Last Updated: May 2026

Your purchasing manager just approved a $14,000 equipment order from a vendor your company has never used before. Nobody else knew about it until the invoice arrived.

Sound familiar? This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when your approval process lives in email threads and someone’s memory. One person might have been out of the office, maybe someone missed a reply, and suddenly a purchase order is moving forward without the right eyes on it.

Here’s the thing: Business Central approval workflows exist specifically to prevent this. And setting them up is more straightforward than most people expect. Let’s walk through how it works.

Why Use Business Central Approval Workflows at All?

Before getting into the how, it’s worth being clear on the why.

An approval workflow in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central puts a formal gate on transactions before they can be processed or posted. A purchase order gets created, it triggers an approval request, the designated approver gets notified, and nothing moves forward until that approval happens. If the approver doesn’t respond within a set timeframe, the system can automatically escalate or send a reminder.

Business Central approval workflows replaces your current email, phone call process with a documented, auditable process. Every approval is logged. Every rejection is tracked. If something gets approved that shouldn’t have, you know exactly who approved it and when.

For mid-sized distribution and manufacturing companies especially, this matters. You’re dealing with a high volume of purchase orders, multiple departments buying things, and real spend control requirements. Manual oversight doesn’t scale. A properly configured Business Central approval workflow does.

What Three Things Do You Set Up First?

Before you create a single workflow, there are three setup steps that need to happen in Business Central. Skip these and the workflow won’t function correctly.

1.Approval User Setup. This is where you define who can approve what, and up to what dollar amount. Go to Approval User Setup in Business Central and add every person who will either request approvals or approve them. This is also where you set approval limits. A department manager might be able to approve purchase orders up to $10,000, while anything above that automatically routes to a VP or the CFO. You can also define an approver chain here, so requests move up the hierarchy automatically based on the amount.

2.Notification Business Central can notify approvers by internal note or by email. For most companies, email is the right call since approvers aren’t always sitting in Business Central when a request comes in. On the Notification Setup page, you configure how each user receives notifications and how often. You can set notifications to go out instantly when a request is submitted, or batch them on a schedule if your team prefers a daily digest approach.

3.Workflow User Groups (if needed). If you have situations where a purchase order needs sign-off from multiple people, such as finance and operations both reviewing orders above a certain threshold, Workflow User Groups let you define those multi-approver sequences. You set the order, and Business Central routes the request through each approver in sequence before the document is released.

Getting these three things configured correctly upfront saves a lot of troubleshooting later.

How do you Set up a Purchase Order Approval Workflow in Business Central?

Once your users and notifications are configured, the actual workflow setup is easier than it sounds. Business Central includes a built-in template called the Purchase Order Approval Workflow, which covers the most common scenario right out of the box.

Here’s how to get it running:

Start from the Workflow Templates page. Navigate to Workflows in Business Central, select New, and choose New Workflow from Template. Find the Purchase Order Approval Workflow template and select it. This creates a new workflow with the standard steps already built in.

Set your event conditions. The template triggers when a purchase order approval is requested, but you can narrow this down. Most companies add conditions such as Document Type equals Order, and Amount is greater than a certain threshold. That way, small, routine purchases under your threshold move through without an approval step, while anything above it gets routed for review. If you need different approval rules for different amount ranges, you create separate workflows for each tier.

Configure the approval response. This defines what happens after the trigger fires. The standard response creates an approval request entry and locks the purchase order from being posted until it is approved. You can also add a response step that notifies the original requester when their PO is approved or rejected, which is a small thing that makes a big difference in day-to-day usability.

Enable the workflow. Once everything looks right, flip the Enabled toggle at the top of the workflow page. The workflow is now live. From this point forward, any purchase order that meets your conditions will require approval before it can be processed.

Microsoft’s official walkthrough on setting up and using a purchase approval workflow is a solid reference if you want to go deeper on any of these steps.

What Catches People Off Guard with Approval Workflows?

Business Central approval workflows are fairly intuitive once you understand the logic, but there are a couple of things worth knowing before you go live.

You need to set up the approver before the requester. In the Approval User Setup page, the approver’s record has to exist before you can assign them as an approver to someone else. If you try to set up a requester first, the system won’t have an approver to link them to. Work from the top of your approval hierarchy down.

Each workflow handles one condition set. If you need different approvers for amounts under $5,000 versus amounts over $5,000, that’s two separate workflows, not one workflow with multiple conditions. This trips people up when they’re first building out their approval structure.

Overdue approvals need their own workflow. If you want Business Central to automatically send reminders when an approval request has been sitting unanswered too long, that’s a separate workflow template called MS-OVERDUE-01. It doesn’t come enabled by default, so if you want those reminders, make sure you activate it.

Test before you go live. Create a few sample purchase orders in a test environment with different amounts and vendors to confirm the routing is working the way you expect. It takes 20 minutes and prevents a lot of headaches on day one.

How do Approval Workflows Connect to the Rest of Business Central?

Approval workflows are one of those features that seem like a small operational detail until you see what they actually connect to. When your purchase order approval process is running cleanly inside Business Central, it feeds accurate, timely data into your financial reporting, your cash flow projections, and your vendor management.

That’s the real value of having everything in one system. When your working together, a properly configured approval workflow doesn’t just stop a bad purchase order. It creates a clean audit trail, keeps your AP team from processing unauthorized invoices, and gives your finance team confidence in the numbers they’re reporting.

If you are newer to what Business Central can do across the board, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central overview on our site is a good place to start. And if you’ve been using BC for a while and want to get more out of it, features like job queues and fixed allocations are worth exploring alongside your workflow setup.

Getting Help with Your Business Central Workflow Setup

Business Central approval workflows are configurable enough that getting them right for your specific business, your approval hierarchy, your dollar thresholds, and your notification preferences benefits from working with someone who knows the system well.

CAL Business Solutions is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central implementation partner serving manufacturing, distribution, and professional services businesses across the United States. If you want help configuring your approval workflows or reviewing your current setup, contact us and we’re happy to walk through it with you.

The post Set Up Business Central Approval Workflows the Right Way appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Update: May 2026

Every month, someone on your finance team opens Microsoft Dynamics GP and manually re-enters the same journal entries. Rent. Depreciation. Prepaid amortization. Insurance allocations. The accounts don’t change and the amounts rarely change, but the entries get keyed in from scratch anyway, checked, and posted, month after month.

That’s the kind of work that should be running itself. GP recurring batches exist specifically for this reason. You set them up once, post them each month, and the system resets and queues the next one automatically. Your team stops re-entering the same monthly data and starts reviewing it instead, which is a much better use of their time during close.

Here’s how to set it up correctly and what to watch for.

What Are Recurring Batches in Microsoft Dynamics GP?

A recurring batch in Dynamics GP is a General Ledger batch that, once posted, doesn’t disappear. Instead, the system resets it for the next posting period based on a frequency you define. The transactions inside stay intact. The posting date rolls forward. Your team posts it again when the time comes.

This is different from a standard single-use batch, which clears entirely after posting. With a recurring batch, you’re building a template that the system reuses on whatever schedule fits the entry: monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, weekly, or even daily if needed.

The most common use case is monthly journal entries that repeat with little or no variation. Straight-line depreciation entries, fixed lease payments, deferred revenue amortization, and intercompany allocations are all strong candidates.

How Do You Set Up a Recurring Batch in Dynamics GP?

The setup lives in the General Ledger module. Navigate to Financial >> Transactions >> Batches to open the Batch Entry window.

Create a new batch and give it a name that makes its purpose obvious. Something like “RECUR-RENT-MONTHLY” or “RECUR-DEPRECIATION” works better than a generic label when your team is scanning a batch list during close. Ambiguous batch names cause confusion, especially when multiple recurring batches are running simultaneously.

In the Frequency field, select the interval that matches how often this batch should post. For standard monthly entries, select Monthly. Once you make that selection, the Posting Date field and the Days to Increment field become relevant. The posting date you enter becomes the date for the current period’s entries. After posting, Dynamics GP advances that date by the increment you set.

Mark the “Use last day of the month” checkbox if your entries need to land on the last day of each month. Without it, Dynamics GP defaults to incrementing by day count, which creates problems in months of different lengths. A batch set to post on January 31 would otherwise default to February 30, which doesn’t exist. With the checkbox marked, the system handles that automatically and posts to the correct last day every time.

Once the batch header is configured, save it and open the batch to add your journal entry lines. Navigate to Financial >> Transactions >> General and assign those transactions to your recurring batch ID. Enter your accounts, debits, and credits exactly as they should appear each period. If amounts vary month to month, you’ll update the lines before posting. If they’re fixed, you won’t need to touch them at all.

What Frequency Options are Available for GP Recurring Batches?

Dynamics GP gives you several frequency options beyond monthly. The full list includes Daily, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Semi-monthly, Monthly, Bi-monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annually, and Annually.

Most finance teams working with recurring journal entries stick to Monthly or Quarterly. The bi-monthly option is useful for entries that need to post every other month, though it’s less common. Quarterly works well for entries tied to quarterly accruals or tax provisions.

One thing to be aware of: the frequency setting controls when the batch is ready to post again, not when it posts automatically. Dynamics GP does not auto-post recurring batches without additional configuration. Your team still needs to open the batch and post it manually each period. The automation is in the reset, not the posting trigger. That distinction matters for how you build your monthly close checklist.

How Do You Post and Reset a Recurring Batch in Dynamics GP?

Posting a recurring batch works the same way as posting any other GL batch. Go to Financial >> Transactions >> Batches, select your recurring batch from the list, review the transactions, and post.

After posting, Dynamics GP resets the batch automatically. The same transaction lines remain, the batch status returns to Available, and the posting date advances to the next period based on your frequency setting. The batch is ready for next month without any manual rebuild.

Before posting each month, check two things. First, confirm the posting date is correct for the current period. If a batch was delayed or skipped, the date may need a manual adjustment. Second, if any transaction amounts change period to period, update the lines before posting. A batch with a stale amount, posts incorrectly and creates a correction entry, which is exactly the kind of noise you’re trying to avoid during close.

If you need to review who posted a recurring batch after the fact, that information is available through the Journal Entry Inquiry. We wrote a great blog on how to track that down – check it out: Tracking Journal Entries in Dynamics GP.

What Mistakes do Dynamics GP Teams Make with Recurring Batches?

We see a few patterns consistently when recurring batches cause problems.

1. The first is forgetting to update amounts before posting. A monthly accrual that should be $12,500 posts at last quarter’s $10,000 because no one updated the line. Always review variable-amount entries before posting, even when the routine feels automatic.
2. The second is poor batch naming. If three accountants are each managing recurring batches and none of the names indicate frequency or purpose, the batch list becomes a guessing game during close. Establish a naming convention and stick to it.
3. The third is skipped batches. If a recurring batch isn’t posted in a given month, the posting date doesn’t advance. The next time someone opens it, the date is still in the prior period. That entry either gets posted with the wrong date or gets adjusted manually, neither of which is a clean outcome. Build a close checklist that includes every recurring batch and who owns it.

How Do Recurring Batches Fit into Your Monthly Close Process?

Recurring batches work best when they’re part of a documented close sequence. Your team should know which batches need to post, in what order, and by what date. Entries that feed downstream reports or that other modules depend on need to post before those reports run.

If your team is also handling entries that come from outside Dynamics GP, for example from a spreadsheet, the copy-paste GL transaction method is a useful complement to recurring batches for one-time or variable entries that don’t fit a recurring template.

Between recurring batches handling fixed monthly entries and a clean process for variable entries, most finance teams can shave meaningful time off their close without changing systems at all.

If you’re running Microsoft Dynamics GP and want help getting your recurring batch setup right, or tightening up your close process overall, we can help. Contact CAL Business Solutions to talk through what your team needs.

CAL Business Solutions is a Microsoft Dynamics GP implementation and support partner serving manufacturers, distributors, and professional services businesses across the northeastern United States. Our team helps Dynamics GP users get more out of the system they already have.

The post Automate Monthly Entries with GP Recurring Batches appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last updated: May 2026

Every day that your consultants leave a client site without logging their hours; that revenue is probably gone. Reconstructing hours becomes guesswork; details blur, and billable time slips through the cracks. Most professional services firms already know this is happening. The harder question is why they haven’t fixed it yet.

The traditional approach of asking consultants to remember their activities at the end of the day or week doesn’t work. Memory fades, details blur, and even the most diligent professionals struggle to reconstruct precise time allocation across multiple client projects. Mobile time tracking offers a practical solution that meets consultants where they work rather than forcing them to adapt their workflow to rigid office-based systems.

Why Do Field Consultants Lose Billable Hours Without Mobile Time Tracking?

Think about the typical day of a consultant working on-site at client locations. Between client meetings, site assessments, troubleshooting sessions, and travel time, opportunities to document work happen continuously throughout the day. Waiting until returning to the office means relying on incomplete notes and approximations.

The longer the delay between completing work and logging time, the more details fade. Did that client call last 30 or 45 minutes? Did the troubleshooting session span two hours or closer to three? These seemingly small discrepancies compound across weeks and months, resulting in significant revenue loss for your firm.

Mobile time capture eliminates this gap by allowing consultants to log hours immediately after (or even during) client interactions. The time entry happens in context while details remain fresh and accurate. This real-time approach transforms time tracking from a burdensome administrative task into a natural part of the service delivery workflow.

Benefits of ERP Mobile Time Tracking

Not all mobile time tracking tools deliver equal value for professional services firms. The most effective solutions share several critical capabilities that align with how consultants actually work in the field.

Offline functionality ranks as perhaps the most important feature. Consultants frequently work in locations with poor or nonexistent internet connectivity. Construction sites, manufacturing facilities, and buildings with thick walls all present connectivity challenges. Solutions that allow offline time entry and sync when connectivity returns provide reliable capture regardless of location.

Project and task categorization must be intuitive and quick. Consultants shouldn’t need to navigate complex menus or remember obscure project codes. The best mobile interfaces present relevant projects based on the consultant’s assignments and allow rapid selection with minimal taps. Integration with your ERP system ensures project lists stay current without manual updates.

Expense capture alongside time tracking streamlines the entire billing workflow. When consultants can photograph receipts and associate them with specific projects from their phone, you eliminate the paper chase that follows client site visits. Acumatica’s Advanced Expense Management uses AI to automatically create expense receipts from a phone photo. No manual entry required.

Approval workflows built into mobile solutions keep projects moving forward. Consultants submit time entries, project managers review and approve from their own mobile devices, and billing can proceed without waiting for everyone to return to the office.

How Does Mobile Time Tracking Improve Professional Services Profitability?

The benefits of mobile time tracking extend well beyond capturing more billable hours, though that alone justifies the investment for most firms.

Client billing accuracy improves dramatically when time entries include detailed context captured at the moment of service. Rather than vague descriptions like “client work” or “consulting services,” mobile entry encourages specific activity descriptions that clients can easily understand and verify. This transparency reduces billing disputes and strengthens client relationships.

Project profitability visibility becomes real-time rather than retrospective. When consultants log time as they work, project managers can monitor hour consumption against budgets throughout the project lifecycle rather than discovering overruns only after completion. This early warning system allows course corrections before profit margins erode.

Resource allocation decisions benefit from accurate time data. When you understand exactly how consultants spend their time across different types of client work, you can make smarter staffing decisions, identify training needs, and optimize team utilization.

Consultant productivity often increases because mobile time tracking removes friction from the entry process. When logging hours takes 30 seconds rather than requiring a trip back to the office and wrestling with a desktop application, consultants are more likely to maintain complete and current time records.

How Should Professional Services Firms Roll Out Mobile Time Tracking?

Successful mobile time tracking implementation requires more than selecting the right software. Training should focus on workflow integration rather than just software features. Show consultants how mobile time entry fits into their daily routines and makes their work easier. Demonstrate the offline capabilities that work in their specific client environments. Address common objections proactively with concrete solutions.

Leadership buy-in sets the tone for organizational adoption. When partners and senior consultants consistently use mobile time tracking themselves, junior staff follow suit. If leadership treats time entry as optional or administrative overhead, field consultants will adopt the same attitude regardless of training or system capabilities.

System integration determines whether mobile time tracking becomes a productivity tool or an isolated application. One Connecticut professional services firm managing 150 simultaneous projects had time tracked in one standalone app, billing in a legacy accounting system, and project management in Excel. None of those systems talked to each other. Bringing everything into Acumatica eliminated the duplicate data entry and gave them a single version of the truth.

How Do Acumatica and Business Central Protect Mobile Time Data?

Consultants accessing client project details from mobile devices create potential exposure points that require thoughtful security measures. Data encryption both in transit and at rest protects time entry information as it moves between devices and your central systems. Cloud-based ERP solutions like Acumatica and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central include enterprise-grade security but understanding how your mobile application implements encryption remains important.

Access controls should follow the principle of least privilege. Consultants need access to their own time entries and assigned projects but shouldn’t view time data for other consultants or unrelated engagements. Role-based access controls built into your ERP should extend to mobile applications.

Audit trails documenting who entered time, when entries were made, and any subsequent modifications provide accountability and support compliance requirements. Your mobile solution should automatically maintain these audit trails without additional administrative effort.

How Does Mobile Time Tracking Help Professional Services Firms Win More Work?

