Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

It is good

Our business is running smoother since changing but we are slowly getting everything in the new system. It is taking some time but it easy to find orders/invoices when you know what to look for. I use it daily to send invoices, correct price errors, correct PO numbers.

I have worked in the supply chain for 5 years now and have experience with 3 different ERP's. Our old ERP was limiting, though it was also fairly straight forward. The biggest issue seemed to be how incredibly date sensitive how ever without requiring dates at the same time. This pushed the change to a new ERP and Microsoft NAV was chosen through their partner company Just Foods.

A truly bizarre system, the flow of documentation through the program makes little sense and over complicates what would normally be easy transactions. For instance Purchase Orders follow this document flow - First the purchase order is created once you receive your order, a warehouse receipt document is created and received in. However, once it is received in the warehouse, the receipt document disappears and becomes a posted receipt document (both have completely different document numbers that don't connect to each other). At this point your original Purchase order has been changed to reflect what ever was received in, and you have to have a second column to view what you originally ordered. Otherwise, figuring out if you over or under received is difficult at best. Now once the invoice comes in and is posted against the posted warehouse document, your purchase order disappears. The only place your purchase order exists in its original form is the in Purchase order Archive, which was never mentioned to us during implementation, forcing us to call Just Foods later on and pay for their customer service.

This same, strange flow of documents, that are essentially intermediary documents only existing to complete a transaction, over complicate what should be a straight forward shipping and receiving process. There are some other basic functionality issues, like figuring out what day you actually shipped or received an item. The easiest way to figure that out seems to require access to the warehouse functionality, which you may or may not want people to have. We get a lot of errors where the tables are locked with other users, and you are just stuck until the report or other person finishes up. The Dimensions on lines can mysteriously disappear, even though the G/L Code and Department code show as filled out in the order. Our MRP has never worked correctly, so in general, we are forced to use Excel to put together our production schedule. All in all, its a sub-par program that you can tell is 5 or 6 different original programs that have been slapped together to try an resemble an ERP system.

Now having said all that, obviously I am looking at this from a supply chain perspective as it is what I do. Perhaps on the accounting end it has some ease of use, but due to how difficult it is to understand on the operations end, the accounting rarely comes out correct due to faulty information in the system. On the positive side there do seem to be a million different ways to do the same thing in NAV, and many of the built in reports are extremely useful assuming that the information in the system is correct.

We use the collections module, sales, purchasing, service cost, job cost, subcontractor module, and more. We use purchase orders and 3 way matching and use dynamics for a wide range of use.

It is really for basic use. If you are part of a manufacturing business or a large business, the software is not for you. In my experience, it is best used for small to mid size companies. The support is also terrible.