer Ramahi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Calgary Foothills PCN uses NAV for all its financial needs: GL, AP, AR and payroll runs.
It is just used by our finance team to take care of our operations and administration finance and generate financial reports to auditors and boards.
  • User friendly, does not need much to train users on how to use it, enter data or generate reports.
  • Secure, it has a very secure & permission account setup.
  • Flexible and customizable for all the company needs: general accounting, A/R, A/P, Fixed Assets, and Budgeting needs.
  • Love the search tool, very powerful.
  • Reports need improvement for sure.
  • Does not integrate with other software or tools.
  • Navigation could be a challenge to some users.
  • Customization, modifications and upgrades require a 3rd party vendor to do.
Would recommend any company with many departments within to adopt the system because it helps to integrate all departments together into a single data base. Real time information helps in making critical decision within the company and helps to improve service delivery.
We are using it as a Main ERP and it runs all the tasks involved in the process of the company. We found that it can do things that our previous ERP couldn't like integrate with other Microsoft products.
Take more training to learn how to use the system. Repeat the training after 3 and 6 months.
Gene Fagelson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I personally have used, consulted, developed and installed NAV for over 22 years, going back to the original character based product. I have used NAV across a wide spectrum of businesses and assisted hundreds of companies with their implementations. I describe the software as a full featured ERP system that conforms to your industry and business rules rather than forcing you to conform to the software. As the product has matured, the feature rich environment has improved and stayed current with the needs of the business world. There are very few companies that are able to use an ERP system right out-of-the-box and NAV has solved this problem by providing the end-user with an almost unlimited ability to customize their environment. Add to this the availability of source code and there is almost no problem or process that cannot be addressed.
  • All of the Dynamics ERP systems are fully integrated with the full family of their Office products (Word, Excel, etc.) but the true power behind Dynamics-NAV is that it comes with complete access to the source code. Although most ERP packages provide some type of a development environment, it is always a third-party software package and requires an additional expense. NAV comes with full source code access and devolvement tools out-of-the-box and requires no additional purchase. The user is able to modify pages, reports and even add additional fields to the standard tables. If your company has an internal development staff you have the ability to purchase the same full development license that the VAR has, allowing you to handle all system customizations and support in-house. The sum total of this high flexibility is that you are able to make NAV conform to your business rather than you conforming to the software.
  • In addition to the available source code, NAV provides the user with an unlimited ability to modify and build within the rich environment of C/AL code. In over 20 years of modifying the NAV product I have never had a client ask for a modification or custom functionality that I was not able to provide. Add to this the fact that NAV now includes many development points that allow the user to place their custom code inside of the system without impacting the base code. This makes the upgrade process quick and easy and avoids the common occurrence of being version locked.
  • The user interface of Dynamics NAV has been well thought out and provides a very easy to learn and use package. Master records (Customer, Vendor, Items, etc.) have been laid out in a standard format. Once you learn where fields are located on one record you have learned them all. The forms (called Pages in NAV) have a very similar structure and, by design, are uncluttered and easily customized by the user without impacting the base code. This allows each user to configure the Page to the way they work, easing the learning process and speeding up daily work and data entry.
  • The NAV environment has grown to be very feature rich in the functionality offered and provides the user with almost everything they need with the purchase of the base product. Advanced features can be added if required as can a large number of third party add-ons made exclusively for the NAV environment. Additionally, user licenses are sold as concurrent and not as named. Concurrent licenses control the number of users allowed into the system at any one time meaning that anyone can be provided with the ability to log into the system. This allows the company to setup an unlimited number of users with the ability to access the system at any given time. This allows the occasional user to share a license with other users who only need to access the system to enter a small amount of data or run a few reports. This functionality is a plus for the company with a large sales staff or outside workers who only need limited access to the system. Named licenses would require that you purchase an access license for every person who needs to access the system.
  • As with most ERP packages, the Jobs functionality within NAV is somewhat limited in functions. It has been primarily designed for large projects such as building a house or large piece of equipment where the process is set from the start and has little change. Small job shops where each project is custom find the package very restrictive and inflexible to use. The WIP calculation has been greatly improved with the last couple of releases but still does not allow the user to a great amount of flexibility or provide you with the ability to post in detail to the general ledger.
  • The item reservation process is very restrictive in the way it was written. NAV does allow you to reserve inventory against sales and projects but is very unforgiving if the need arises to change or release those goods. It is possible but requires that the user jump through multiple hoops to accomplish the task.
  • Security within NAV is very good but requires that you build custom user roles as the standard roles provided by the package do not lend themselves well to the normal company environment. The standard permission roles tend to either provide too much access or too little and are often hard to follow and understand. However, NAV has provided a new tool that makes the creation of custom roles quick and easy but still requires that they be created. Additionally, NAV still does not provide field-level security, only record level. It is possible to modify the code to control this or purchase an add-on but is not available out-of-the-box.
Needless to say I am a very big believer in Dynamics NAV but do understand that there are times when other ERP offerings are better suited. I feel that if the company looking at purchasing an ERP system can use the package right out-of-the-box they are better suited to go with Dynamics GP or SL. Both packages are very feature rich and offer a great amount of standard functionality. However, if you require a system that needs to conform to your work environment there is no better package in Dynamics NAV. Additionally, if you are in an industry that is very unique and/or specialized, an industry specific package may be better suited. Dynamics NAV can be made to fit any industry or requirement, the determining factor is, as always, cost.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Dynamics NAV is used throughout the organization for all aspects of the company other than HR & payroll. We are a manufacturing company and are currently in the process of deploying Dynamics NAV to our subsidiaries.
  • Data integrity is paramount and in 18+ years of using Dynamics NAV with both the original native database as well as SQL, we have never lost any data.
  • Dynamics NAV has all of the functionality that small to medium sized businesses need to operate in an efficient and effective manner.
  • The ability to customize Dynamics NAV allows it to be adapted to practically any environment.
  • Report generation has always been somewhat below what would be expected. We rely on third-party tools to produce our reports.
  • User documentation, although better than previous versions still needs a lot of improvement.
Works very well in a manufacturing environment. Very flexible.
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