Clients notice when consultants can immediately document work performed rather than relying on memory and approximation. This real-time attention to detail signals professionalism and respect for the client’s budget. Transparency builds trust and often leads to expanded engagements as clients feel confident in the value they receive.

Top talent increasingly expects employers to provide mobile-first tools that support flexible work styles. Firms stuck with legacy time entry systems face disadvantages in attracting and keeping skilled consultants.

Competitive proposals also get stronger when your firm can demonstrate sophisticated time tracking and project management capabilities. Clients evaluating multiple consulting firms often request information about billing transparency and project management practices. Mobile time tracking backed by full ERP integration provides concrete evidence of operational maturity.

How Do You Get Started with Acumatica or Business Central Mobile Time Tracking?

Start by evaluating your current time capture process and identifying the biggest pain points. Are consultants consistently missing billable hours? Does project profitability remain murky until well after completion? Do billing cycles drag on due to incomplete time entries? Your answers will point you toward which mobile capabilities matter most for your specific situation.

Acumatica’s Time Management offers mobile time and expense entry that connects directly to its project accounting features, including real-time timers, cross-device sync, and approval workflows managers can handle from their phone. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central provides mobile access to project time tracking and approval workflows. For a deeper look at how Acumatica handles time and expense for professional services, see our full breakdown of the module’s capabilities.

The revenue impact is straightforward to calculate. If your consultants miss even 30 minutes of billable time per day, multiply that across your team and extend it over a year. Most professional services firms find the financial case for mobile time tracking far exceeds the implementation cost and effort.

Is your team losing billable hours to manual time entry and end-of-day guesswork? CAL Business Solutions can help you implement mobile time tracking that connects directly to your Acumatica or Business Central system. Contact us at 860-485-0910 ext.4 or sales@calszone.com to start the conversation.

CAL Business Solutions is an Acumatica and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central implementation partner serving professional services firms across the United States. Our team helps consultants and project-based organizations implement mobile time tracking, project accounting, and billing solutions that reduce revenue leakage and improve project profitability.

The post Capture Billable Time with Mobile Time Tracking appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last updated: May 2026

Distribution ERP invoicing automation is one of the fastest ways to get cash moving faster through your business. However, most mid-sized distributors are still running on manual invoicing processes that add days, sometimes weeks, to their collections cycle.

Your warehouse team shipped the order. Your customer has the product. So why is it taking 60 days to get paid?

If you’re like most distribution companies, that gap between shipment and payment is where cash flow goes to die. It could be your invoices go out late or they are going out with errors. Sometimes customers dispute line items because the data doesn’t match what they received and then your AR team spends hours chasing down paperwork that should have been handled automatically.

Here’s the thing: this isn’t a collections problem. It’s an invoicing problem. Fix the invoicing process, and the cash starts moving faster.

What is Days Sales Outstanding Actually Telling You?

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) measures how long it takes to collect payment after a sale. For distribution companies operating on Net 30 terms, a DSO in the 35–45 day range is reasonable. Once you’re pushing past 60 days, you have working capital sitting on the table that belongs in your bank account.

The math is straightforward: every day you shave off your DSO is a day of working capital you get back. Companies running automated AR workflows consistently outperform those still relying on manual processes, and simply delivering invoices within 24 hours of shipment can meaningfully reduce the time between shipment and payment. That’s not a small thing when you’re running on tight margins.

Yet most mid-sized distributors are still emailing PDFs, manually keying invoice data, and reconciling discrepancies by hand. It works, until it doesn’t.

Where the Delays Actually Come From

Manual invoicing creates problems at every step. Here are the spots where distribution companies consistently lose time.

Invoices generated before shipment confirmation create mismatches. Your customer receives 94 units. The invoice says 100. Now you have a dispute, a credit memo, a phone call, and another 15 days added to your DSO.

Batch processing is another culprit. If your team generates invoices once a day, orders that ship at 3pm don’t get invoiced until the following morning. That’s an entire business day lost before the payment clock even starts.

Manual data entry introduces errors that stall payment. A transposed PO number means your customer’s AP department can’t match the invoice to the purchase order. They don’t pay it. They don’t tell you why. You find out 30 days later when you’re calling to collect.

What Distribution ERP Invoice Automation Actually Does

A properly configured ERP system eliminates most of these bottlenecks by tying the invoicing process directly to your operational workflow.

When a shipment is confirmed in the system, an invoice generates automatically using the confirmed quantities, pricing from the customer’s contract, and the correct PO number pulled directly from the order. No manual keying. No batch delay. The invoice goes out the same day the product leaves your dock.

Look at what that does to your process. Instead of waiting for your AR team to generate invoices at end of day, invoices are automatic. Instead of customers receiving incorrect quantities, the invoice reflects exactly what shipped. Instead of disputed line items, you have clean documentation that your customer’s AP system can match without manual intervention.

In Acumatica, the accounts receivable module handles this natively, including detailed line-item invoicing, recurring billing for maintenance contracts, and automated cash receipt application. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers similar functionality through its sales document workflow, where invoices post directly from confirmed shipments without any manual re-entry.

The Follow-Up Problem

Getting the invoice out fast is step one. Following up when it goes unpaid is step two. Most distribution companies are inconsistent at both, but more so with step two.

Your AR team has 200 open invoices. Some are due tomorrow. Some are 45 days past due. Without automation, someone has to sort through that list every morning and decide who to call. In practice, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and customers who never complain often wait the longest for a follow-up.

ERP systems with automated reminder workflows change this entirely. The system tracks every open invoice against payment terms and fires reminder emails on a schedule you define: at 7 days out, at the due date, at 14 days past due. No one on your team has to manage it manually. No invoice falls through the cracks.

Automated payment reminders consistently help distribution teams collect faster than manual follow-up. On a $5 million AR balance, that’s a significant chunk of working capital freed up without adding a single person to your collections team.

Auditing Your Current Process

Before assuming you need a complete overhaul, it’s worth asking a few honest questions about where your process actually breaks down.

How long after shipment does an invoice typically go out? If the answer varies by day, by employee, or by order size, you have a consistency problem that distribution ERP invoice automation directly solves.

What percentage of invoices get disputed in a given month? Disputes above 5% usually point to a data accuracy issue at the invoicing stage, not a customer behavior problem.

How does your AR team prioritize follow-up on past-due accounts? If the answer involves spreadsheets and manual sorting, you’re leaving money on the table every month.

CAL has worked with distribution companies across multiple industries to close these types of gaps. Our distribution ERP experience includes implementations where tightening the invoicing workflow drove measurable DSO improvement without adding headcount to the AR function.

The Bottom Line

DSO reduction comes down to three things: get invoices out faster, get them right the first time, and follow up automatically when they go unpaid. Manual processes make all three harder than they need to be.

Distribution ERP invoice automation handles the execution. Invoicing happens when the shipment happens. Data is accurate because it comes directly from the order. Follow-up runs on a schedule without anyone managing it.

If your DSO is higher than your payment terms warrant, the fix probably isn’t more aggressive collections. It’s better invoicing from the start.

If you’re running Acumatica or Business Central and want to tighten up your AR workflow, we can help. Contact CAL Business Solutions to talk through your current invoicing process and where automation can make the biggest difference.

The post Automate Distribution ERP Invoicing to Improve Cashflow appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

May has arrived and we’re officially in “no more excuses” territory—Q2 is here, the weather’s cooperating, and it’s time to tackle those projects that have been sitting on the back burner since January. We’re celebrating the warmer days and longer evenings by sharing some practical ERP tips that’ll help you work smarter (not longer) and maybe even sneak out early on a Friday or two!

Acumatica Building a Generic Inquiry: Step-by-Step

Tired of spending two hours every time your CFO needs a custom data report that your standard ERP reports can’t deliver? This step-by-step guide shows you how to build Acumatica Generic Inquiries—custom data views you create yourself without writing code—so you can pull real-time information, add filters and calculations, and share it with your team in minutes instead of hours.

Learn How to Make a GI

Blanket Purchase Orders

Stop wasting time renegotiating repeat orders—learn how blanket purchase orders automate high-volume supplier relationships and save distribution companies serious time and money.

Read More

Acumatica Bulk Data Entry

Stop wasting hours manually entering data one record at a time—Acumatica’s built-in Import Scenarios let you bulk-load spreadsheets with hundreds of inventory items, customers, invoices, or pricing updates straight into your system without custom development or add-on licenses, and you can even schedule recurring imports to run automatically.

Learn More

Using Dimensions in Business Central Reporting

If your finance team is still rebuilding the same reports every month, this one’s for you — learn how Business Central dimensions let you tag every transaction by department, project, or location so the reporting your CFO needs is always just a few clicks away.

Read More

Please Join Us for GP Forward 2026

GP businesses, what’s next for you? Planning beats panic every time. At our GP Forward 2026 event on June 10th, you’ll explore different options for your business. You get all the pros and cons, honest side-by-side comparisons, and walk away with your own personalized roadmap and action plan. Plus, complimentary lunch and a free strategy session with CAL.

Contact us with questions, or Register Today

Dynamics GP Advanced Lookup

Budgeting is a year-long activity and we wanted to remind you to revisit this step-by-step guide on using Dynamics GP’s Excel Budget Wizard. You can export customizable templates, segment budgets by department for manager-level oversight, and seamlessly import your completed budgets back into GP, saving hours of manual data entry.

Read More Here

The post The CAL Connection Newsletter – May 2026 appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: May 2026

It’s month-end and your CFO wants department profitability, location breakdown, and project-level detail — all from the same data. That shouldn’t take two days. But it does.

Somewhere between the GL export, the pivot tables, the copy-pasted spreadsheets, and the four separate workbooks your team built from scratch, the numbers stopped being current. The meeting starts in an hour. The analysis is already stale.

Here’s the reality: you’re not battling a data problem. You’re battling a structure problem. Your chart of accounts tells you what the money was spent on but it can’t tell you why, where, or for which project without creating thousands of accounts nobody could manage.

Business Central dimensions solve this. Here’s how.

What Dimensions Actually Are

Think of dimensions as tags you attach to every transaction. Sales order, journal entry, purchase invoice — each one gets labeled with the categories that matter to your business: department, location, project, product line, sales region.

Your chart of accounts tells you what. Dimensions tell you everything else.

The real power comes from combining them. Want to see Sales department revenue in the East region for Project Alpha? Done — without touching your GL structure.

Global vs. Shortcut Dimensions: Choose Wisely

Business Central gives you two Global Dimensions — your most critical reporting categories. These are stored directly in every transaction table, so they appear automatically across most pages and reporting runs fast. Most companies use Department + Project, or Location + Cost Center. The right choice is whichever two categories your team analyzes most frequently.

You only get two globals, so think carefully before you set them.

Beyond globals, you have six Shortcut Dimensions that supplement your reporting without slowing the system down. Everything beyond those eight still works for tagging and analysis — values just live in a separate dimension table.

Set this up in General Ledger Setup → Dimensions. Pick your two globals from the dropdown, select your six shortcuts, and you’re in business.

Default Dimensions: Where the Real Time Savings Live

Here’s what drives me crazy about dimension setups I see in the field: companies configure dimensions correctly, then skip default dimensions entirely. Then they wonder why month-end cleanup takes forever.

Default dimensions attach values to master records — customers, vendors, items, GL accounts. When someone creates a transaction referencing those records, Business Central fills in the dimensions automatically. No manual tagging, no forgotten entries, no cleanup.

Open any customer card, navigate to Dimensions, and set their defaults. A retail customer in the East gets Department: Sales, Region: East — automatically, on every sales order, every time.

Do the same for vendors. Your facilities vendor defaults to Department: Operations. Your marketing agency defaults to Department: Marketing. The system does the work.

One setting worth knowing: Business Central offers four behaviors for default dimensions:

• Blank — user can change or remove the dimension
• Code Mandatory — value required, but user can change it
• Same Code — locked to one specific value
• No Code — blocks that dimension entirely

Use Code Mandatory for most scenarios. It ensures transactions get tagged while still giving users flexibility.

Block Invalid Combinations Before They Cause Problems

Some dimension combinations make no sense for your business. The Retail project should never show Operations costs. Manufacturing locations shouldn’t carry Marketing expenses.

Navigate to Dimension Combinations to see a grid of all possible dimension pairs. Click any intersection to block or limit combinations. Blocked means those two dimensions can never appear together. Limited means you define which value pairs are valid.

This one setup step prevents a class of posting errors that are genuinely painful to untangle after the fact. Review your combinations quarterly — business changes, and your rules need to keep up.

The Reporting Payoff

This is why you do all of the above. Open Financial Reports (which replaced Account Schedules in recent BC versions), define rows for accounts, define columns for dimensions or time periods, and Business Central calculates the intersections automatically from your posted data.

Your CFO now gets department profitability, location breakdown, and project-level detail — pulled directly from live posted entries. Export to Excel for further analysis. The data is current every time because it pulls from what’s actually in the system.

No more rebuilding. No more stale spreadsheets. No more two-day month-end.

A Few Best Practices Worth Keeping

• Archive, don’t delete. When a project ends, block those dimension values for new transactions — but keep them active so historical reporting stays intact.
• Consistent naming matters. If one region is “Northeast,” don’t label another “SW.” Pick a pattern and stick with it. Inconsistency corrupts reports quietly over time.
• Audit monthly. Run a report showing transactions missing dimensions before you close the period. Build this into your month-end checklist.
• Don’t over-dimension. Dimensions work best for categories you slice across multiple accounts. If you’re tracking dozens of tiny subcategories, you may need more GL accounts instead.

Let’s Get This Set Up Right

We’ve helped organizations in all industries set up Business Central the right way, including dimension structures that give finance teams the reporting clarity they’ve been missing for years. With 40+ years of ERP experience and a long-standing Microsoft partnership, we know what works and what creates problems down the road.

If your team is still rebuilding the same reports manually every month, it’s time to fix that.

Contact CAL Business Solutions to talk through your reporting needs and get your dimensions built properly from the start.

The post How to Create and Use Dimensions in Business Central for Better Reporting appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: April 2026

Truthfully, have you been here? You’re in the middle of entering a transaction in GP and you click the lookup button to find a customer, vendor, or item. The list pops up but it’s sorted in a way that makes no sense for you. The columns showing aren’t the ones you need, and you end up scrolling or typing partial strings hoping something surfaces. You find what you need eventually, but it took 42 times longer than it should have.

Advanced lookups in Dynamics GP exist specifically to fix this. They let you control what information appears in lookup windows and how it’s organized, so the right data is front and center when you need it. If you’ve never touched the Advanced Lookup setup, you’re working harder than you have to.

What Advanced Lookups Actually Are

When you click a lookup button in Dynamics GP, say on the Customer ID field in a sales transaction, you’re opening a lookup window. By default, GP populates those windows with a predefined set of columns in a predefined order. Advanced lookups let you override those defaults.

Through the Advanced Lookup Setup window (found under Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > System > Advanced Lookups), you can define which fields appear as columns in any supported lookup window. You can set the default sort order, choose which field users search against first, and control how many columns are visible. Each change you make applies to that specific lookup window across the system.

This is different from SmartList. SmartList is for building and running custom reports. Advanced lookups are about what you see when you’re in the middle of data entry and need to pull up a record. The two features are related, but they serve different moments in your workflow.

Setting Up an Advanced Lookup

Open the Advanced Lookup Setup window and you’ll see a list of lookup windows you can configure. Select the one you want to modify: Customers, Vendors, Items, GL Accounts, and many more are available.

From there, you choose which fields to display as columns. The key decision is what your users actually need to see when they’re searching. For a customer lookup, the default shows Customer ID and Customer Name. That works if everyone searches by ID. If your team searches by phone number, city, or contact name, those fields aren’t visible by default, and that’s the problem.

Add the fields that matter for your team’s workflow. Move them into a logical order. Set the default sort field to whatever people search by most often. If your sales team finds customers by company name, make Name the first sort column, not Customer ID.

Watch this short video clip from CAL for step-by-step instructions.

A practical tip: before changing anything, talk to the people who use the lookup regularly. The AP clerk searching for vendors has different habits than the order entry team searching for customers. Advanced lookups can be configured differently for each window, so you don’t have to compromise.

Connecting Advanced Lookups to SmartList Favorites

Next, you’ll want to step up your game and assign a SmartList Designer list as the source for an Advanced Lookup window. That means if you’ve already built a SmartList that shows exactly the customer or vendor data your team needs, you can wire that same view into the lookup window.

The payoff is significant. Instead of maintaining two separate configurations, one for SmartList reporting and one for lookups, you build the data view once, and it works in both places. If your team already has SmartList Favorites set up for the records they use most, connecting those to Advanced Lookups is a natural next step.

Searching Within Lookup Windows

Now that your Advanced Lookup columns are configured, searching gets faster too. Within any lookup window, you can type directly in the search field at the top to filter the list. The search runs against the column you’ve set as the default sort.

Note: Dynamics GP searches from the beginning of the field by default, not anywhere in the string. If you’re searching for a customer named “Springfield Manufacturing” and you type “Manufacturing,” nothing comes up. Type “Spr” and it finds it. This is worth explaining to users when you roll out any lookup changes, because it changes how people type their searches.

If you need to search within a string rather than from the beginning, that’s where SmartList’s Search function is more flexible. For mid-entry lookups, training your team on how GP’s field-start search works saves a lot of confusion.

