Subscription Billing - Item Types

When signing up for a subscription, there are often different methodologies of how to pay for that subscription. Similarly, companies require different methodologies for billing. For example, some companies bill for their services at a flat rate per period. Others may operate on a usage basis, such as $x.xx per hour used. Lastly, some billing occurs as a fixed amount that gets billed when the goods/services are fully consumed.

The Subscription billing module in Dynamics 365 for Finance offers the flexibility to bill using these different methodologies. There are different Item Types and Pricing methodologies that can be used, and I am going to start breaking them down in this blog post for you today! This blog post will cover the different Item types available, and I will break down the Pricing methods in a separate blog post. 

Subscription Billing - New Feature!

Subscription billing is a new feature that was introduced in 10.0.25. As more and more companies go to a subscription-based billing model, this feature has proven to be extremely relevant and beneficial! 

This is the first in a series of blogs I will be writing about this new functionality and what you can do to enable, configure, and use Subscription billing in Dynamics 365 Finance. Also, if you are attending Dynamic Communities' North American Summit October 10th-13th, 2022, I will be presenting on this topic there as well. 

Common Data Import Errors

If you have ever imported data using Data management in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and received an error before any records even went in, I am sure you were frustrated. 

Here are a few tips and tricks to consider before ever importing your data:

• Ensure the data formatting in Excel is consistent
• Custom or Special data formats in Excel will not import properly, use standard formatting always
• Data that was derived from formulas will likely generate an error message. Copy that data and paste it back in as values instead of a formula. 
• Check spellings - especially on data that is validated by the system (Address/city names, Dropdown values, etc)

Once your data is clean, you can still get errors. Here are some common errors that you can run into before any records ever hit the staging table. 

OCR in Expense Management

I recently got to implement OCR in Expense management in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Turns out, there is a lot of interest in this topic, so I put together a little blog about it. 

What is OCR? 

Optical Character Recognition. This is used to process documentation such as receipts and invoices by using Azure Cognitive Services to "read" the documentation and import the data into the system, cutting down on manual system entry.

Mobile Workspaces are Being Deprecated

This has been a rumor for a while now, but the announcement has been made that the concept of the Mobile Workspace in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations is being deprecated. 

Microsoft released this information on June 3, 2022, here: Removed or Deprecated Platform Features

Here is a screenshot of the relevant information for those of you who do not want to click the link.

NSF Payments - The What, Why, and How of NSF in D365 Finance

NSF, or Non-sufficient funds, are payments that have been received that are rejected by the bank as the account tied to the payment does not have sufficient funds to be paid out. These are often referred to as "bounced checks." This blog will detail how to set up and utilize the NSF functionality in Dynamics 365 for Finance to reverse the payment and mark it as NSF.

Human Resources Data Management - Workers Without Employment

When importing Workers into Dynamics 365 Human Resources (now in D365FO), you populate the Worker data entity with as much information as possible. Then, start the import using Data management and after the import is complete, you check Human resources > Workers > Workers, and there are no records to be found. The import says it was successful, so where did the worker records go?

If you look around, you will find them in the Workers without employment filtered view (Human resources > Workers > Workers without employment.) 

Great, the records made it into the system, but I don't want to touch each record and add employment dates. How do we use the Data management functionality to add "employment" to these worker records?