What’s new in January 2024

Microsoft Business Central platform updates 

This release rolls out the following Microsoft Business Central platform updates:

• Business Central 2023 Wave 1
• Business Central 2023 Wave 2.

The following features are included in these releases but you can find more information about other features here. 

Intercompany posting provides a one-stop-shop setup experience

Intercompany posting has a new Intercompany Setup page that gives you an improved overview of your setup. The new setup page gives you fast access to various setup and task pages. The new setup page also will help you validate your intercompany posting setup to determine whether you've missed any settings across companies.

The intercompany posting has been improved in the following ways:

• Manage your intercompany setup on one page that includes intercompany partners, an intercompany chart of accounts, and intercompany dimensions.

• Handle bank transactions on the IC General Journals page.

• IC general journals are included on the G/L Register page.

• The experience when working with the intercompany inbox and outbox is smoother, and the Handled Inbox now lets you open documents.

• Role Center cues have been added added to give an overview.

Read more: Intercompany posting provides a one-stop-shop setup experience

Usability improvements to Financial Reporting pages

Use financial reports to do custom reporting on your general ledger.

Improvements on the Financial Reports page, and related pages, include:

• The Financial Reports list is extended to show row and column analysis views. In most cases, the two analysis views must be identical for the row and column for the report to work. If you don't use analysis views, you can hide these columns.

• The Financial Report page has a Show action that lets you show or hide the Options and Dimensions FastTabs, which leaves more space for the report.

• You can directly access the row and column definitions. You'll be notified that your changes will affect the use of the financial for all users.

• When you're working on a financial report, you can access default settings directly by using the Edit Defaults action. Editing defaults is the same as opening the report in edit mode, and your changes will affect all users.

Read more here: Usability Improvements to Financial Reporting pages

Use statistical accounts to collect data for financial reports

Businesses can significantly improve their analyses on G/L data by using additional statistical metrics. You can define statistical values and register them in a separate ledger so that you can analyse the data.

When posting G/L transactions, the Quantity field alone doesn't provide much data for statistics and data analysis for the transactions. More data is often needed to increase the relevance of reports.

Statistical accounts improve analyses and progress tracking by letting you add a number-based statistical value to a separate ledger. For example, you might want to add the following information to clarify values on reports:

• Square meters in your building for tracking rental expenses.

• Number of full-time employees.

• Customers served for a given marketing spend.

You register the values for the statistical account in Statistical Accounts Journals and then find the values in the statistical accounts ledger entries page or by going to the ledger entries for an account from the Statistical Accounts list.

Read more here: Use statistical accounts to collect data for financial reports

Add more columns to pages for better insight

This feature adds more fields and columns on several pages, allowing you to better customise your documents.

On select sales and purchase documents, you can now add the Gen. Bus. Posting Group, Gen. Prod. Posting Group, GST Bus. Posting Group, and GST Prod. Posting Group fields can be added by personalising the Lines FastTab. 

Read more: Add more columns to pages for better insight

Avoid document number errors with the Renumber Document Numbers action

To avoid or fix errors related to the order of document numbers when you post item journals, you can use the Renumber Document Numbers action before you post.

On the Item Journals page, the Document No. field is editable so that you can specify different document numbers for different journal lines or the same document number for related journal lines.

Read more: Avoid document number errors when you post item journals

Bin Code and Zone Code fields dynamically shown on warehouse documents

When you require bins, your warehouse employees need access to the Bin Code and Zone Code fields on all relevant warehouse documents. Having those fields readily and consistently available makes it easier for warehouse workers to do their jobs and make fewer mistakes.

When you have Bin Mandatory turned on for a location, the following documents will include the Bin Code and Zone Code fields:

• Warehouse receipt header

• Warehouse receipt lines

• Warehouse put-away lines

• Warehouse shipment header

• Warehouse shipment lines

• Warehouse put-away lines

Read more: Bin Code and Zone Code fields are dynamically shown on warehouse documents

Catalog items can now be included in blanket sales orders

It's now easier for businesses to manage catalogue items in your Wiise environment. Catalogue items are items that you don't manage in Wiise until you sell them.

You can now decide how to convert the vendor item numbers to the item numbering structure that you use. The number series is defined in the item template that is assigned to a catalogue item, or use the number series defined in Item No. field on the Inventory Setup page. The number series defined on the item template takes priority.

Read more: Catalog items use standard number series, and can be included in blanket sales orders

Post multiple transfer orders at the same time

You can now select multiple transfer orders to post instead of individually posting one by one. After selecting the transfer orders you would like to post, select the posting drop-down and select which Post Batch option you require. You can also set a schedule for when the orders will be posted.

This can help your business avoid system performance issues that might happen if you post during work hours. You can complete this by setting up the Batch Post Transfer Orders report to automatically post transfer orders at a certain time.

Read more: Post multiple transfer orders at the same time

Use different general ledger accounts for payables, receivables

Sometimes businesses want to post payable and receivable transactions to a different general ledger (G/L) account than the one that is specified on the customer or vendor posting group.

You can enable alterations of default customer or vendor posting groups by choosing Allow Alteration of Posting Group on the Sales and Receivable Setup and Service Mgt. Setup pages for customer posting group changes, and the Purchases and Payables Setup page for vendor posting group changes.