Using the Lookup Window Effectively

These tips and tricks make Dynamics GP advanced lookups faster regardless of how they’re configured.

Column header sorting. Click any column header in a lookup window to sort by that column. Click again to reverse the sort. If you’re looking for a vendor you know starts with “T,” clicking the Name column header and sorting alphabetically gets you there faster than scrolling.

Resizing columns. You can drag column borders within the lookup window to widen or narrow them. If a field is truncated and you can’t read the full value, drag it wider. These changes don’t persist after you close the window, but they help in the moment.

The Find field. In most lookup windows there’s a “Find” field at the top. Use it in combination with the column sort. Sort by the field you’re searching, then type in Find. GP will jump to the nearest match in the sorted list.

Keeping Lookup Data Clean

Advanced lookups only help as much as your underlying data allows. If your customer list has dozens of inactive customers cluttering the results, even a well-configured lookup window is harder to use than it should be. GP lets you mark customers and vendors as inactive, which typically removes them from lookup lists. Periodic cleanup of inactive records makes every lookup in the system faster and less cluttered.

This is also worth revisiting when people complain that lookups feel slow. A bloated list of records, many of which haven’t been touched in years, adds friction that configuration alone can’t fix.

Advanced Lookups as Part of a Broader GP Setup

Advanced lookups are one of those features that sit in the background doing quiet work once it’s set up. Users don’t think about it because it just works. But getting there takes a little bit of configuration and knowledge of how your team actually searches for records.

If your GP setup hasn’t been tuned since implementation, this is a good place to start. CAL Business Solutions has been working with Dynamics GP customers across manufacturing, distribution, and professional services for decades. If your team is fighting the system to find basic records, that’s a solvable problem. Reach out to our team and we can take a look.

The post How to Use Dynamics GP Advanced Lookups to Find Information Faster appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: April 2026

Maybe this sounds a bit familiar? A company rolls out a new ERP system and the office team loves it. Then someone hands a warehouse worker or a field technician a phone and says “you can do your timesheets in here now.” The worker opens the app, sees a screen built for a desktop user with a dozen fields they’ve never touched, and goes back to writing things down on paper.

That’s not a people problem. That’s a design problem. But with Acumatica’s mobile app customization you can quickly fix that.

See, Acumatica’s mobile app isn’t just a shrunken version of the desktop interface. It’s a configurable tool, and when you set it up right, it gives field workers exactly what they need and nothing they don’t. The difference between a mobile screen that gets used and one that gets ignored almost always comes down to how much thought went into building it.

What Acumatica’s Mobile Framework Actually Does

Acumatica’s mobile app runs on a framework that lets you define custom screens, control which fields appear, set their order, and determine what actions are available. You’re not locked into Acumatica’s default mobile layout for every screen. You can build views that match how your people actually work in the field.

The configuration happens through the Acumatica Mobile Application Framework, which uses a declarative markup language to define screens. If you’ve done any customization work inside Acumatica before, the approach will feel familiar. You define what a screen contains, and the framework handles rendering it on iOS or Android.

The most important thing to understand going in: mobile screens in Acumatica are separate from desktop screens. Changing the desktop layout doesn’t change the mobile layout, and vice versa. That’s a good thing – it means you can build a direct field view without touching anything else your office team relies on. Acumatica’s mobile framework documentation covers the full structure in detail.

How to Build Field-Friendly Screens

Before you open your customization editor, spend time with the people who will actually use the screen. This sounds obvious, but it’s skipped constantly. A field technician completing a service order has different needs than a warehouse worker confirming a receipt. Build for the specific job, not for a generic “mobile user.”

A few questions worth answering before you start:

What’s the one thing this person needs to do on their phone? Start there. If it’s logging time against a project, every other field on that screen is secondary. If it’s confirming a shipment quantity, that number needs to be front and center.

What information do they need to see, versus what do they need to enter? Read-only context fields (customer name, job number, site address) take up space but support accuracy. Don’t strip them out entirely just to simplify the screen. Make them visible but secondary.

What DON’T they need? Financial fields, internal reference numbers, system-generated data – these belong on the desktop view, not the mobile one. Removing them from the mobile screen isn’t limiting your workers, it’s respecting their time (and eyesight).

Once you know what the screen needs to do, you can start defining it in the mobile framework. Screens are built using YAML-style markup that specifies containers, fields, actions, and selectors. Acumatica’s Open University has course material on mobile customization that walks through building screens from scratch if you’re new to the framework.

Common Field Scenarios Worth Customizing

Here are a few examples of the mobile screen types we see come up for many manufacturing and distribution companies.

1. Time entry. The default time entry screen works, but it’s built for completeness, not speed. A custom mobile time entry screen can default the project, task, and date based on context, leaving the worker to confirm or adjust the hours. That turns a five-minute process into thirty seconds.
2. Inventory receiving. Field workers confirming purchase order receipts don’t need to see vendor payment terms or landed cost allocations. A custom mobile receiving screen shows the PO number, expected items, quantities, and a confirm action. That’s it. Acumatica’s purchase order and receiving functionality supports mobile receiving natively, and customization lets you tighten the interface around that workflow.
3. Service order updates. Field technicians need to update job status, log materials used, and capture signatures. A well-built mobile service screen handles all three without requiring the technician to navigate multiple screens or scroll past irrelevant fields.

NOTE: If you’re using Acumatica for manufacturing or distribution and your field teams aren’t taking advantage of the mobile app, it’s usually because the default screens don’t fit their workflow. Customization can solve that issue—reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help.

Testing Before You Deploy

This can be a crucial step. The screen might look fine when someone tests it in the office on a clean wifi connection. But, it looks totally different when a warehouse worker is using it on a cellular signal, with gloves on, under a loading dock light.

Test your mobile screens in real conditions. Have actual users walk through the workflows before you push anything to production. Pay attention to which fields require too much scrolling to reach, which actions aren’t obvious, and where people hesitate. Those friction points are your revision list.

Acumatica’s mobile framework lets you iterate quickly. Adjusting field order, adding a default value, or removing a container that’s creating confusion is straightforward once the screen is built. Build, test with real users, adjust, and repeat. A little extra time here goes a long way in the end.

Connecting Mobile Customization to Your Broader Acumatica Setup

Mobile screens don’t exist in isolation. They pull data from and push data to the same records your desktop users work with. That means your Acumatica security roles and user permissions apply to mobile screens too. A field worker who can’t edit a record on the desktop won’t be able to edit it on mobile either. Before you roll out custom screens, make sure the users who need them have the right access configured.

Make sure to coordinate mobile customization with workflow and approval automations. If a field technician submitting a service order kicks off an approval process, validate that the mobile screen gives them the context they need to submit accurately. A well-configured mobile screen that feeds bad data into a workflow defeats the purpose.

Getting Acumatica Mobile Customization Right

The mobile app is one of the most visible parts of Acumatica for field-based teams, and it’s often the most underbuilt. Companies that take the time to customize mobile screens for specific workflows see real adoption. Companies that ship the defaults and hope for the best usually end up with people working around the system instead of in it.

If you’re implementing Acumatica for the first time or trying to improve mobile adoption for an existing installation, getting the screen design right is worth the investment. CAL Business Solutions works with mid-sized manufacturing, distribution, and professional services companies to configure Acumatica so it works for the people using it, in the field and in the office. Reach out to our team to talk through what your field workflows need.

The post Acumatica Mobile App Customization: Build Screens Your Field Team Will Actually Use appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

April is here and we’re ready to shake off the last bits of winter and dive into spring! As you get through tax season, be ready because there’s plenty happening in the world of ERP, from exciting new releases & features, an Acumatica webinar, a GP workshop, to time-saving tips that’ll make your day-to-day operations smoother than ever.

Keep Acumatica Up-to-date

Tired of expensive, nerve-wracking ERP upgrades every few years? Acumatica’s Always Current Program automatically keeps SaaS customers on the latest supported version with predictable, scheduled updates.

Learn More About Acumatica’s Always Current Program

Managing Consignment Inventory

Managing consignment inventory on spreadsheets means you’re flying blind, unable to track what’s at customer sites, what’s been consumed, or what you’re owed. Discover how modern ERP uses virtual warehouses to automatically track customer locations, trigger replenishment, and keep your financials accurate without manual reconciliation.

Read More

BC’s Payables Agent

Think your email server is secure because you restricted SMTP to internal IPs? Discover why basic authentication and unencrypted connections are security issues and how to lock down your SMTP properly before something happens.

Learn More

E-document Enhancements in Business Central

Tired of fixing electronic invoices after they’ve already hit your financials? Business Central’s new e-invoice draft page in Wave 2 lets your AP team review and correct vendor information, item mappings, and GL accounts before creating invoices.

Read More

Dynamics GP Excel Budget Wizard

Budgeting is a year-long activity and we wanted to remind you to revisit this step-by-step guide on using Dynamics GP’s Excel Budget Wizard. You can export customizable templates, segment budgets by department for manager-level oversight, and seamlessly import your completed budgets back into GP, saving hours of manual data entry.

Read More Here

The post The CAL Connection Newsletter – April 2026 appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: April 2026

Your team just finished a system migration. The go-live went well. Then someone drops a spreadsheet on your desk with 400 inventory items and says, “Can you get these loaded?”

And instead of using the bulk import tool that’s been sitting in Acumatica this whole time, your team starts entering records one by one.

Here’s what drives me crazy about this: Acumatica Import Scenarios are already built into your system. No add-on. No extra license. No calling a developer. Just a straightforward tool that lets you take a spreadsheet and push data directly into virtually any screen in Acumatica. If someone on your team can type data into a screen manually, you can almost certainly import it in bulk instead.

Whether you’re loading new records for the first time, running a recurring monthly process, or working through a full data migration from a system like Dynamics GP, Import Scenarios are one of the most practical tools in Acumatica’s toolbox. Here’s how they work and how to set one up.

Import Scenarios vs. File Upload: Know the Difference

Before you build anything, it helps to understand what Import Scenarios actually are, because they get confused with another Acumatica feature – File Upload.

File Upload creates a single entry with multiple line items. Think of a complex journal entry or a payroll batch. One transaction, many lines. We covered this in detail in our post on Excel File Upload in Acumatica.

Import Scenarios create multiple separate records from a single file. A spreadsheet with 400 items becomes 400 inventory records. A file with 200 customers becomes 200 customer accounts. That’s the key distinction. Import Scenarios are your bulk processing tool, and they work across a wide range of data types: customer and vendor records, inventory items, sales and purchase orders, open invoices, pricing updates, bills of materials, and more.

One more thing worth noting: the equivalent tool in Microsoft Dynamics GP, Integration Manager, requires a separate license purchase after the initial implementation window. Acumatica Import Scenarios are included in your system at no additional cost. That’s one of the reasons we highlight it in our Acumatica vs. Dynamics GP comparison as a meaningful differentiator.

The Three Pieces Every Import Scenario Needs

Every Acumatica bulk import runs on three components. Once you understand what each one does, the setup process makes a lot more sense.

1. The Data Provider This tells Acumatica where your data is coming from and what format it’s in. Excel and CSV are the most common. You point the Data Provider at your file, select the worksheet, and pick which columns are relevant. Acumatica reads those column headers and builds a schema your import can reference.
2. The Import Scenario This is the mapping layer. You connect each column in your spreadsheet to the corresponding field on the Acumatica screen. Customer Name to Customer Name. Invoice Date to Invoice Date. You can also write formulas to transform data on the way in, convert non-standard values to what Acumatica expects, or assign fixed defaults to required fields that don’t exist in your source file.
3. Import by Scenario This is where you run the actual import. Select your scenario, upload your file, and click Prepare. Acumatica loads the data into a staging grid so you can review every row before anything gets written to the database. Click Import, and a checkmark in the Processed column means it worked. Errors surface at the row level with a clear message so you know exactly what failed and why.

How to Set Up Your First Import Scenario

Acumatica gives you two ways to build an import scenario. Start with the Simple method.

Navigate to the Import by Scenario screen and click the plus button. You’ll be prompted to upload your Excel file, select the Acumatica screen you’re importing into from the site map, and give the import a name. Acumatica reads the file and automatically creates both the Data Provider and the Import Scenario structure, including the command lines that control how records get saved.

Go to the Mapping tab and connect your spreadsheet columns to the Acumatica fields. Map the key field first. Acumatica uses that field to determine whether it’s creating a new record or updating an existing one, and it sets up the matching logic automatically once you map it. Save, go to Import by Scenario, upload your file, and run Prepare and Import. Most people have their first import working in under an hour.

A few things worth knowing before you start:

• Acumatica comes with about 40 pre-built import scenarios. Check whether a template already exists before building one from scratch. Copying an existing scenario and adjusting the mapping is significantly faster.
• Parallel processing is available for large files. Acumatica breaks the import into batches and processes them simultaneously. For hundreds or thousands of rows, you’ll notice the difference. See it in action in our overview of Acumatica’s faster data import features.
• Complex imports need the Manual method. Parent-child screens like an invoice header with multiple detail lines, or screens that trigger pop-up dialog boxes, require the manual scenario approach for full control. The Acumatica community forum for import scenarios is a solid resource when you hit those situations.

Don’t Overlook Scheduling and Automation

Most people don’t discover this until they’ve been using Import Scenarios for a while: you can schedule them to run automatically.

If your team receives a vendor pricing file every Monday, or pulls transaction data from a separate system nightly, you can configure Acumatica to pick up that file and run the import without anyone manually kicking it off. This is where Import Scenarios start crossing into genuine integration territory without requiring custom development or third-party middleware.

Three Mistakes to Avoid

Not mapping the key field first. Acumatica uses it to determine whether to create or update a record. Skip it and you’ll end up with duplicates or failures.

Skipping a small test batch. Always run five to ten rows before committing a full file to production. Errors on row 312 of 400 are a lot more painful than errors on row 4 of 10.

Ignoring the substitution list. If your source data uses values that don’t match what Acumatica expects, the substitution list handles that translation automatically on every import. Use it instead of cleaning your spreadsheet manually each time.

Ready to Cut Manual Entry Out of Your Process?

If your team is still entering data row by row when a spreadsheet full of records is sitting right there, that’s time you’re not getting back. CAL Business Solutions has over 40 years of experience implementing ERP systems for small and mid-sized businesses. We can help you set up your first import scenario, build a library of reusable templates, or manage a full data migration from your prior system.

Contact CAL Business Solutions at 860-485-0910 x4 or sales@calszone.com. Or reach out through our website and we’ll get back to you.

The post Set Up Acumatica Import Scenarios for Bulk Data Entry appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: March 2026

Your CFO walks into your office with another data request. She needs a list of open sales orders by customer showing their unshipped quantities. The standard reports don’t show it this way. You export data to Excel, build some pivot tables, and copy numbers between spreadsheets. It takes two hours every time she asks.

Here’s the thing. You’re rebuilding the same report manually because your standard reports can’t slice the data the way stakeholders need it. Meanwhile, your ERP system already has all this information. You just need a way to pull it together.

Acumatica Generic Inquiries (GI) solve this problem. They let you build custom reports and data views without writing code. Pull information from multiple tables. Filter how you want and then share it with your team. No developer is required.

What Makes Generic Inquiries Different

GI’s are not standard reports. Think of them as custom database queries you build yourself through a visual interface. Point and click to select tables. Choose which fields to display. Add filters. The system does the SQL work behind the scenes.

You get real-time data. Every time you open a GI, it pulls current information straight from your database. No waiting for nightly report processing. No stale data from last week’s export.

The power comes from flexibility. One inquiry can replace five different Excel spreadsheets you maintain manually. You can tag it, filter it, sort it, export it, build dashboards from it, share it with your team, or just keep it for yourself.

Before You Start Building

Navigate to System > Customization > Manage > Generic Inquiries. This screen is your workspace for building and managing all your custom inquiries.

If you can’t access the Generic Inquiry screen, check with your system administrator before going further. Most companies restrict inquiry creation to power users or administrators, so confirming your security roles upfront saves you from hitting a wall mid-build.

Plan your inquiry before you build it. Write down exactly what data you need. Which tables contain that information? What filters matter? How should results sort? Five minutes of planning saves an hour of rework.

Before you dive in, get familiar with Acumatica’s Inspect Element tool. Right-click any field on any form, select Inspect Element, and the system tells you the exact table name and field name behind that field, which takes the guesswork out of tracking down your data sources.

Creating Your First Generic Inquiry

Click the plus icon to create a new inquiry and give it a clear, descriptive name. Use the Screen ID field to add it to the Acumatica menu system so your users can find it without hunting.

Your next decision is choosing the primary table, which is your main data source and determines what other tables you can pull in. For sales orders, that’s SOOrder; for inventory, INItemSite; for customer balances, ARBalances.

On the Tables tab, your primary table appears automatically. Click Add Row to bring in additional tables, and the system shows you which ones can relate to your primary table based on how the data is structured.

Once your tables are in place, go to the Relations tab to define how each additional table connects to your primary one. Inner joins return only records that match on both sides, while left joins show all primary records even when there’s no corresponding record in the related table. Which one you choose depends on whether you want to see gaps in your data or only confirmed matches.

Adding Fields to Your Results

The Results Grid tab controls which columns appear when someone runs the inquiry. For each field you want to display, click Add Row, choose the table from the Object dropdown, then select the specific field from the Data Field dropdown.

