Stuart Hardman Director

When a Service Contract is created if the start date is mid month then the first invoice is created for a partial invoice up to the end of the month, new invoices are then created from the first of the following month. This means that the recurring invoices aren't for the same date that the contract started. For instance: A contract is signed on 15th July with Quarterly invoicing. An invoice is generated for 17 days up until the end of July then the first quarterly invoice is generated for 1st August to 31st October. In many countries & industries the date that the contract is signed should be the recurring date for the invoices. IE 3 month invoice generated on 15th July, 15th October, 15th January etc

If a Service Contract is prepaid and has a discount on it then the discount amount is recognised in full in the first month of recognition. It is not spread across the invoicing period which means the recognition amounts are incorrect for the length of the invoice. For instance a contract is set up with Annual billing for £1,200 and should be recognised at £100 per month. A 10% discount is agreed that totals £120 for the Annual invoice. When the recognition routine is run the first month shows £120 discount and £100 income, this means the contract shows a £20 loss in the first month. The system should recognise £100 income and £10 discount for each month.

Service Contracts can have a Currency Code filled out but the value that you see on the contract are only ever in LCY. These values are converted to the FCY when the Service Invoice is generated. This means that the values on the Service Invoice fluctuate based on the Currency Exchange Rate. It should be possible to specify a Contract Currency and Invoicing Currency so that the value that are entered on the Service Contract are the same values that are put on to the Service Invoice. If you have an agreed price with a customer for a contract it should not fluctuate based on exchange rates, the existing functionality is not consistent with the Sales & Purchase Price functionality where values can be entered in FCY.

If you have a prepaid Service Contract and the Invoice Period is set to anything greater than Month then you will have a line created on the invoice for each month. IE If Invoice Period = Year then I will have a Service Invoice generated with 12 lines on it. A customer does not need to see an invoice with 12 lines, they need one line with the start and end date for the invoice.

When using the Outlook integration if you receive an email requesting a quote from a Contact that is not yet a Customer you cannot create a Sales Quote. It gives an error "Cannot find an existing customer that matches the contact Stuart Hardman". Within Business Central you have always been able to Quote a Contact as long as you specify a Customer Template to be used (which is then used in the Make Order function to create the Sales Order). You should be able to create a Sales Quote for a Contact from Outlook, perhaps just prompt for a Customer Template to use?

When converting a Contact to a Customer using the Outlook integration it suggests Contact Conversion Templates that are filtered based on Contact Type. IE if an email is received from a Person Contact related to a Company it will only show Contact Conversion Templates for people (not companies). When the Contact is converted to a Customer it takes the Person Contacts details on to the Customer card NOT the Company Contact that the person is associated with.

Increasing number of banks are advertising integration with accounting systems. NatWest are now advertising their Rapid Cash functionality on their website that allows borrowing against outstanding customer invoices. This appears to be a relatively simple integration and they explicitly list systems that you can use with it: FreeAgent. Xero, Netsuite, Quickbooks, Sage and Kashflow. Business Central is not listed. Anyone looking at a new system could immediately discount Business Central due to that list. It's not adequate to expect a partner developed app in this type of scenario it requires a Microsoft backed out of the box app that is approved and gets Business Central on to the list. Details can be found at rapidcash.natwest.com

When creating capacity for Resources you have to Set Capacity per Resource. This is a laborious manual process. On the Resource card allow the user to specify a Work Hour Template. Amend the Set Capacity routine to allow it to be run across all Resources (with the ability to set filters) to allow the users to create capacity quickly. When run it should create capacity based on the Work Hour Template specified on each Resource. The ability to override when running the report and specify a Work Hour Template to use on that occasion would be useful (IE over holiday periods)

On Purchase Return Orders (and Sales Return Orders) when the Get Posted Document Lines to Reverse function is used it is not possible to filter on Posting Date. It appears you can filter on all other fields but not Posting Date. If there are hundreds or thousands of lines it can make very difficult to locate the correct lines to reverse. The ability to filter on Posting Date was available in older versions of NAV.

On the Role Centre -> Actions -> Excel Reports there is the ability to export Account Schedules to Excel (Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, Retained Earning Statement). The Account Schedules used are defined on the General Ledger Setup Reporting Fast tab. When exporting to Excel these Account Schedules use the correct rows but only export a single column (Balance) they do not use the Default Column Setting that is defined against the Account Schedule. This makes the functionality very limited in its usefulness. The export should respect the Default Column Setting as defined against the Account Schedule