On the Customer Posting Groups or Vendor Posting Groups pages, you can specify the posting groups to allow as substitutes by choosing Substitutions. Substitute posting groups can replace the default customer or vendor posting group specified for a customer or vendor.

After you set this up, you can pick among allowed substitute posting groups and change customer or vendor posting groups when posting sales or purchase documents and journals. Changed, non-default, customer or vendor posting groups are copied to posted documents and journals, and payable or receivable G/L entries are posted to the G/L accounts specified for the substitutes.

You'll also be able to run the Suggest Vendor Payments report using a vendor posting group as a criteria for suggesting payments.

Read more here: Use different general ledger accounts for payables, receivables

Manage user permissions using security groups

Security groups allow for easier management of access control, ensuring that users only have access to the resources they need.

You can use Azure Active Directory security groups to manage the permissions users have to access various parts of Wiise.

A prerequisite for using security groups in Wiise is that you create Azure Active Directory security groups and add members to them either in the Microsoft 365 admin centre or in the Azure Active Directory portal. After you create Azure Active Directory security groups, you can link them to security groups in Wiise on the Security Groups page, by choosing the New action.

Manage permission sets for security groups by choosing Permissions, and then Permission Set by Security Group on the Security Groups page.

Read more here: Manage user permissions using security groups

Reverse a customer and vendor ledger entry with a realised gain or loss entry

Microsoft has improved the features for reversing transactions to save you time when you enter data and when you validate manual postings.

You can use the Reverse transaction action to reverse payments that were applied to entries that originated in foreign currencies and were adjusted using the Exchange Rate Adjustment batch job. The feature works for both purchases and sales.

With this step (actually two because you must always un-apply entries before you can reverse them), you can easily undo mistakes that also involve currency adjustments.

Read more here: Reverse a customer and vendor ledger entry with a realized gain or loss entry

More control over general journal approvals

Some transactions require an inspection by accounting managers and require approvals before being posted. Making sure transactions remain unchanged after approval ensures compliance with your company policies.

When you send a general journal batch or specific general journal lines for approval, Wiise ensures that people can't change them before or after they're approved. Changing the G/L account will show an inline validation error message that offers two actions that can help the accounting manager fix the mistake, or return the general journal batch to the submitter. The accounting manager can document the change they're requesting by choosing Show Comments, or reject the batch by choosing Reject Approval.

Read more here: More control over general journal approvals

Block item variants

Over time, you might have some item variants that you no longer need. Wiise will allow you to block item variants from being chosen on sales or purchase lines, and you can block them from being posted in transactions.

The following table describes the new toggles added to the Item Variant page.

Suggest the next step for sales and production orders

Value to customers: Improve customer satisfaction by delivering on sales and production orders faster. Wiise monitors the inventory status of the items on orders for you and suggests the next step accordingly.

New Feature: Wiise offers a reservation worksheet that can help you reserve and allocate incoming goods in bulk, so you can be sure that quantities are available for your sales and production orders.

Based on the quantities you’ve reserved in inventory, Wiise displays the status on the documents so that you’re quickly aware of the next step. For example, Wiise will indicate that you can ship a sales order or start to work on a job, assembly, or production order. The status also helps reduce the risk of accidental partial shipments or hold-ups due to missing stock for production and assembly orders.

Read more here: Suggest the next step for sales and production orders

More features:

• Invoice posting policy can be defined for various users

• Navigate more easily between warehouse and inventory documents

• Review general ledger accounts faster

• Ship and receive non-inventory items on warehouse documents

• Generate a customer statement only with open entries

• Include approvals for intercompany general journals in your workflows

• More control over general journal approvals

Read more about these features and other features in these major platform upgrades, here and here.

 

---

Wiise feature enhancements

Updates to Charts of Accounts

The naming of some Charts of Accounts has been adjusted to be clearer for customers.

GL Account Category Linking

Customers will now be able to create their Account Categories, allowing for more detailed reporting options.

Application areas renamed to KBIZ prefix

It is now easier to locate which application area you are after while developing extensions.

All application areas have been renamed to include KBIZ as the prefix with Wiise added in the caption. This will allow for easier recognition of what is the purpose of each application area.

eCommerce and POS forms have been refactored

Set up eCommerce and POS integrations with Wiise faster with no API calls needed.

The Shopify, Square, Chargebee and Wiisedom wizards now run without API calls. The setup wizards have now been hardcoded into Wiise.

Enter up to 100 characters for more detailed purchase line descriptions

Customers can now add more details to item descriptions in purchase lines when splitting.

Purchase lines can now split with 100 characters in the item description. This allows users to add more detail to lines when completing purchase orders in landed cost.

Bug fixes

Notice about pending deprecated fields

In this release, there are no pages or fields removed or deprecated from the Wiise platform. The below lists are the pages and fields that will be removed in our April release.

Pending updates to fields

The following fields will be removed from these pages in the next release after this one. The reason for this is Microsoft introduced standard functionality to allow the addition of any field back to a page. These removals will ensure no compatibility problems in future.

If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team at support@wiise.com.