Here are a few good tips: Make sure to pay attention to your column headers. The Caption field is what users actually see, so “Customer Name” is always going to serve them better than “BAccountAcctName.” Also, don’t forget to set the column widths using pixel values and preview the inquiry to make sure nothing looks cramped or cut off.

Easily create calculated fields by checking the Formula checkbox on any row. This is where GIs start to get powerful. Subtract Open Quantity from Total Quantity to show Shipped Quantity, or multiply Unit Price by Quantity to display Extended Amount without needing a separate export.

Setting Up Filters: Parameters & Conditions

The Parameters tab is where you give users the ability to narrow results without touching the inquiry itself. Add parameters for the fields your team filters on most often, such as Order Date, Customer, Item, or Status. Set a clear Display Name for each one so users see plain-language prompts instead of the field codes, and choose data types that match the field so they get date pickers for dates and lookup windows for customer IDs.

The Conditions tab is separate and handles default filters that apply automatically every time the inquiry runs. Use these to keep noise out of the results: exclude closed orders, hide inactive customers, or limit results to specific warehouses. Users see relevant data from the start without needing to set filters manually each time.

Always test with real data before publishing. Click Preview, check that calculations are correct, verify filters work as expected, and look at how results sort. Fixing issues in preview costs minutes; fixing them after users are already relying on the inquiry costs much more.

Making Your Inquiry Useful

A few additional settings determine how far your inquiry can go.

The Sort Order tab controls how results are organized by default. Alphabetical by Customer Name, newest Order Date first, highest Amount at the top. Thoughtful sorting makes data scannable without requiring users to click column headers every time.

The Grouping tab lets you aggregate data when summary-level information is more useful than individual rows. Sum amounts by customer, count orders by status, average quantities by item. Just be careful not to over-group or the results become harder to interpret, not easier.

Field-level security is handled back in the Results Grid tab. If certain users shouldn’t see cost or margin data, uncheck the Visible checkbox for those columns. You control who sees what without needing a separate version of the inquiry.

Finally, check “Expose via OData” if you need API access, “Show in Dashboards” to enable dashboard widgets, and configure mobile access with one checkbox. These settings are easy to miss but they significantly expand where and how your inquiry can be used.

Taking Generic Inquiries Further

Once your inquiries are built and tested, you can share them with specific users or roles, keeping financial data locked down while making operational inquiries available to everyone who needs them.

From any inquiry, users can click Actions > Export to Excel to pull the current results with all active filters applied, no manual data entry required. For teams that want data on their home screen, you can build dashboards by navigating to Dashboards > Manage Dashboards and adding widgets that pull directly from your Generic Inquiries.

You can also schedule automated delivery. Acumatica can email Generic Inquiry results on a set schedule, whether that’s a daily aging report, a weekly sales summary, or a monthly inventory snapshot. Set it up once and it runs without anyone thinking about it.

Making It Work for Your Business

Generic Inquiries exist to replace manual report building. That two-hour data request from your CFO? Build it once, run it in seconds, share the link, and let her filter it herself going forward.

The bigger opportunity is training department managers to build their own. They know what data they need. Give them the tool and the basics, and you reduce the IT backlog while giving people faster access to the information they actually use.

Start simple: one table, five fields, one or two filters. Get comfortable with the mechanics before attempting complex multi-table joins. The tool rewards patience, and the time you invest early pays off every time someone runs the inquiry instead of exporting to Excel.

If you need help building Generic Inquiries in your Acumatica system, contact CAL Business Solutions at 860-485-0910 x4 or sales@calszone.com.

The post Build Your First Acumatica Generic Inquiry Step by Step appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: March 2026

Your purchasing manager just got hit with another price increase email from your packaging supplier. This is the third one this quarter. Meanwhile, your team keeps placing the same order every month, paying whatever rate gets quoted, and watching margins shrink a little more each time.

Here’s the reality: you have more leverage than you’re using.

Distribution companies that buy the same materials repeatedly are leaving money on the table every single day. The problem isn’t your suppliers, it’s that you’re treating recurring purchases like one-time transactions. Blanket purchase orders fix that.

What a Blanket Purchase Order Actually Is

A blanket purchase order is a long-term agreement with a supplier to deliver specific goods at a locked-in price over a set period, typically one year. Think of it as a framework you negotiate once and then draw against as needed, without creating new paperwork or renegotiating terms every time.

The traditional PO process makes perfect sense for one-off purchases. But when you’re ordering the same fasteners every week or the same packaging materials every month, creating individual POs each time does two things: it buries your purchasing team in admin work, and it destroys your negotiating leverage by hiding how much you spend with that supplier.

With a blanket agreement in place, your supplier knows what to expect over the year. You know exactly what you’ll pay. Your warehouse knows when shipments are coming. And your accounting team stops getting surprised by cost swings.

The Business Impact Goes Beyond Paperwork

The time savings are real, but the financial impact is bigger. When you commit to annual volumes, suppliers offer better pricing and they can plan their production around your needs and give you priority when capacity is tight.

One of our distribution clients locked in pricing on their top 50 SKUs through long-term agreements and avoided a mid-year 8% price increase that hit their competitors hard. That’s not a small number when you’re talking about high-volume, recurring purchases.

Cash flow benefits matter too. Structuring payments around quarterly deliveries instead of front-loading everything keeps working capital where you need it, without sacrificing supply reliability.

How to Set One Up

Start with your purchasing history. Pull reports from your ERP showing everything you bought over the past 12 months. Look for items with consistent volume and predictable demand like packaging materials, maintenance supplies, or maybe raw materials you use continuously. Those are your best candidates for this.

Calculate your estimated annual needs conservatively. Review past usage, factor in growth, and add a reasonable buffer. You want to commit to volumes you’re confident you’ll really use.

Then approach your suppliers with data. Share your annual projections and ask for volume pricing. Start contract renewal conversations 90–120 days before expiration. This sort of runway gives you time to get competitive bids if the negotiation stalls.

Your agreement needs to clearly spell out:

• Total quantity or dollar amount committed
• Unit pricing and any volume tiers
• Contract period with start and end dates
• Delivery schedule and lead times
• Payment terms and cancellation clauses
• Quality specifications

And make sure your Acumatica Distribution Edition or ERP system can track quantities released against each agreement, remaining balances, and upcoming renewals. If you can’t see that data at a glance, the contract isn’t really under management.

Three Mistakes That Kill the Results

Over-committing. Companies get excited about volume discounts and commit to quantities they can’t possibly use. Start conservative. You can always expand a successful contract. You can’t easily escape one you structured too aggressively.

Skipping compliance tracking. If your purchasing team doesn’t know which items are covered by existing contracts, they’ll create one-off POs—and your negotiated pricing evaporates. Your ERP should make it easy, not heroic, to release against existing agreements. The compliant path needs to be the obvious path.

Setting it and forgetting it. Market conditions change and businesses shift. Contracts signed in January might not reflect reality by July. Make sure to review active agreements quarterly, adjusting delivery schedules, modifying quantities if demand changed, and renegotiating if market pricing moved significantly.

How Your ERP Holds It All Together

Blanket purchase orders only deliver their full value when your procurement system supports them. Modern ERP platforms like Acumatica and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central handle the tracking automatically—quantities, receipts, open balances, and auto-close rules when expected amounts are received.

More importantly, they connect your supplier agreements to inventory planning. When a reorder point is hit, the system suggests releasing against the appropriate contract rather than spinning up a new purchase order from scratch. Your distribution operations get tighter, your supplier relationships get stronger, and your margins stop eroding one unmanaged purchase at a time.

Ready to Start Buying Smarter?

You don’t need to convert your entire supplier base overnight. Pick three high-volume suppliers where you have predictable demand and start with six-month trial agreements. Track the results. Compare pricing against what you’d have paid through individual POs. Then expand from there.

The distribution companies winning on margins right now aren’t necessarily buying cheaper products. They’re buying smarter—with better terms, more predictable costs, and procurement processes that support their growth.

CAL Business Solutions has worked with distributors across New England for over 40 years. We know how to set up blanket purchase order workflows in Acumatica and Business Central that your team will actually use. Contact us today or call 860-485-0910 x4 to talk through your purchasing challenges.

The post Blanket Purchase Orders: How Distribution Companies Stop Renegotiating the Same Deal Every Month appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: March 2026

Here’s a scenario your AP team probably knows too well. An electronic invoice hits Business Central. It processes automatically. Then someone notices the GL account is wrong, an item reference didn’t map correctly, or the vendor wasn’t recognized. Now you’re correcting a posted document instead of just… not having the problem in the first place.

Microsoft’s 2025 Release Wave 2 addresses this directly. The new e-invoice draft page gives your team a dedicated checkpoint to review and correct incoming invoices before they ever touch your financial records. It’s a practical fix to a workflow problem that costs AP teams real time every month.

What the Old Workflow Was Missing

The original Business Central e-invoicing workflow was efficient but rigid. When an electronic invoice arrived, the system automatically created a purchase invoice or attempted to match it to an existing purchase order using Copilot or manual matching. There wasn’t much room to intervene before the document entered your system.

If something was off—wrong account coding, unrecognized vendor, mismatched item numbers—you found out after the fact. Correcting a posted invoice is a hassle. It’s the kind of low-grade friction that adds up fast across a full month of payables.

What the Draft Page Actually Does

Now, when Business Central receives an electronic invoice, it creates a draft version first. That draft is where your team does the actual review work before anything becomes part of your official records.

From the draft page, you can:

• Edit header fields. Dates, document numbers, and vendor information are all adjustable. If the system can’t automatically identify the vendor from their VAT number or address, you look them up and select the right one yourself.
• Edit every line item. Quantities, prices, units of measure, descriptions, type, and number fields are fully open. You’re not locked into whatever the automatic mapping produced.
• Review intelligent account suggestions. The system works through a hierarchy: first checking item references you’ve configured for that vendor, then text-to-account mappings, then historical invoices from the same vendor. If none of those match, AI analyzes the line description and suggests a GL account with an explanation of its reasoning.
• Create a purchase invoice or purchase order. Depending on your vendor setup and process, you choose which document gets created—after you’ve confirmed everything looks right.

Financial controllers will appreciate the deferral and GL verification step that’s now built into the process rather than bolted on afterward.

Real Situations Where This Pays Off

A few scenarios where this makes a meaningful difference:

Vendor item number changes. Your vendor updates their item numbers. With the draft page, you map the new numbers to your internal items before the purchase invoice gets created. No cleanup required after the fact.

Mixed invoices. An invoice arrives with both inventory items and service charges. The draft page lets you verify inventory items are tied to item numbers and service charges are coded to the right expense accounts—all before posting.

New vendors. Before item references or account mappings are fully configured, the draft page gives you the space to get it right on the first invoice, with AI suggestions to speed up the process rather than starting from scratch.

One Important Setup Decision

Here’s something to know before you move forward: you can’t run both workflows simultaneously. You choose one approach for your organization.

Version 1 is the original automatic creation workflow. Version 2 is the new draft page workflow. To switch, go into your e-document services setup, find the importing section, and select version 2. You’ll also choose the format the system uses to read data into the draft—Peppol and other standard formats are supported.

This isn’t a “one is better” situation. It depends on how your team actually operates. If your AP process relies heavily on automatic PO matching and you have clean vendor data, version 1 may still serve you well. If invoice accuracy issues are a recurring headache, version 2 is worth evaluating seriously.

Test It Before You Go Live

Microsoft is releasing this in public preview first, which means you have time to evaluate it before committing. Use your sandbox environment. Run it against actual vendor documents your team processes regularly. Get input from the people who will use it every day.

This is a meaningful change to a core AP process. Taking the time to test it thoroughly is the right call—and it’s exactly the kind of thing we help our Business Central clients work through.

Is the Draft Page Right for Your Team?

If your AP team has struggled with invoice accuracy, needed more control over how electronic invoices are processed, or spent too much time correcting documents after the fact, this feature is worth a serious look. It’s a practical improvement to a workflow most Business Central users deal with every single day.

For more on what else is new in Wave 2, check out our post on how Word layouts got a major overhaul in the same release.

Questions about how the new draft page workflow fits your specific setup? Contact CAL Business Solutions and we’ll walk you through the configuration and help you decide which approach makes sense for your organization.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Business Central’s New E-Invoice Draft Page: Fix Problems Before They Happen appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Last Updated: March 2026

Your sales rep lands a great deal. The customer agrees to stock your products at their facility. You ship a pallet out the door, and they’ll pay as items sell. Everyone’s happy.

Until three months later, when nobody can tell you how much of your product is at that customer site, whether any of it has been consumed, or what you’re owed.

This is the consignment problem. And if you’re managing it on spreadsheets and phone calls, you’re not alone, but you’re spending a lot of time you shouldn’t have to.

What Consignment Inventory Really Means for Your Business

Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about, because the term gets used loosely.

You own the inventory until the customer uses it. That’s the defining characteristic. Stock is physically located at the customer’s site, but it stays on your balance sheet. You’re not recording a sale when you ship it out. You record the sale when the customer reports consumption.

This arrangement is common across industrial distribution, medical supply, and specialty product companies. It reduces purchasing friction for your customer and keeps your product top of mind. But it also means your inventory is sitting in locations you don’t physically control—and if your ERP can’t track it, you’re flying blind.

How ERP Manages Customer Consignment Locations

The foundation of consignment inventory management in a modern ERP like Acumatica is the virtual warehouse.

You set up a separate warehouse in the system for each customer consignment location. It’s not a physical building—it’s a logical location that lets the system track quantities, values, and movements at that customer’s site exactly like it tracks inventory at your own facility.

Here’s how the flow works:

• You ship inventory to the customer site → the system records a transfer, not a sale
• Stock moves from your main warehouse to the customer’s virtual warehouse
• Your total inventory value stays the same—it’s just at a different location
• When the customer reports consumption → the sale is recorded and the invoice is generated
• When stock drops below threshold → the system automatically triggers a replenishment transfer

That last point is a big one. Instead of waiting for a customer to call and say they’re running low, your ERP flags it and initiates replenishment automatically—based on safety stock levels, reorder points, and max quantities you configure per customer location, per item.

The Real Cost of Managing Consignment on Spreadsheets

Here’s what we see all the time: a distributor thinks they have 400 units on hand. But 150 of those are spread across three customer sites. If those customers have been consuming without reporting consistently, your real available inventory is significantly less than your spreadsheet shows.

Meanwhile, you might be reordering stock you don’t need—because the system doesn’t know what’s already out in the field. That’s working capital tied up unnecessarily, and it’s a problem that compounds month over month.

With proper consignment tracking in your ERP, your inventory reports reflect reality. You can see total on-hand broken out by location, including every customer consignment site. You can see which customer has what, how long it’s been there, and what the consumption rate looks like. And because inventory, purchasing, sales orders, and financials all run on the same database, when a consignment sale is recorded, the GL updates automatically. No separate reconciliation step.

Three Things That Cause Consignment Setups to Break Down

Even with the right ERP in place, a few things consistently cause problems:

1. Inconsistent consumption reporting. Your system is only as good as what customers tell you. Set a clear reporting cadence—weekly, monthly, or triggered by reorder point. Some distributors use EDI connections or customer portals to automate this entirely.
2. Costing decisions upfront. You’ll need to decide how inventory is valued at customer locations and whether consigned inventory gets tracked under separate GL accounts or subaccounts. Getting this right at setup avoids messy reclassifications later.
3. Returns. Not all consigned inventory gets consumed. Expired product, slow movers, contract changes—your system needs to handle the return transfer cleanly so inventory gets back into your main warehouse without creating a GL mess.

Ready to Get Your Consignment Inventory Under Control?

If you’re still tracking customer consignment locations on spreadsheets or through manual reconciliation calls, you’re spending time and energy you shouldn’t have to. The right ERP handles the tracking, the replenishment triggers, and the financial reporting automatically.

CAL Business Solutions has been working with distributors across New England for over 40 years. We know how consignment arrangements work in the real world and how to set them up correctly in Acumatica so your inventory data actually reflects what’s out in the field.

Contact our team today or call us at 860-485-0910 x4 to talk through your distribution setup.

The post Consignment Inventory Management: How Distributors Use ERP to Stay in Control appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated: March 6, 2026 Acumatica Always Current Program is a program for SaaS customers that automatically keeps their ERP system on the latest supported version. Instead of large, risky upgrades every few years, the program provides regular, scheduled updates so customers stay secure, supported, and up to date with new features.

How it works

• Acumatica releases two major versions each year (R1 and R2).
• Customers on Always Current are typically upgraded about six months after a major release, once the version has stabilized and service packs are available.
• Customers receive advance notices (90, 60, and 30 days) before their scheduled upgrade.

Upgrade flexibility

Upgrade frequency depends on the edition:

• Small Business / Essentials: upgrade twice per year
• Advanced / Select / Enterprise tiers: upgrade once or twice per year depending on the selected schedule.

Customers needing more control over timing can work with their partner or use Acumatica Flex to choose upgrade dates.

Benefits

The program helps organizations:

• Avoid expensive upgrades
• Access new features sooner
• Receive security fixes and patches automatically
• Stay on a supported version of Acumatica
• Plan upgrades with a predictable schedule.

