Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning Highlighted in 2020 Spring Release of Dynamics 365 Finance

By Ron Rud | February 20, 2020

Microsoft is slated to release the Dynamics 365 Wave 1 2020 update in April 2020, with a preview of most new features available starting as early as February 2020. Wave 1 for Finance focuses on automation, predictive analytics, and core capabilities to help finance users and leaders spend more time on action and less time on daily transactional activities. With the tools provided within Dynamics 365, businesses can easily view real-time data to help drive impactful decisions.

A variety of new features are being added to the core financials functionality of the system that address Finance Insights, Globalization, and Public Sector needs. You can view a full list of the features available in this release here. The spring release puts efficiency and predictivity at the forefront, allowing users to rely on data and insights from the system to reach goals faster.

Touchless Email Reminders to Customers

Dynamics 365 can now be enabled to automatically send email reminders to customers with their overdue invoice attached. This eliminates any need for your collections managers to manually contact each customer in arrears.

Credit Management

The credit management functionality will now proactively suggest credit control activities for customers, giving your team insight into where potential sales may fail and helping to mitigate any credit risks. Capabilities include:

  • Management of risk scores
  • System-suggested credit limits
  • Configurable blocking rules
  • Automation of credit cases
  • Dynamic release of credit holds
  • Credit limit management
  • Tracking historical credit limits

Advanced Ledger Settlement

The settlement process within the system can now run with only a warning, even if the process includes transactions that are marked for both settlement and unsettlement. Before when both settled and unsettled records were marked, both the Settle marked transactions and Reverse marked transactions processes would fail with an error because each process is separate. Now the process will run to completion.

Customer Payment Prediction

Customer payment predictions use machine learning to forecast when an invoice or sales order will likely be paid. This allows organizations to have a more accurate cash flow forecast and streamline the collection process. The predictive functionality helps answer the following questions:

  • When will an invoice or sales order be paid?
  • What customers will pay on time or late?
  • What invoices or orders will they pay?

Forecast Bank Balance

You can now predict the cash that will be available to your business at any time. This feature takes into account any number of bank accounts, balances, and transactions into each of them. Data from customer payment insights and vendor payments are also used in calculating a true balance.

Intelligent Budget Proposal

Business moves quicker than ever and frequently finance teams are developing budgets more often than an annual basis. Intelligent budget within Dynamics 365 allows you to create not only an annual budget, but also periodic forecasts through an automated intelligent process. These budgets are drafted based on historical data.

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If you have any questions or would like more information about moving your business to Dynamics, reach out to Stoneridge Software.

Learn more about transitioning from Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central.


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