Business Central -- If your business is growing, start here first
September 07, 2019

Business Central -- If your business is growing, start here first

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Dynamics NAV)

My organization adopted Business Central as part of an upgrade to the entire electronic medical record platform, with this component taking the place of an older general ledger platform that didn't quite meet our needs. We adopted Office 365 two years ago, and having this platform able to integrate with that system and utilize the same user accounts for access was ideal, along with the reliability we've seen from O365 in general. There just wasn't a huge need to have our GL installed locally, and from experience working with Dynamics locally installed at another facility, I much preferred the idea of letting Microsoft handle the updates for us instead of having to hire it out to another company annually.
  • Reporting is top-notch, and the ability to dig down into an entry is fantastic. If I'm curious about where a specific number or total came from, finding out is as simple as clicking on it and drilling down until I have my answer.
  • The stability of the platform is excellent -- no worries about our servers going down at all. :)
  • Our CFO position is outsourced, and this platform lets him work on our GL from anywhere. He showed me the other day on his phone how we can review journal entries, and was raving about how it makes him more responsive and effective.
  • The only downside I've really seen so far is that the licensing can get expensive if you have a large accounting department. It's several times the cost of a single O365 license, which makes it a bit cost-prohibitive to spread the love around. This sucks because there's some great executive dashboarding that I'd love to be able to set up for my CEO, but burning a license each month just so he can look at a dashboard is a waste of money.
  • Two things. 1st, it has allowed us to clean up our GL by dropping our old platform and building onto this new one. The old one had a ton of bad entries and old information, so we're more efficient and effective as a byproduct of this transition. 2nd, the reporting is top-notch. It's so easy a child could learn it, which makes planning budgets and auditing transactions a breeze.
We looked at both Quickbooks and Multiview, and ultimately felt that Quickbooks was too limiting for our growth, while Multiview met our needs but didn't offer quite as much ease-of-use as Business Central. I believe it was the dashboarding, reporting, and single-sign-on integration with O365 (and that entire suite) that put Business Central over the top as our choice.
I think that Business Central is closely on-par with being just as useful as Quickbooks in organizations that would normally lean towards Quickbooks first, but probably scales up a little better for slightly larger organizations. It's kind of the power-user version of Quickbooks I think. It still meets smaller organizations' needs, it just has the ability to kick it up a notch when needed. If you are in an organization that is experiencing growth, this is probably the better solution to build from.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
10
Accounts receivable
10
Global Financial Support
Not Rated
Primary and Secondary Ledgers
Not Rated
Journals and Reconciliations
10
Configurable Accounting
10
Standardized Processes
10
Billing Management
10
Cash and Asset Management
10
Budgetary Control & Encumbrance Accounting
10
Period Close
10
Inventory tracking
Not Rated
Automatic reordering
Not Rated
Location management
Not Rated
Pricing
Not Rated
Order entry
Not Rated
Credit card processing
Not Rated
Cost of goods sold
Not Rated
Order Orchestration
Not Rated
Pay calculation
Not Rated
Benefit plan administration
Not Rated
Direct deposit files
Not Rated
Dashboards
7
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
8
Not Rated
API for custom integration
Not Rated
Plug-ins
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
10
Single sign-on capability
10
Award Lifecycle Management
Not Rated
Budgeting and Forecasting
10
Project Costing
Not Rated
Cost Capture
10
Capital Project Management
Not Rated
Customer Contract Compliance
Not Rated
Project Revenue Recognition
Not Rated
Requisitions-to-Purchase Orders Integrated
10
Not Rated
Transportation Planning and Optimization
Not Rated
Transportation Execution Management
Not Rated
Trade and Customs Management
Not Rated
Fulfillment Management
Not Rated
Warehouse Workforce Management
Not Rated
Not Rated
Production Process Design
Not Rated
Production Management
Not Rated
Configuration Management
Not Rated
Work Execution
Not Rated
Manufacturing Costs
Not Rated
Not Rated
Forecasting
Not Rated
Inventory Planning
Not Rated
Performance Monitoring
Not Rated
Proposal Management
Not Rated
Product Master Data Management
Not Rated