Important considerations

• Customizations and integrations should be tested in a sandbox before upgrades.
• Major upgrades may temporarily unpublish customizations, which must be republished afterward.
• Planning with your Acumatica partner and maintaining documentation helps ensure smooth upgrades.

✅ In short: Always Current keeps SaaS customers automatically updated with predictable upgrades, improved security, and continuous access to the newest Acumatica capabilities—while requiring proper testing and preparation for customizations.

Learn More about Acumatica Always Current Program

By Amy Mackiewicz, CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post How Acumatica’s Always Current Program Keeps Your ERP Up to Date appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated: February 2026

Your accounts payable team is buried in vendor invoices. PDFs are flooding email inboxes and manual data entry is eating up hours every week. Mistakes slipping through that mess up your financial statements. Sound familiar? Microsoft’s Payables Agent for Business Central is changing all that—and it’s smarter than you might think.

This AI-powered system handles your entire vendor invoice processing workflow, from inbox to posted transaction. Best part? It learns from your business operations, getting better with every invoice.

Why Accounts Payable Accuracy Matters

Mistakes in accounts payable don’t stay there. They trickle through your entire financial system, impacting your P&L, balance sheet, and every financial statement you produce. What starts as a simple data entry error becomes hours of cleanup work and questions about data reliability.

That’s why Microsoft calls the Payables Agent “the first line of defense against poor quality data.” When your AP process is accurate from the start, everything downstream works better.

What Makes the Payables Agent Different

End-to-End AI Processing: The agent handles your complete vendor invoice workflow from receiving to creating purchase documents. It’s not just OCR; it’s intelligent interpretation with AI doing the heavy lifting.

It Learns Your Business: The agent gets smarter over time, learning how your company codes expenses, vendor patterns, and invoice matching workflows. The more you use it, the better its suggestions become.

Built for Trust and Transparency: The agent explains its reasoning, why it matched a line to a specific account, where it found vendor information, how it interpreted invoice data. This transparency builds confidence in AI-assisted processes.

How It Actually Works: A Practical Walkthrough

Simple Setup

Configure a dedicated email account that the agent monitors for incoming invoices. You can either give vendors this email address directly or have your AP team forward invoices to it.

Important: Don’t monitor this email account in Outlook yourself. Let the agent handle it, it will automatically process any PDF attachments that arrive.

When you click on a task notification the agent shows you the invoice, extracted data, and coding suggestions. You can also view the original PDF alongside the proposed draft invoice. If everything looks correct, you confirm it. The agent then creates the purchase invoice. Total time? About two minutes.

When the Agent Needs Guidance

Sometimes the agent encounters a vendor it doesn’t recognize. It asks for your input and suggests creating a new vendor record, populating vendor information based on what it extracted from the invoice—address, contact details, tax information.

Smart safeguard: When you approve creating a new vendor, the agent automatically sets the blocked field to “all.” This respects your due diligence processes. Review the vendor, verify their details, complete onboarding, then unblock them. The agent won’t process the invoice until you do.

Current Capabilities Worth Knowing About

No Data Entry Required: The agent extracts all information from invoice PDFs automatically—vendor details, invoice numbers, dates, line items, quantities, amounts. Your team reviews and confirms rather than types.

Intelligent Line Matching: The agent suggests appropriate GL accounts and item matches for each invoice line, considering your item references, text-to-account mappings, and historical patterns.

Deferral Recognition: The agent identifies and proposes deferrals based on invoice content and your business rules, helping ensure revenue recognition compliance.

Configurable Review Points: Control how much automation you want. Require review of each incoming email, or skip that step and have the agent analyze PDFs directly with human review later in the process.

The Vision: Transforming Back Office Operations

Microsoft’s vision: handle any invoice from any source—e-invoices or PDFs—with built-in fraud detection, complete end-to-end processing, and flexible autonomy levels. The goal isn’t just automating tasks—it’s enabling your AP team to provide consistently high-quality financial data while focusing on higher-value activities like vendor relationship management and strategic analysis.

Real Business Value

• Increased Throughput

Your AP team can process significantly more invoices in the same amount of time. What took hours of data entry now takes minutes of review.

• Improved Accuracy

AI-powered interpretation reduces manual data entry errors. Consistent coding based on learned patterns ensures financial data quality.

• Better Compliance and Control

Built-in review points, vendor blocking for new suppliers, and transparent reasoning ensure you maintain proper financial controls while benefiting from automation.

• Scalability

Handle growing invoice volume without proportionally growing your AP team. The agent scales with your business.

• Learning Over Time

Unlike static automation rules, the agent continuously improves as it processes more of your invoices and learns your business patterns.

The Bottom Line

The Payables Agent represents Microsoft’s vision for AI-powered back office transformation. It’s not just about reducing data entry—though it certainly does that. It’s about fundamentally improving the quality and efficiency of your accounts payable process.

Current capabilities already deliver significant value: automatic data extraction, intelligent matching, learning-based suggestions, and streamlined review workflows. Upcoming features like purchase order matching and approval integration will make it even more powerful.

The future of accounts payable isn’t about eliminating your AP team—it’s about empowering them to focus on judgment, relationships, and strategic value while AI handles the repetitive, rules-based work that’s consumed their time for decades.

Ready to explore how the Payables Agent can transform your accounts payable process? The team at CAL Business Solutions understands the complexities of AP workflows and has deep experience with Business Central’s AI capabilities. We can help you evaluate whether the Payables Agent is right for your organization and guide your implementation to ensure you get maximum value. Contact Us!

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Business Central’s Payables Agent: The End of Manual Invoice Entry Is Here appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

March is here and spring is just around the corner! As the days get longer and the weather (hopefully) starts to warm up, we’re looking forward to fresh starts, new projects, and helping our clients gear up for their busiest season ahead. How can we help you?

GP + SalesPad vs. Acumatica

Still paying extra for mobile access, payment processing, and automation on top of your Dynamics GP + SalesPad licenses? Discover why these “premium” features come standard in Acumatica and how CAL saved over $3,000 annually just on credit card processing when we made the switch ourselves.

Read how Acumatica compares to GP with SalesPad

What’s Slowing Down My BC Database?

Frustrated by Business Central slowdowns but can’t pinpoint the cause? Microsoft’s 2025 Wave 2 release includes game-changing database visibility that shows exactly what’s slowing your system down—no database expert or technical knowledge required.

Read More

Stop Hackers from Hijacking Your Email Server

Think your email server is secure because you restricted SMTP to internal IPs? Discover why basic authentication and unencrypted connections are security nightmares and how to lock down your SMTP properly before you become the next victim.

Learn More

Dynamics GP EFT Payments w/Automatic Emails

Still printing checks and paying $25-$35 wire transfer fees for vendor payments? Discover how Dynamics GP’s built-in EFT feature can slash payment costs by 99% (from $25 to just 25 cents per transaction) while automatically emailing payment confirmations, saving your team hours every month.

Read More Here

Using GP SmartList Favorites

Is your team rebuilding the same Dynamics GP reports from scratch every week because nobody showed them SmartList Favorites? This fully-paid-for feature saves your custom filters, columns, and sorting with one click—turning 15-minute report builds into instant access to exactly the data you need.

Learn How Here

The post The CAL Connection Newsletter – March 2026 appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated: February 27, 2027

Here’s the thing about email security. Most business owners don’t think about it until something goes wrong. And by then, you’re already dealing with blacklisted domains, spam complaints from customers, and a massive cleanup bill.

Your Microsoft 365 or Exchange server sends emails every day. Purchase orders go out through Dynamics GP. Sales quotes flow through SalesPad. Invoices print and email through Forms Printer. All of that runs on SMTP connections behind the scenes. And if those connections aren’t locked down properly, you’ve left the door wide open.

Why Basic Authentication Is a Problem

Basic authentication sends your username and password directly to the mail server. Think of it like shouting your password across a crowded room. If you’re not using SSL/TLS encryption on that connection, those credentials travel in plain text. Anyone sitting on your network can grab them.

According to F5 Labs, SSLstrip attacks, which downgrade encrypted connections to unencrypted HTTP, are actively being used to steal login credentials in real-world scenarios. The Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found that 88% of basic web application attacks involved stolen credentials, with unencrypted connections making credential theft significantly easier.

Most Microsoft 365 tenants now block basic authentication by default. Microsoft deprecated basic authentication for good reason. But plenty of companies are using workarounds to keep it running. That’s a mistake.

Look, we get it. Switching to OAuth takes time. You have to reconfigure applications. But OAuth works differently. When an app tries to connect, you get a permission screen showing exactly what access it’s requesting. Same idea as installing an app on your phone and seeing what permissions it wants. You review it, accept it, and the connection happens with better security.

The key difference is control. With basic auth, once an application has your credentials, it has full access until you change the password. With OAuth, you grant specific permissions and can revoke them anytime without touching your main account credentials. That matters when you’re dealing with third-party applications connecting to your mail server.

The Open Relay Problem

We’ve seen too many Exchange servers configured with open SMTP relay connectors. These let email flow through without authentication. The thinking goes like this: “We’ll just restrict it to our internal IP addresses. That’s secure enough.”

It’s not.

Even with IP restrictions, attackers who gain access to your network can exploit that relay. Your mail server should enforce both encryption and authentication. Yes, restrict by IP address. But add authentication on top of that. Make the connection prove it’s coming from a trusted source and verify it with legitimate credentials.

SSL/TLS encryption adds another layer. The traffic itself gets encrypted. That makes intercepting credentials or email content much harder. Modern mail servers support TLS 1.2 or higher. There’s no good reason to allow unencrypted connections in 2026.

What Happens When Security Fails

A few years back, one of our clients learned this lesson the expensive way. They had an in-house EDI application that transmitted data to their warehouse system. The application sent email notifications through an unauthenticated relay on their Exchange server.

A hacker found a backdoor in that EDI app. Once inside, they discovered the open relay and started sending spam. Thousands of emails went out. Because they originated from a legitimate, trusted mail server, spam filters didn’t catch them.

The client’s domain got blacklisted. They spent days contacting blacklist providers to get removed. They had to trace how the attack happened. They reconfigured their mail server and updated the EDI application to use proper authentication. All of that could have been prevented with correct configuration from the start.

The reputational damage hurt too. Many spam recipients were their actual business partners. The client initially thought an employee’s email account got compromised. The reality was worse. They’re a public manufacturing company with products sold in retail stores worldwide. Their website proudly lists every retailer that carries their products. The attacker just scraped that public “where to buy” page and grabbed contact information for all those retailers.

How to Lock Down SMTP Properly

Modern mail servers give you the tools. Configure your SMTP connections to require authentication. Use OAuth where your applications support it. Enforce SSL/TLS encryption on every connection. Reject unencrypted traffic.

For Dynamics GP environments running third-party tools like SalesPad or Forms Printer, SMTP is still legitimate. But configure it right. Don’t accept the defaults. Don’t take shortcuts with open relays or basic authentication just because it’s easier to set up.

Start by auditing what SMTP connections currently exist in your environment. Check which applications are sending email. Verify what authentication method each one uses. Document which connectors are configured on your Exchange or Microsoft 365 tenant. You can’t secure what you don’t know exists.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends multi-factor authentication and encrypted connections for all email systems. These aren’t suggestions for enterprises only. Mid-market manufacturers and distributors face the same threats. Attackers don’t care about company size. They care about easy targets.

Getting Your Configuration Reviewed

If you’re running Exchange, Microsoft 365, or any mail server that connects to your ERP system, you should verify your SMTP security settings. Check what authentication method you’re using. Confirm encryption is enforced. Make sure you don’t have an open relay sitting there waiting to be exploited.

We review mail server configurations as part of our ERP implementation and support services. Rob and our infrastructure team can audit your current setup, identify vulnerabilities, and help you reconfigure everything properly. It’s faster and cheaper than cleaning up after an attack.

Your email server shouldn’t be your weakest security link. Let’s make sure it isn’t.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Stop Hackers from Hijacking Your Email Server appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated February 2026

Look, we’re going to be straight with you. If you’re running your business on Microsoft Dynamics GP with Cavallo SalesPad, you’re probably feeling the pain. It has been a solid solution for our clients in the past, but it has become an expensive patchwork of add-ons while delivering little additional value year-over-year, especially in the fast-moving era of cloud computing and AI.

Here’s the thing that might surprise you: everything you’re paying for, it’s already built into Acumatica ERP, plus so much more. With Acumatica there’s one solution that does the best of both, no integration headaches, no server upgrades. Just one comprehensive system that works the way your business needs it to.

Stop Paying Extra for Basic Business Functions

Let me paint you a picture of what’s really happening with your current setup. You’re paying Microsoft for Dynamics GP, then you’re paying Cavallo more in annual licensing fees just to get some of the functionality that comes standard in modern ERP systems.

3 Features SalesPad charges extra for that Acumatica includes:

1. Mobile Access– SalesPad Mobile costs extra. Acumatica Mobile? It’s built right in. Your sales team, field service techs and delivery drivers can access customer information, check inventory, and process orders from anywhere without paying a penny more.
2. Payment Processing– Need integrated payments? SalesPad relies on Nodus PayFabric. Acumatica Payments with payment links comes standard, saving you thousands in additional licensing and processing costs.
3. Process Automation– SalesPad’s Automation Agent is an add-on. Acumatica gives you powerful automation scheduling and processing screens as part of the core platform.

The pattern is clear: SalesPad charges extra for features that nowadays modern ERPs include.

CAL’s Own Journey from Dynamics GP + SalesPad to Acumatica

We’ve been where you are. CAL Business Solutions used Microsoft Dynamics GP and SalesPad for nearly twenty years, and like many of our clients, we dealt with managing multiple disconnected systems.

Our old reality with GP:

• Microsoft Dynamics GP for core accounting and billing
• A separate system for time entry and project accounting
• Another system for CRM to track sales leads
• A fourth system for reporting
• A fifth system for case management and support calls

Sound familiar? We were the classic example of “islands of disconnected information.” Everything technically worked, but we were doing duplicate data entry, creating endless workarounds, and our teams couldn’t see the complete picture of what was happening in the business.

 What changed when we moved to Acumatica:

As CAL’s Founder, George Mackiewicz puts it: “As a business owner, I can look at everything that’s going on, and I absolutely love it. Having those dashboards in the fabric of the Acumatica application without having to buy or learn additional tools is great.”

Specific results we experienced:

• Eliminated duplicate data entry – No more entering the same information in multiple systems
• Integrated credit card processing – Saved over $3,000 annually in credit card processing fees alone
• Automated renewal process – What once consumed two weeks of a full-time employee’s month is now completely automated
• Real-time visibility – All teams now work from the same data instead of separate systems
• Streamlined collections – Customizable AR statements that really do get paid faster

The bottom line? We went from five systems to one, and everything became more efficient. When we recommend Acumatica to our clients, we’re not just selling software—we’re sharing what transformed our own business.

Why the Migration is Happening Now

Microsoft’s timeline creates urgency

Microsoft has made it clear: no new Dynamics GP sales after 2025, and support ends in 2029. If you’re on GP with SalesPad, you’re already on borrowed time. The question isn’t whether you’ll need to migrate—it’s whether you’ll do it proactively or wait until you’re forced into a rushed decision.

SalesPad’s integration limitations

Here’s what SalesPad doesn’t tell you: their solution is fundamentally limited by Dynamics GP’s aging architecture. You can bolt on all the add-ons you want, but you’re still constrained by a platform that wasn’t designed for today’s business requirements.

Acumatica was built from the ground up as a modern, cloud-native ERP. It doesn’t have the architectural limitations that force you to buy separate solutions for basic business functions.

The Feature Comparison That Says It All – Core Functionality

Let me show you exactly what I mean with some specific examples:

Inventory planning and automation

• SalesPad: Purchase Advisor is included, but automation requires separate licensing
• Acumatica: Inventory Planning, automated reordering, and MRP/DRP capabilities included

Document management

• SalesPad: Limited storage capabilities
• Acumatica: Comprehensive document management and file storage built in

Reporting and analytics

• SalesPad: Quick Reports included, advanced analytics costs extra
• Acumatica: Full report designer, Generic Inquiry, and pivot reporting included

Workflow management

• SalesPad: Workflows are good and included, advanced automation costs extra
• Acumatica: Workflow engine, business events, and approval mapping included

Mobile functionality

• SalesPad: Mobile access requires separate licensing
• Acumatica: Full mobile application included with core licensing

The pattern is unmistakable: Acumatica includes as standard features what SalesPad treats as premium add-ons.

CAL’s Deep Experience with Both Platforms

At CAL Business Solutions, we’re not just talking theory—we’ve lived the reality of both platforms. We’ve been a leading SalesPad/Cavallo partner since 2007, not only using it internally, our team has done numerous implementations and built deep expertise in maximizing the platform’s capabilities.

As a Cavallo partner, CAL Business Solutions was one of the early adopters of Cavallo (formerly SalesPad) in 2007. We felt that the user interface and the flexibility were a great alternative to using standard Microsoft Dynamics GP. We’ve seen firsthand how businesses have succeeded with GP + SalesPad, and we understand the value it provided when it was the best option available.

