Before splitting payment methods for a single invoice or compiling stellar reports, there are a few best practices to follow when planning to add expense automation to your ERP. Applying the following concepts to your new Dynamics integration will allow your team to gather granular data for each expense.
In turn, you’ll be able to figure out when someone is approaching their spending limit, estimate GST/VAT taxes, capture spend by dimensions and perform other high-level tasks in seconds.
6 best practices for expense management with Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC
1. Map out everything
First things first, it’s critical to map out how you plan to structure your expense capture process. Mapping out data relationships, what information you need and how you expect it to be presented will save a lot of headaches. Once you have everything mapped out, our expense reporting integration has the ability to map required expense fields to the desired dimensions / jobs / GL accounts in Business Central.
2. Understand how users might use the product
Next, you’ll want to consider how your accounting team will interact with the files and what structure will make more sense to them. For example, Gorilla Expense can combine estimated tax into a total amount or provide a line-by-line breakdown. Which version you need will depend on your preference and types of payments.
There are also times when AP professionals will want to export data into various sections of the accounting system like General Ledger or Purchase Invoice. Ensure that your expense integration has this capability.
3. Pick a secure integration
Every software decision must balance the power of automation with security. The more access your Dynamics integration has to customer data, the less secure your data is.
At Gorilla Expense, our integration does not touch or retain any specific vendor or customer data from Microsoft Dynamics. Since our expense management system uses a SOAP/ODATA to access Microsoft Dynamics after getting Admin approval, the connection is simple and secure.
While it’s not critical to understand the technical jargon, asking your chosen integration team about their security measures can be useful.
Gorilla Expense’s solution ensures that the incoming and outgoing connections with corporate card data are secure. This is possible because the Gorilla Expense works with almost all banks in the US and Canada. In addition, this network allows the expense integration to seamlessly pull your business card and corporate card data directly into the platform.
4. Optimize your configuration for various requirements
Not every expense report needs to be added as a Purchase Invoice in BC. Accounts payable professionals also send data in a General Journal Entry with the ability to dynamically define the Balancing Account Type and Value. This feature is especially useful for corporate card expenses when the statement is already paid.
5. Make room for GST/VAT
GST/VAT is applicable in over 160 countries. For organizations with business travelers, it’s helpful to have a program that tracks GST/VAT taxes and keeps information in your system. Since Gorilla Expense uses receipts when calculating and storing data, the expense integration maintains GST/VAT reclaims compliance. Furthermore, our solution sends the GST/VAT criteria to BC from the respective GL Account, Tax Area Code, or Tax Group Code.
6. Leverage digitized receipts
The ability to send receipts to Business Central is also a convenient feature that will save financial professionals time and provide peace of mind. AP departments need an expense reporting integration to effortlessly export receipts into BC.
Our integration not only pushes receipts to BC, but also scans them and auto flags duplicates, errors, and policy violations.
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Ready to streamline your expense management workflow? with us today and learn more about how the Microsoft Dynamics can power your AP system.