But we’ve also experienced the limitations, the escalating costs, and the architectural constraints that come with building solutions on top of an aging platform. GP’s legacy client/server design (including 32-bit ODBC requirements) and SalesPad’s dependency on matching GP versions create ongoing coordination, testing, and upgrade effort—technical debt that compounds over time…

Why CAL Became an Acumatica Partner:

Even back then, we could see that Microsoft was not heavily investing in the distribution capabilities of Dynamics GP. When we evaluated Acumatica, we saw a platform that delivered everything our SalesPad clients were paying extra for—included as standard functionality.

Our unique position:

• SalesPad experts – we started with SalesPad in 2007 and know the platform inside and out
• Experienced internal team – We don’t rely on Cavallo (SalesPad) for implementations; we do them ourselves
• Direct experience – We migrated our own business from GP with SalesPad to Acumatica and can share real results
• Objective perspective – We can honestly compare what you’re getting with each platform

Matt Abbott, Chief Strategy Officer at Cavallo SalesPad, says:

“We are extremely proud of our deep partnership with CAL Business Solutions, which has spanned more than a decade. CAL has proven time and time again to be a valuable advisor to our mutual clients and trusted implementation partner for SalesPad solutions.”

This relationship gives us credibility when we tell you that for most businesses today, Acumatica is simply the better choice.

Beyond Feature Parity: Why Acumatica is Simply Better

But here’s where it gets interesting. It’s not just that Acumatica includes more features for less money—it’s that the entire platform is fundamentally more capable.

True cloud architecture: Acumatica was designed for the cloud from day one. That means automatic updates, anywhere access, and scalability that just works. SalesPad with GP? You’re still dealing with on-premise limitations and complex upgrade cycles.

Unlimited user options: With Acumatica’s licensing model, you can give everyone in your organization access to the information they need without worrying about per-user costs. Try doing that with SalesPad.

Integration-ready: Need to connect to e-commerce, CRM, or other business systems? Acumatica’s modern APIs make integration straightforward. With GP and SalesPad, every integration is a custom project.

Future-proof technology: Acumatica is actively developed with modern technologies and regular updates. GP is in maintenance mode, and SalesPad is limited by that aging foundation.

The Migration Process: It’s Easier Than You Think

I know what you’re thinking: “This sounds great, but migrating our entire ERP system sounds like a nightmare.”

Here’s the reality: migrating from GP + SalesPad to Acumatica is actually more straightforward than most people expect. Why? Because Acumatica was specifically designed to handle data from legacy systems like GP.

The process typically involves:

1. Data assessment – We analyze your current GP data and SalesPad configurations
2. System design – We configure Acumatica to match your business processes (often improving them) or propose better ways of doing things
3. Data migration – Your historical data moves cleanly into Acumatica
4. Training and go-live – Your team learns the new system and goes live
5. Ongoing support – We ensure everything runs smoothly after implementation

Most of our clients are fully operational on Acumatica within 3-6 months, and they wonder why they waited so long to make the switch.

The Bottom Line: Acumatica Includes SalesPad Features

Every month you stay on Dynamics GP with SalesPad, you’re paying for functionality that Acumatica includes as standard. You’re also missing out on the operational improvements that come from having a truly integrated, modern ERP system.

The businesses that are thriving in today’s competitive environment aren’t the ones trying to squeeze more life out of aging systems—they’re the ones that invested in platforms designed for growth, efficiency, and adaptation.

Key questions to ask yourself:

• How much are you spending annually on SalesPad licensing and add-ons?
• How many workarounds do you have because of system limitations?
• How often do integration issues slow down your operations?
• What opportunities are you missing because your system can’t keep up?

If you’re honest about these questions, the path forward becomes pretty clear.

Ready to See What You’re Missing?

We’ve helped dozens of companies make the transition from GP + SalesPad to Acumatica. Every single one tells us the same thing: they wish they’d done it sooner.

The combination of cost savings, improved functionality, and operational efficiency typically pays for the migration within the first year. After that, it’s pure advantage.

Want to see exactly how Acumatica compares to your current SalesPad setup? We can provide a detailed feature comparison and cost analysis specific to your business. No sales pressure, just real data so you can make an informed decision.

Contact CAL Business Solutions today to schedule your Acumatica evaluation and take a look at how it can help cut costs and give you the SalesPad functionality built-in.

At CAL Business Solutions, we specialize in helping businesses transition from legacy ERP systems to modern, cloud-based platforms like Acumatica. Having been both a leading SalesPad partner since 2007 and having migrated our own business from GP to Acumatica, we bring unique expertise and firsthand experience to every implementation. Our team has the experience and expertise to ensure your migration is smooth, cost-effective, and delivers real business results.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Dynamics GP + SalesPad vs. Acumatica: Which Comes Out on Top? appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Hello from everyone at CAL! As February gets underway, we’re thinking about our customers and the challenges you’re facing right now – whether that’s closing the books, planning upgrades, or just keeping everything running smoothly. How can we help you?

Acumatica Summit 2026 Recap

Acumatica Summit 2026 delivered nearly 1,000 game-changing features in 2025 R1 and R2—from AI-powered cross-sell assistants and self-service portals to real-time shop floor kiosks and Amazon profitability dashboards—proving that the future of cloud ERP isn’t coming, it’s already here and driving measurable results for over 3,000 attendees.

Read More: Acumatica Summit 2026, Moving ERP From Potential to Impact

Dynamics BC Manufacturing Analytics

Stop making production decisions based on stale data and gut instinct. Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2 delivers game-changing manufacturing analytics with Excel reports you can filter and customize on the fly, plus PowerBI dashboards with consistent measurements across your entire operation, all without needing IT support!

Read More

Industry Focus: Future-Proof Your Distribution Business

With 55-75% of ERP implementations failing to meet objectives, distribution companies that stop reacting to crises and start planning strategic technology roadmaps using the three-horizon approach can finally break free from expensive emergencies and build systems that support growth instead of constraining it!

Learn More

BC 2025 Wave 2: Inventory and Project Profitability

Business Central 2025 Wave 2 brings machine learning-powered inventory forecasting that predicts your future needs based on actual historical patterns, plus enhanced project profitability tracking with billable-to-invoice percentages. Stop scrambling between stockouts and overstock, and discover which projects are actually profitable before it’s too late.

Read More

Dynamics GP January Tax Update

Microsoft just released critical Dynamics GP tax updates covering 12 states plus a January Hotfix with SQL Server 2025 support and game-changing 1099 form updates—don’t let outdated tax tables put your payroll compliance at risk!

Read More Here

Fix Your Slow GP Check Batches

If your Dynamics GP check batch creation is crawling from 30 seconds to several agonizing minutes each month, one simple checkbox setting is sabotaging your EFT payments by clogging up the PM20100 table—discover the 5-minute fix that stops the slowdown before you waste time considering an expensive system upgrade!

Learn How Here

With February being the shortest month of the year, time blocking becomes even more critical. This technique involves dedicating specific blocks of time to focused work on particular tasks, rather than constantly switching between different activities throughout the day.

How to implement it:

• Schedule your most important work during your peak energy hours
• Block out 90-minute focused work sessions with 15-minute breaks
• Protect these time blocks by turning off notifications and closing unnecessary applications
• Communicate your focused work times to colleagues to minimize interruptions

Read More Here

The post The CAL Connection Newsletter – February 2026 appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated February 2026

Your AP clerk runs the same vendor report every Tuesday morning. Same filters. Same columns. Same sort order. And she rebuilds it from scratch every single time because nobody ever showed her about SmartList Favorites.

Here’s what drives me crazy about this: the feature she needs is already sitting inside her Dynamics GP system, fully paid for, waiting to be used. She’s just never heard of it.

SmartList Favorites let you save your custom reports — filters, columns, sorting, all of it and run them again with a single click. No rebuilding. No remembering which fields you needed. Just instant access to the exact data view you set up last time. If you or your team regularly pull the same reports in GP and you’re not using Favorites, you’re burning time you don’t need to.

What Are Dynamics GP SmartList Favorites — and Why Do They Matter?

SmartList is already built into your Microsoft Dynamics GP system. You’re paying for it whether you use it or not. Favorites take those default SmartLists and turn them into customized, saved report views that match exactly how your business operates.

Think of it like bookmarks for your data. You configure the columns you need, apply your filters, arrange everything just right — then save it. The next time you need that exact report, it’s sitting there waiting for you. And here’s the part people miss: Favorites save your settings, not a static snapshot of data. Every time you open one, the results refresh automatically. That vendor aging report you saved last month will show current data when you run it today.

For growing businesses where the same reports get pulled daily, weekly, or at month-end close, this is one of those features that quietly saves hours you didn’t even realize you were losing.

How to Create Your First  SmartList Favorite

Open SmartList by clicking Microsoft Dynamics GP in your toolbar, then selecting SmartList from the menu. If you use it frequently, add a toolbar shortcut to save even more clicks.

Start with a default SmartList that’s close to what you need. For example, if you want to track vendors missing 1099 tax information, navigate to Purchasing > by vendors > 1099 Vendors. Any SmartList ending with an asterisk is a Microsoft default, a solid starting point.

From there:

• Click the Columns button to add, remove, or reorder fields. Switch the display to “All Columns” to see everything available. Use Ctrl-Click to select multiple columns at once.
• Use the Search button to set filters — up to four criteria at a time. For the 1099 example, you might filter for vendors where the tax type is populated but the 1099 box is empty.
• Once your SmartList shows exactly what you need, click Favorites in the toolbar, give it a descriptive name (“Missing 1099 Tax Info” beats “Vendor Report 3” six months from now), and save it.

Most people have their first Favorite working in under ten minutes. The hardest part is picking which report to start with and for most accounting teams, that’s usually the vendor aging report or a recurring month-end query.

If you need more information, watch this video showing how to create SmartList Favorites and set up reminders on our YouTube channel.

The Visibility Setting Most People Get Wrong

This matters more than you think. The “Visible To” dropdown determines who sees your SmartList Favorite. If it’s set to system, then everyone in every company sees your Favorite in their list. That’s lots of people scrolling through “Bob’s Q1 Vendor Analysis” when they’re looking for their own reports. Clutter drives people crazy.

Set it to User unless you specifically built this Favorite for your whole team. Your finance manager doesn’t need to wade through the warehouse supervisor’s inventory queries.

Company makes the Favorite visible to everyone in your specific company database only. User Class works if your GP administrator set up logical groupings and assigned people to classes. System should be reserved for truly universal reports that benefit everyone.

Here’s a practical rule. If you created it for yourself, set it to User. If your department needs it, ask your GP admin about User Class settings. If the entire organization should use it, then consider System visibility.

Advanced Features Worth Knowing

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, a few more features are worth exploring:

• SmartList Reminders connect to your Favorites and alert you when specific conditions occur — for example, notifying you when payables transactions over a certain threshold need approval. The reminder shows up directly on your GP homepage.
• The GoTo button jumps you from a SmartList result directly to the related record in GP — click a vendor, press GoTo, and you’re in their vendor card without navigating through menus.
• Excel export works seamlessly. Click the Excel button to push your results into a spreadsheet without the formatting headaches that come from other GP exports.
• Password protection (available in GP 2018 and later) lets you lock down sensitive Favorites — useful if you’re sharing compensation data or confidential vendor terms.

One more thing to watch: if your SmartList shows 1,000 records on both sides of the count at the bottom, you’re hitting the default maximum and missing data. Go to SmartList Options to increase that limit or refine your filters.

Practical Ways to Build Favorites into Your Workflow

The best Favorites aren’t built in isolation — they’re built around the work your team actually does every day.

For month-end close, create a Favorite for each of the reports you consistently pull, label them clearly, and run through them in sequence instead of rebuilding queries from memory. For new employees, point them to the six Favorites they’ll use daily instead of teaching them to construct SmartLists from scratch — they’re productive faster, and you field fewer questions.

For auditors, build Favorites ahead of time using the exact filters and columns they ask for every year. Set the visibility appropriately and you’ll stop spending the first day of audit week just pulling reports.

SmartList has been part of Dynamics GP since the early Great Plains days. The functionality keeps improving with each release. The latest GP updates include enhanced reporting features across multiple modules, and Microsoft has extended GP support through December 2029 with security patches continuing until April 2031.

Stop recreating the same reports. Build your Favorites once. Use them forever. Your future self will thank you.

Need help optimizing your Dynamics GP reporting or setting up SmartList Favorites for your team? Contact CAL Business Solutions at 860-485-0910 x4 or sales@calszone.com.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Stop Recreating the Same Reports: How Dynamics GP SmartList Favorites Save Your Team Hours Every Month appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated February 6, 2026 – Because even legacy systems can run fast

One of our clients called us recently with a frustrating problem: creating check batches in Dynamics GP was taking longer and longer each month. What used to be a quick 30-second process was now stretching into several minutes. And getting worse every pay cycle.

Sound familiar? If you’re paying vendors through EFT in Dynamics GP and noticing your check batch creation slowing to a crawl, you’re probably dealing with the PM20100 remittance table issue. The good news? It’s an easy fix that takes about five minutes.

The Problem: When EFT Payments Create Digital Clutter

Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes. When you create a check batch in Dynamics GP, there’s an option called “Print Previously Applied Documents.” This setting tells the system to include remittance information about which invoices are being paid on the check stub.

For companies printing physical checks, this works perfectly. The remittance information prints on the check stub, and once printed, the system removes those records from the PM20100 table (the remittance holding table). Clean and simple.

But if you’re paying vendors through EFT (which is increasingly common and makes good business sense), you never actually print those checks. The EFT payments go out electronically, but the remittance records just sit there in the PM20100 table. Forever.

Every month, you create more EFT payments. More remittance records pile up in that table. And every time you try to create a new check batch, Dynamics GP has to wade through all those accumulated records, checking each one to see if it needs to be included.

Month one: 50 records to check through. Month six: 300 records. Month twelve: 600 records and counting. Your check batch creation keeps getting slower and slower.

The Real-World Impact

This isn’t just a minor annoyance. We’ve seen many of our clients dealing with:

• Check batch creation that takes 5-10 minutes instead of seconds
• Frustrated AP staff who can’t understand why the system keeps slowing down
• Delayed payment processing because the batch creation is so time-consuming
• Unnecessary “zero dollar” checks being created just to clear out old remittance data

One client was considering a complete system upgrade because they thought their GP installation was fundamentally broken. Turns out, they just needed to change one checkbox setting.

The Simple Solution: Two Ways to Fix It

Quick Fix: Change Your Batch Creation Setting

When you’re building your check batch in the Select Checks window, look for the “Print Previously Applied Documents” checkbox. Simply uncheck it.

That’s it. By unchecking this option, you prevent GP from creating those remittance records in PM20100 for your EFT payments. No records created means nothing to slow down your batch processing.

Better Fix: Change the Default Setting

If you want to prevent this from happening automatically, you can change the default setting in Payables Setup so “Print Previously Applied Documents” is unchecked by default. This ensures the problem doesn’t creep back in if someone forgets to uncheck the box during batch creation.

To do this:

1. Go to Microsoft Dynamics GP > Tools > Setup > Purchasing > Payables
2. Look for the default settings for check processing
3. Set “Print Previously Applied Documents” to unchecked by default

Now every new check batch will automatically have the correct setting without anyone needing to remember to change it.

What If You Already Have Records Stuck in PM20100?

Here’s the thing: if you’ve been running with this setting enabled for months or years, you probably have hundreds or thousands of remittance records clogging up your PM20100 table. Changing the checkbox setting prevents new records from accumulating, but it doesn’t clear out the existing ones.

That’s where the performance problem persists even after you fix the setting. GP still has to check through all those old records every time you create a batch.

The solution is to clear out those stuck remittance records from the PM20100 table. This requires some careful SQL work to remove only the appropriate records without affecting your legitimate payment data.

If you’re dealing with existing performance issues from accumulated PM20100 records, contact our support team at CAL. We can safely clear out those stuck records and get your check batch processing back to normal speed.

Understanding the PM20100 Table (Without Getting Too Technical)

Think of the PM20100 table as a temporary holding area for remittance information (the details about which invoices are being paid). It’s designed to hold this information just long enough to print it on a check stub, then clear itself out.

The table was designed with the assumption that most payments would eventually result in a printed check. EFT payments broke that assumption. The system creates remittance records for EFT payments just like it does for check payments, but those EFT records never get the “print event” that would normally clear them out.

It’s like a waiting room that keeps filling up with people who never get called for their appointments. Eventually, the waiting room gets so crowded that it’s hard to move through it.

The Bigger Picture: EFT Best Practices in Dynamics GP

This remittance table issue is just one small piece of optimizing EFT payments in Dynamics GP. If you’re using EFT (and you should be, because it saves money and speeds up vendor payments), make sure you’re following best practices:

• Keep “Print Previously Applied Documents” unchecked for EFT payments
• Regularly review your Payables Setup defaults
• Monitor system performance during routine tasks like batch creation
• Work with knowledgeable support partners who understand these nuances

Look, Microsoft has extended Dynamics GP support through 2029. That means investing in optimization and best practices for your current system makes good business sense. You don’t need to replace a perfectly good ERP just because one checkbox is slowing you down.

Small Settings, Big Impact

If your Dynamics GP check batch creation is getting slower, don’t assume you need a new system or a major overhaul. Check that “Print Previously Applied Documents” setting first. You might solve your performance problem in the time it takes to read this article.

Need Help?

Whether you’re dealing with existing PM20100 performance issues or want to optimize your Dynamics GP EFT processes, our team at CAL Business Solutions has the expertise to help. We’ve been supporting Dynamics GP for decades and know these systems inside and out.

Contact us today: 860-485-0910 x4 or sales@calszone.com

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Why Your Dynamics GP Check Batches Are Getting Slower (And How to Fix It in 5 Minutes) appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated February 5, 2026

Look, I need to share something that might sting a little: according to Gartner, 55-75% of ERP implementations fail to meet their objectives. That’s not just disappointing—that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars down the drain, months of disrupted operations, and a team that’s lost trust in your leadership.

For distribution companies, the consequences are even worse. You can’t fulfill orders when volume doubles. Your competitors are shipping in half the time. And your growth plans? They’re hitting a wall because your systems can’t keep up without hiring twice as many people to manage the chaos.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most distribution companies don’t have a technology strategy. They have a pattern of reactions to immediate crises.

The Reactive Trap That’s Costing You Money

Your warehouse management system crashes, so you scramble to find a replacement. A major customer demands EDI capability, so you bolt on another integration. Your accounting team can’t close the books fast enough, so you hire another person instead of fixing the underlying system.

Sound familiar?

This reactive approach costs you in three ways. You’re constantly paying the “emergency premium” where rushed implementations cost more and deliver less. Your systems become a mess of tools that barely talk to each other. And you miss the technology investments that could transform your business because you’re too busy putting out fires.

What Actually Works: The Three-Horizon Approach

A genuine technology roadmap starts with one question: what does your distribution business need to do three years from now that it can’t do today?

Maybe you’re expanding into new markets that require multi-location inventory visibility. Perhaps you’re adding value-added services like kitting or light assembly. Or your customers are demanding shorter lead times and real-time order visibility that your current systems simply can’t provide.

Here’s how successful distributors organize their technology investments:

Horizon 1: Operational Stability (0-12 months)

Keep the lights on and fix what’s actively breaking. System upgrades that are past due, security patches you’ve been postponing, infrastructure approaching end-of-life. These aren’t exciting investments, but skip them and everything else gets derailed by preventable crises.

Horizon 2: Capability Building (12-24 months)

Bridge the gap between what your systems can do today and what your business strategy requires tomorrow. Planning to expand into ecommerce? Adding third-party logistics services? You need warehouse management capabilities that can support it.

Horizon 3: Competitive Differentiation (24-36 months)

Explore technologies that could fundamentally change how you compete. AI-powered demand forecasting, IoT sensors for condition-based monitoring, advanced analytics that predict customer churn before it happens.

Most successful distributors allocate roughly 50% to operational stability, 30% to capability building, and 20% to competitive differentiation.

Budget Reality: The 70-20-10 Framework

Industry benchmarks say distribution companies typically spend 1.5-2.5% of revenue on technology. But benchmarks only tell you what others are doing, not what your business needs.

Here’s a more useful framework for how to spend that budget:

70% Run: Maintaining existing systems, keeping infrastructure operational, supporting current users. Software maintenance, infrastructure costs, help desk support, routine upgrades. This percentage feels high, but most of your budget goes toward keeping what you already have running smoothly.

20% Grow: Investments that directly support business growth or efficiency improvements with clear returns. Warehouse management systems that reduce pick errors, ecommerce capabilities that open new sales channels, cloud ERP that eliminates manual data entry.

10% Transform: Experimental investments in emerging technologies. Pilot programs with AI, blockchain for supply chain transparency, advanced analytics platforms.

This framework helps you avoid two common traps: starving “run” to fund “transform” projects (which leads to unreliable core systems), and spending everything on “run” without investing in growth.

Building Business Cases That Actually Get Approved

Let me be blunt: nobody cares that your proposed ERP upgrade includes “advanced workflows.” They care whether it will reduce operating costs, increase revenue, or mitigate risks.

Quantify benefits in financial terms wherever possible. If automated picking will reduce warehouse labor hours by 15%, show what that means in annual savings. If customer portals will reduce service calls by 30%, translate that into staffing costs avoided.

And here’s the critical part: be honest about total cost of ownership. That “inexpensive” on-premise system might look attractive until you factor in servers, IT staff time, network upgrades, and business disruption during implementation. The cloud ERP with higher subscription fees might cost less when you account for eliminated infrastructure and reduced IT staffing needs.

The Cloud ERP Question

At some point, most distribution companies confront whether to move to a cloud ERP platform like Acumatica or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. This isn’t a technology decision—it’s a business model decision about how you want to consume, maintain, and scale your core systems over the next decade.

Cloud ERP makes particular sense when you’re expanding into multiple locations, adding ecommerce channels, integrating with third-party logistics providers, or preparing for rapid growth. The ROI comes from several sources: you eliminate capital expenditures on servers, reduce IT staffing needs, and accelerate implementations.

But cloud ERP isn’t automatically better for everyone. If you have stable operations, minimal growth, strong internal IT capabilities, and limited integration requirements, on-premise systems might serve you perfectly well.

What Future-Proofing Actually Means

Here’s the paradox: you can’t actually future-proof your technology. Business needs change, technologies evolve, and competitors do unexpected things. But you can build a technological foundation that adapts reasonably well to change without requiring complete replacement every few years.

Future-resilient technology strategies use open standards and avoid proprietary lock-in. They’re built on flexible architectures that accommodate new integrations without major rework. They include vendor roadmaps that align with where your industry is heading.

The goal isn’t to predict every future scenario perfectly. It’s to maintain optionality—the ability to pivot when circumstances change without being trapped by inflexible systems.

The Bottom Line

Future-proofing your distribution business through technology isn’t about having the newest, flashiest tools. It’s about making deliberate investments that align with your business strategy, budgeting realistically, and measuring whether those investments are delivering value.

The distribution companies that win over the next decade won’t necessarily have the most advanced technology. They’ll have the right technology, implemented well, and used effectively by people who understand both the tools and the business they support.

Your technology roadmap should be a living document that evolves as your business evolves. Your budget should reflect honest priorities, not wishful thinking. And your ROI calculations should be rigorous enough to survive scrutiny from skeptical CFOs.

Get these fundamentals right, and you’ll build a foundation that supports growth instead of constraining it.

Ready to develop a technology roadmap that actually aligns with your distribution business strategy? Contact CAL today to discuss how we can help you make smarter technology investments that deliver measurable results.

The post Future-Proofing Your Distribution Business: Stop Reacting, Start Planning appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated January 2026

From Panic to Planning: Inventory Forecasting That Actually Works

The reality for most distribution and manufacturing companies is that inventory management feels like an endless cycle of emergencies. You’re either scrambling because you ran out of something critical, or you’re tying up cash in overstock trying to avoid the next stockout. Neither situation is sustainable, and both are expensive.

Business Central’s new Power BI inventory forecasting report uses statistical modeling to predict your future inventory needs based on actual historical patterns. This is machine learning analyzing your transaction history to identify patterns, account for seasonality, and project likely demand with confidence intervals.

Here’s where it gets practical. You can filter by specific locations, individual items, or ledger entry types. Click a warehouse location and see forecasted needs for that specific facility. Select a product and understand whether demand is trending up, down, or stable. This dimensional forecasting means you can answer real questions like “Will our Chicago warehouse need more of Product X next month?” or “Should we increase orders before peak season hits?”

The visualization shows your actual historical inventory levels, forecasted future levels, and upper and lower bounds representing the confidence interval. This range perspective helps you understand uncertainty and plan accordingly. You can adjust parameters including forecast length, seasonality cycles, and confidence interval width—it’s ongoing refinement as you learn which settings match your real-world outcomes.

Project Profitability: Know What You Are Making Before It Is Too Late

If you deliver projects—whether manufacturing custom products, providing professional services, or implementing solutions—you’ve probably experienced the painful surprise of discovering a project wasn’t as profitable as you thought after it’s complete and the customer is long gone.

Business Central’s enhanced Power BI app for projects includes a critical metric: billable-to-invoice percentage. This immediately shows how much of your completed billable work has actually been invoiced. Why does this matter? Because unbilled work represents value you’ve delivered but haven’t yet converted to revenue, directly impacting both cash flow and how profitable your projects actually look.

The report now includes all sales types: resources (consultant time, labor), items (materials, products), and general ledger accounts (services). You see complete project revenue and profitability regardless of what you’re selling, helping you discover whether your resource revenue is more profitable than product sales, or whether certain service types consistently deliver better margins.

The Project Invoice Sales by Customer report flips the perspective to show profitability by customer. This analysis answers strategic questions like which customers are your most profitable project clients and whether you should pursue more work with specific customers based on actual profitability history.

Open Source Customization Changes Everything

The Projects Power BI app is now open source. You can download the complete source code for both report visuals and the semantic model as a PBX file, which fundamentally changes customization economics.

Previously, you either accepted Microsoft’s standard app or built custom analytics from scratch (expensive and time-consuming). Now you download Microsoft’s professionally built app, customize only the elements needing adjustment, and deploy your enhanced version. This accelerates custom analytics development dramatically while giving you enterprise-grade functionality as your starting point.

Getting Started and Strategic Implementation

For inventory forecasting, start with your high-value, stable items—products with consistent demand patterns and significant business impact. Track how predictions compare to actual demand for the first few cycles to build confidence. The key is embedding forecasting into your actual purchasing decisions, not treating it as separate analysis.

For project profitability, define what profitability means for your business before diving into reports. Establish a regular review cadence and use the billable-to-invoice percentage to drive billing discipline. Analyze profitability both by what you sell (resources versus products versus services) and by who you sell to (customer profitability).

Ready to Stop Flying Blind?

Every distribution and manufacturing business faces the same challenge: making decisions about the future based on information about the past. The question is whether that information gives you enough intelligence to predict what’s coming, or whether you’re just reacting to problems after they’ve already cost you money and customers.

Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2’s Power BI enhancements transform inventory management and project delivery from reactive scrambling to proactive planning. When you forecast inventory needs before stockouts occur and track project profitability with precision while you still have time to course-correct, you make fundamentally better decisions about ordering, resource allocation, customer relationships, and pricing.

At CAL Business Solutions, we’ve been helping mid-market distribution and manufacturing companies optimize their Business Central implementations for over 40 years. We understand both the technical features and the business processes that drive inventory management and project delivery.

Ready to see how these Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2 features can transform your operations? Contact us today to learn more about leveraging enhanced Power BI capabilities for smarter inventory management and project profitability tracking.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Business Central 2025 Wave 2: Stop Guessing About Inventory and Project Profitability appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated January 28, 2026

It’s that time of year again—tax season is here, and if you’re running payroll in Dynamics GP, you need to make sure your tax tables are current. The good news? Microsoft just released the second round of US tax table updates, and installation is straightforward with no code changes required.

Here’s everything you need to know, plus a preview of what’s coming in the January Hotfix.

What’s Available Right Now: 2nd Round Tax Table Updates

The second round of tax table updates for US taxes were released, covering 12 states with tax changes effective for 2026.

States Included in This Update:

• Arkansas
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Louisiana
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Montana
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Oregon
• Vermont

Important Details:

• No code changes needed for this update—just install and you’re ready to process payroll
• New date after installation: January 20, 2026
• Installation is quick and straightforward

How to Get the Update

You can download the cab file directly from Microsoft:

Direct Download Link: https://mbs2.microsoft.com/fileexchange/?fileID=959c4ed7-0051-49d1-979e-61abaf725190

Complete Documentation: For detailed information about specific tax changes in each state, visit Microsoft’s US Payroll Tax Update documentation.

January Hotfix

Microsoft’s January Hotfix brings several important updates:

Important Note: You do NOT need to install this hotfix just to print general W-2s, 1099s, or other standard tax forms. Only install this update if you’re specifically impacted by one of the changes listed below.

Download It Here: https://mbs2.microsoft.com/fileexchange/?fileID=e1a486b4-7029-459a-9857-791bd38e4985

Key Updates in the January Hotfix:

SQL Server 2025 Support (Great News!) 🎉

• SQL Server 2025 will be officially supported with the January Hotfix
• This will be added to the system requirements documentation
• Note: Analysis Cubes installer will NOT be supported on SQL Server 2025

Payroll W-2 Changes:

• OMB Number Updated: The OMB number has changed for the 2025 tax year (this only affects forms printed with lines and boxes)
• New Box 12, Code II: Added for Medicaid waiver payments to the EFW2 electronic file

Form Alignment Issues Fixed:

• Payroll 1096 Summary Form: Corrected alignment issues (this existed last year as well)
• Payroll 1099-R for Pension Employees: Corrected alignment issues

1099-MISC and 1099-NEC Changes for 2026:

• Golden Parachute Payments Moving: Starting with 2026 reporting, Excess Golden Parachute Payments will move from Form 1099-MISC to Form 1099-NEC Box 3
• This change was announced by the IRS in April 2025 regarding reporting requirements
• Previously: Reported on Form 1099-MISC Box 14
• Going Forward: Must be reported on Form 1099-NEC Box 3

Why These Updates Matter

Tax compliance isn’t optional—it’s essential. Installing these updates ensures:

1. Accurate payroll processing for employees in the affected states
2. Compliance with IRS requirements for 2025 W-2s and 1099 forms
3. Proper electronic filing with updated formats and codes
4. Reduced risk of penalties or corrections

The good news is that these updates are designed to be as straightforward as possible. Microsoft has handled the heavy lifting with the tax calculation logic—you just need to install the updates and verify they’re working correctly.

Installation Best Practices

While these updates are relatively simple to install, here are some recommendations:

Before Installing:

• Back up your Dynamics GP system
• Review the documentation for specific state tax changes that might affect your business
• Plan installation during a maintenance window if possible

After Installing:

• Verify the new date shows correctly (January 20, 2026 for the current tax update)
• Test with a sample payroll calculation to ensure tax amounts calculate correctly
• Review any affected states’ calculations against your previous payroll data

For the January Hotfix:

• Evaluate whether your organization needs this update based on the specific changes listed
• If you process pension payments, use the new 1099 codes, or need SQL Server 2025 support, plan to install promptly
• Standard W-2 and 1099 processing for most organizations does NOT require this hotfix

Dynamics GP in 2026: Still Supported, Still Valuable

If you’re reading this and wondering about Dynamics GP’s future, here’s what you need to know:

Microsoft announced that new sales of Dynamics GP perpetual licenses stopped in 2025, with new sales of GP subscriptions ending in 2026. However, existing customers can continue using their GP systems with extended support through 2029.

This means:

• Microsoft is still providing regular updates like these tax table releases
• Technical support continues
• Your investment in Dynamics GP remains protected through 2029
• You have plenty of time to plan any future migrations to cloud platforms like Dynamics 365 Business Central or Acumatica

For organizations still running Dynamics GP, staying current with updates like these tax table releases ensures you’re maximizing your investment while maintaining full compliance.

Need Help with Your Dynamics GP Tax Updates?

At CAL Business Solutions, we’ve been helping organizations manage their Dynamics GP systems for decades. Whether you need assistance with:

• Installing tax table updates or hotfixes
• Verifying that calculations are working correctly
• Troubleshooting payroll or tax form issues
• Planning your eventual migration to modern cloud ERP platforms
• Maximizing your GP investment while you continue to use it

We’re here to help. Our team understands Dynamics GP inside and out, and we can ensure your tax updates are installed correctly and functioning properly.

Don’t wait until tax filing deadlines are looming—get these updates installed now and stay ahead of compliance requirements.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Dynamics GP Tax Update: 2nd Round Released for 2026 (Plus January Hotfix Preview) appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated January 2026

Are you headed to Acumatica Summit 2026 in Seattle next week (January 25-28)? Before you pack your bags, make sure you watch this helpful video, “What to Know Before You Go to Acumatica Summit 2026”, a recording of a webinar done by Acu-Connect— it’s packed with practical tips to help you make the most of this unforgettable event!

Acumatica Summit is THE annual gathering where customers, partners, product leaders, and tech innovators come together to explore the latest in cloud ERP, AI-driven business solutions, and real-world success strategies. With 80+ breakout sessions, insightful keynotes, and rich networking opportunities, it’s all about accelerating your business performance in 2026 and beyond.

In this preview video, you’ll discover key advice like:

✨ How to plan your Summit experience — from choosing sessions that align with your business goals to building a personal agenda you’ll actually use.

🤝 Networking tips that work — learn how to go beyond exchanging business cards and make connections that lead to real collaboration and long‑term relationships.

📍 Insider insights on navigating the event — whether it’s maximizing time in the Acumatica Marketplace or prepping for breakout sessions, this video gets you Summit‑ready.

For first‑time attendees or Summit veterans alike, this overview puts you in the driver’s seat long before the event starts. From scheduling your time wisely to engaging with industry peers and experts, these insights will help you hit the ground running in Seattle.

🎟️ Not registered yet? There’s still time to secure your spot at Summit 2026 — an event designed to elevate your ERP knowledge, connect you with the community, and help you shape what’s next for your business.

👉 Watch the video now and get Summit‑smart before you arrive!

By Amy Mackiewicz, CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post 🎥 What to Know Before You Go to Acumatica Summit 2026 — Your Essential Preview appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Your production floor generates thousands of data points every hour, but most manufacturing teams make critical decisions based on static reports and gut instinct. Microsoft Business Central’s 2025 Release Wave 2 changes this with comprehensive manufacturing analytics modernization that delivers real-time production insights through Excel reports and PowerBI dashboards—no IT support required.

The Problem with Traditional Manufacturing Reports

You generate a PDF report, look at the numbers, and need to dig deeper? You’re exporting to Excel and starting from scratch. Want to filter by a specific work center or compare production utilization across time periods? That’s manual work. Your production managers make decisions based on whatever information they can access quickly—usually experience rather than real-time manufacturing data.

Excel Manufacturing Reports: The Real Game-Changer

Business Central manufacturing reports now come directly in Excel format with full analytical capabilities. No more exporting and reformatting. The data arrives ready for filtering, sorting, pivot tables, and charts—everything your team already knows.

Take the “Where Used Top Level” report. The old version gave you a static PDF. The new Excel layout provides the same data but your production manager can filter by components, sort by quantity, create custom views, and save their preferred layout as the team standard. No developer required.

PowerBI Manufacturing Analytics: Consistent Measurement

The updated PowerBI app for manufacturing solves inconsistent capacity measurement. Every number across the entire PowerBI manufacturing dashboard now displays capacity in the universal unit of measure configured in Business Central. When one report showed hours while another used days, it created confusion. Now everything’s consistent, eliminating mental math and reducing errors.

In-Client Help Makes Manufacturing Reports Discoverable

Every modernized manufacturing report now includes in-client help explaining what it shows and when to use it. Everything links to comprehensive Microsoft Learn documentation. The manufacturing data analysis information your team needs is contextual and always one click away.

Getting Started with Business Central Manufacturing Analytics

Start strategic. Identify production questions your team asks most frequently or manual reports created weekly. Implement modernized manufacturing reports addressing those specific needs first.

Have production managers customize Excel layouts for their needs, then save as standard templates. Most organizations use both approaches, built-in Excel reports for operational details and PowerBI manufacturing dashboards for strategic oversight.

The Bottom Line

Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2 represents Microsoft’s most comprehensive manufacturing analytics update. When every report offers Excel flexibility and PowerBI apps provide consistent measurement, your team focuses on insights rather than data wrestling.

Learn more on Business Central 2025 Wave 2 Manufacturing Analytics. Watch the 9-minute video here.

At CAL Business Solutions, we’ve helped dozens of manufacturing organizations implement Business Central to match their production processes. Our Connecticut-based team understands both technical capabilities and manufacturing operations. We develop implementation strategies delivering real results rather than just checking boxes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Business Central 2025 require PowerBI for manufacturing analytics?

No. Updated built-in reports deliver Excel-formatted manufacturing data without PowerBI. PowerBI provides advanced dashboards for strategic oversight but isn’t required for production insights.

Can we customize Excel manufacturing reports in Business Central?

Yes. Production managers customize layouts using standard Excel functionality and save as templates without IT involvement. No developer resources required.

What’s the difference between Business Central reports and PowerBI dashboards?

Excel manufacturing reports handle operational details and ad-hoc analysis. PowerBI manufacturing dashboards provide strategic oversight and visual presentation. Most organizations use both.

Ready to transform your production team’s manufacturing data access? Contact CAL Business Solutions today to learn more about Business Central’s enhanced manufacturing analytics features.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Business Central Manufacturing Analytics: Stop Making Decisions on Last Week’s Data appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated January 13, 2026

A distribution company woke up one Monday morning to find their entire network encrypted. The ransom demand? $180,000 in Bitcoin. The attackers had waltzed in through a forgotten SQL login nobody knew existed. An old integration account from three years ago that was never decommissioned.

The painful part? Their Dynamics GP security was configured perfectly. User permissions were locked down. Multi-factor authentication was enabled. Regular security audits were performed.

None of that mattered.

They paid the ransom. They didn’t have a choice. The attackers had deleted their backups first, and they couldn’t operate without access to their financial data.

Sound familiar? Or maybe it makes you a little nervous?

Look, you’ve locked down your GP user permissions. Your warehouse staff can’t access payroll. Nobody can cut unauthorized checks. Your Dynamics GP security is perfectly configured. You’re protected, right?

Not quite.

Here’s the reality most GP administrators don’t want to hear: your carefully configured application security is only protecting one piece of a much larger puzzle. SQL Server, reporting tools, integrations, and cloud services create vulnerabilities that can expose your financial data even when GP’s internal security is flawless.

This isn’t about GP security being weak. It’s about understanding that GP doesn’t operate in isolation. The systems surrounding it can quietly undermine everything you’ve set up inside the application.

SQL Server: The Foundation Everyone Forgets

Dynamics GP sits on top of SQL Server, and that database layer has its own security rules that don’t always align with what you’ve configured in GP itself.

Password Requirements Can Be Bypassed

Your company probably has strict password policies. Complexity requirements, expiration rules, minimum lengths. Here’s what catches people off guard: anyone with the right SQL Server permissions can disable those requirements for individual GP users.

That means someone could end up with “password123” without IT ever noticing.

Pull SQL-level password audits monthly. Make sure everyone follows your domain security standards, not just most people.

Two Accounts Control Everything

The sa and DYNSA accounts have complete control over GP’s data. If someone gains access to either account, they effectively own your entire financial system.

Lock these accounts down with strong passwords, limited access, and close monitoring. It’s that simple and critical.

Learn more about SQL Server authentication best practices from Microsoft.

SSRS Reports: The Forgotten Access Point

SQL Server Reporting Services powers many GP reports, and access is controlled through reporting roles, not through GP’s security system.

The problem? During initial setup, administrators often grant broad “access to all reports” permissions to make configuration easier. Those temporary permissions never get removed.

Suddenly, your accounts payable clerk can run payroll reports because nobody went back to tighten things up.

Here’s the fix: Pull SSRS permission reports monthly and kill any access that doesn’t match actual job duties. Report access should match your GP security model. Period.

See more Dynamics GP security tips on our blog

Integrations: Where Convenience Meets Risk

GP connects to other systems through Web Services, eConnect, or direct SQL queries. These integrations need credentials to function. That’s where things get messy.

Stop Using Employee Accounts for Integrations

Some organizations use regular employee login credentials for integration accounts because it’s easy. The integration runs under John’s account, pulls data from GP, and everything works fine. Until John leaves the company or changes his password.

Then integrations break, orders stop processing, and everyone scrambles to figure out what happened.

More importantly, that integration inherited all of John’s permissions, including access to data it shouldn’t touch.

Create dedicated service accounts. They won’t change when staff turns over, they can use long complex passwords that never expire, and you can lock them down to exactly the permissions the integration needs. Nothing more.

Track Your SQL Logins

Some integrations and reporting tools use SQL logins instead of Windows accounts. SQL logins don’t appear in Active Directory, aren’t tied to specific employees, and become forgotten entry points into your data.

Use Windows accounts for integrations whenever possible. They’re visible, auditable, and easier to manage when someone leaves or changes roles.

Read Microsoft’s guidance on securing SQL Server

The Systems Around GP Matter Too

Several systems that aren’t technically part of GP still interact with GP data or GP users—and weaknesses in these areas can expose your financial information.

 Microsoft 365: The Front Door

Your Microsoft 365 tenant often connects to multiple GP-related systems. Every user should have multi-factor authentication enabled, and service accounts supporting backend processes should have conditional access policies restricting logins by location or network.

Block access from countries where you have no staff. Restrict administrative access to your office network. These simple policies prevent most unauthorized access attempts.

Administrator roles deserve special attention. Smaller organizations sometimes make multiple users Global Administrators for convenience, but Microsoft recommends no more than six Global Admins—and many organizations can operate with fewer. Review these roles regularly to ensure only the right people have high-level access.

Backup Systems: Attackers’ New Target

Backups are your safety net during disasters. They’ve also become a prime target for attackers.

Ransomware operators increasingly focus on deleting or encrypting backups before launching their main attack. Why? It ensures you can’t recover without paying.

That distribution company from the beginning? Their attackers didn’t just encrypt their production systems. They spent two weeks quietly mapping the network, identifying backup locations, and systematically deleting every backup copy before launching the ransomware.

When the attack hit, there was nothing to restore from.

Isolate your backup systems. Implement strong authentication. Monitor access religiously. If someone can access your backups, they can hold your business hostage even if your Dynamics GP security is perfect.

Password Vaults Centralize Risk

Password managers like LastPass, KeePass, or Devolutions Password Manager centralize sensitive credentials. That makes them incredibly valuable targets.

Use non-cloud storage when possible. Restrict access to only necessary users. Some organizations hide the network location of vault files or use multiple vaults to separate highly sensitive credentials from everyday ones.

Your password vault holds the keys to your kingdom. Treat it that way.

Stop Playing Whack-a-Mole with Security

Most organizations approach Dynamics GP security reactively. Someone discovers a permission issue, they fix that specific problem, then move on until the next issue surfaces.

That’s playing whack-a-mole with your financial data.

The better approach? Understand that GP security extends far beyond the application itself. SQL Server settings, integration accounts, Microsoft 365 configuration, backup protections, and password management practices all determine whether your payroll, AP, AR, and GL data stays protected.

Your GP security is only as strong as the weakest link in this chain. In most organizations, that weak link exists somewhere outside GP itself. Just like that forgotten SQL login that cost one company $180,000 and weeks of operational chaos.

Planning your move from GP? Modern cloud platforms like Business Central and Acumatica include built-in security features that eliminate many of these infrastructure headaches.

Ready to Strengthen Your Entire GP Environment?

At CAL Business Solutions, we’ve been implementing and securing Dynamics GP systems for over 40 years. We understand both the application-level security and the surrounding infrastructure that can undermine your efforts.

Whether you need help auditing your current security configuration, implementing better integration practices, or planning your eventual migration to modern cloud platforms like Business Central or Acumatica, our team can help you protect your financial data across your entire technology stack.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help strengthen your GP security, both inside the application and across the systems that surround it.

By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC / GP Partner, www.calszone.com

The post Dynamics GP Security: Blind Spots Hiding in Your System appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Here’s to a 2026 where your dashboards are green, your integrations are seamless, and your only manual processes are the ones you actually want to keep. Reach out and we can show you some new automations.

Meet Acumatica 2025 R2, A Modern UI That Really Works

Last month, Stacey did a webinar showing the new power-packed features of Acumatica 2025 R2. The highlight of the show was the new, modern user interface (UI) that transforms dashboard customization from a 20-minute headache into a 2-minute drag-and-drop breeze while adding game-changing improvements to generic inquiries, project dashboards, and payment processing.

Read More Here

BC Copilot – Smarter Autofill

Discover how Business Central’s new Copilot autofill feature can cut vendor setup time from 15 minutes to just 2 by automatically pulling contact details, addresses, and registration information directly from the web, saving your team hours every week.

Read More

Industry Focus: Why Mobility and Accessibility Businesses Need a Modern ERP

If your company is juggling scattered customer data, disconnected inventory systems, and chaotic scheduling, you’re probably losing over $52,000 annually in wasted labor. Discover how a modern cloud ERP consolidates everything into one system and delivers positive ROI within the first year.

Learn More

PowerBI Reports that Finally Make Sense

Stop spending 30 minutes manually verifying PowerBI reports. Business Central’s new drill back feature lets you click any number and instantly see every transaction behind it, while dynamic dimensions finally replace cryptic codes with labels people actually understand.

Learn More

Secret RansomWare Attack Areas in GP

Your Dynamics GP security might be perfectly configured inside the application, but forgotten SQL logins, unmonitored integration accounts, and backup system vulnerabilities are creating dangerous blind spots that could cost you thousands. Discover the critical security gaps hiding outside GP that attackers are exploiting right now!

Read More Here

2025 Year-End Closing

Many businesses are still working on closing out 2025 – we’ve got your back. Our GP support team is standing by to help you with anything year-end related like updates and payroll.

Contact our expert support team at support@calszone.com or visit our free resource page for closing procedures, links to updates, and more at
CAL’s Dynamics GP Year End Closing Resources

Using SafePay to Submit Files to Your Bank

Stop wasting time manually creating positive pay files in Excel—Dynamics GP’s SafePay automates the entire process, protecting your business from check fraud while generating perfectly formatted bank files with zero manual entry required.

Read More Here

Master Your Daily Productivity in 2026

Feeling overwhelmed by endless to-do lists? The 1-3-5 rule offers a simple yet powerful approach to daily task management: complete one major task, three medium tasks, and five small tasks each day. This strategic framework prevents overload while ensuring you make meaningful progress on what matters most. By categorizing and prioritizing your workload, you’ll start each day with clarity and end it with a sense of real accomplishment. Read All About the 1-3-5 Rule Here

The post The CAL Connection Newsletter – January 2026 appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.

Updated January 8, 2026

When’s the last time you got genuinely excited about an ERP software update? If you’re like most Acumatica users, you’ve been hearing about the “modern UI” for years. Well, it’s finally here, and it’s not just cosmetic surgery.  Acumatica 2025 R2 brings real improvements that actually make your team’s daily work easier.

We got to show off all the cool new features in our recent webinar, but what really stood out wasn’t flashy AI buzzwords; it was Acumatica fixing the annoying friction points that slow you or your team down every day.  That’s what we are focusing on in this blog post.  We will have more to come, but if you want to see everything right away, you can watch the recording here.

The Modern UI: From Elementary School Art to Sophisticated Dashboard

Remember those old dashboards with primary colors everywhere? We’re finally moving past that. The new modern UI brings a streamlined, professional look but more importantly, it fixes the nightmare of moving widgets around.

If you’ve ever tried to reorder dashboard widgets in the old UI, you know the pain. It was time-consuming and tedious, especially trying to insert a widget into the middle of a section.

What’s Actually Better:

• Clean, professional widget design
• Drag-and-drop that actually works
• One-click conversion for existing dashboards
• All your data still drills down and remains actionable

From a usability standpoint, this gets an A+.

Generic Inquiries Get a Major Upgrade

Generic inquiries are the workhorses of Acumatica. Everyone uses them for payables, receivables, and inventory. So improvements here touch everybody.

The New Column Management: The old paper icon is replaced with a gear icon that opens an intuitive column selector. Search for columns, check or uncheck them, and reorder them with drag-and-drop. Small improvement, huge impact when you do this dozens of times daily.

Filters That Make Sense: Those tabs marching across your screen are gone. Now you get a clean dropdown menu where you can select saved filters, reorder them, and favorite your most-used ones. In the old UI, you had zero control over filter order. Now your most-used filters can sit at the top where they belong.

Creating filters is simpler: apply your filters, click the funnel, hit “save,” and you’re done.

Document Consolidation: When Your Portal Has Requirements

Distribution and manufacturing companies will appreciate this: consolidate multiple documents into a single email or combined PDF.

Many larger companies use portal systems with document recognition. These systems need documents delivered in a specific way, one email with multiple attachments or a single combined PDF. Before 2025 R2, you didn’t have this flexibility.

Now you can send documents as separate emails, in one email with multiple attachments, or combine everything into a single PDF. For businesses with automated AP processing or EDI requirements, this isn’t just convenient; it’s essential.

Project Status Dashboard: One View That Makes Sense

If you’re using Acumatica for construction or project management, important data gets buried across different tabs and side panels. The new Project Status Dashboard brings critical information together in one place.

What You Get:

• Key metrics: gross profit, margins, percentage complete
• Budget versus actual comparisons
• Outstanding approvals and unpaid invoices
• Organized navigation to drill into details

Instead of hunting through tabs, project managers get everything that matters in one view. For anyone managing multiple projects, this is a genuine productivity boost.

Acumatica Payments Gets More Flexible

For companies using Acumatica Payments, there are four significant improvements:

1. Payment Links Expand Beyond Invoices – Payment links now work on debit memos and finance charges, not just invoices. Customers can pay any of these document types using the embedded payment link.
2. EFT/ACH Auto-Settlement – Auto-settlement now handles EFT/ACH payments, not just credit cards. The system automatically pulls in settled transactions and matches them to payments in Acumatica.
3. Better Rejection Handling – EFT/ACH transactions can get rejected a day or two later when funds aren’t available. The new version includes a “rejected amount” column to identify these situations, plus a new action to reject and void the transaction in Acumatica.
4. PDF Details in Payment Links – Customers now see a PDF copy of the actual invoice with line-item details, not just a lump sum. Enable this in your processing center settings, and fewer customer questions mean fewer interruptions for your AR team.

The Bottom Line

This release, Acumatica 2025 R2, focuses on removing friction from daily operations rather than adding complexity. The modern UI looks better, but more importantly, it works better. Dashboard customization that used to take 20 minutes now takes 2. Project managers see everything they need without clicking through five screens.

These aren’t flashy features, but they’re the ones that add up to real time savings. When your accounting team saves 15 minutes a day, when project managers review status in half the time, when AR fields fewer customer questions, that’s genuine ROI.

Ready to Upgrade?

If these improvements sound appealing, it’s time to talk about upgrading to 2025 R2. Here at CAL, we help organizations upgrade while preserving customizations and minimizing disruption.

Want to see these features in action? Watch the full webinar recording where we demonstrate everything covered in this post.

Contact us today to learn more about upgrading to Acumatica 2025 R2.

The post Acumatica 2025 R2: Finally, A Modern UI That Works appeared first on CAL Business Solutions-Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC, Dynamics GP & SalesPad Partner.