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6 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Automate with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Think about the last time a purchase order sat waiting for approval, someone had to follow up on an overdue invoice, or your sales team manually entered an order that arrived by email.
These are routine parts of running a business, but the work involved can add up quickly as transaction volumes grow. In Smartsheet’s 2026 Operational Excellence Report, 99% of operations leaders said they spend time on repetitive, low-value tasks every week.
If your organization uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you may already have opportunities to streamline some of these processes within your existing ERP. Business Central offers automation capabilities across finance, purchasing, sales and inventory, with additional opportunities available through the wider Microsoft ecosystem. Understanding what’s possible can help you identify where manual work is slowing your team down and which processes are worth improving first.
What Can You Automate in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers several ways to reduce the manual effort involved in everyday operations. The right approach depends on the process you’re trying to improve, which systems are involved and how much human judgment is needed.
There are three main types of automation we’ll cover in this article:
- Native Business Central functionality: Built-in workflows and planning tools that support processes such as document approvals, payment reminders and inventory replenishment.
- Microsoft Power Automate: Workflows that connect Business Central with applications such as Teams, Outlook and SharePoint, allowing actions in one system to trigger activity in another.
- Copilot and AI agents: Capabilities that can help interpret information, handle certain exceptions and support tasks such as bank reconciliation or processing customer emails.
Some of these capabilities are built into Business Central, while others require additional configuration, services or licensing. Here are six processes worth exploring, including a few newer capabilities you might not have considered.
1. Route Approvals Without Chasing People
How much time does your team spend following up on purchase orders, invoices or other documents waiting for approval?
When approvals happen through email or informal conversations, requests can get buried, employees may be unsure who needs to sign off and transactions can sit waiting longer than necessary. This becomes especially difficult as an organization grows and more people need to be involved in reviewing purchases or financial transactions.
Business Central’s built-in approval workflows help organizations standardize this process. Depending on the workflow and configuration, you can:
- Route purchase or sales documents to designated approvers.
- Apply approval limits based on the employee or transaction.
- Send notifications when an approval is required.
- Trigger subsequent steps once a request is approved.
Approval workflows can also support payment journals or changes to important customer, vendor and item records, depending on configuration.
2. Automate Customer Payment Reminders and Collections
Following up on overdue invoices can create significant administrative work for finance teams, especially for organizations processing hundreds or thousands of payments every month.
Business Central can streamline this process through its reminder functionality. Organizations can establish reminder terms and levels that define how overdue customer balances should be handled. For example, a business might configure an initial reminder shortly after an invoice becomes overdue, followed by additional reminders if payment remains outstanding.
This gives finance teams a more consistent approach to collections while allowing them to focus their attention on accounts that need more personalized follow-up or further investigation.
3. Turn Incoming Vendor Documents into Usable ERP Records
Each time your business receives an invoice, an employee needs to open each document, identify the vendor, enter details, check the information against existing records and prepare the transaction for processing. Multiply that by hundreds of invoices, and the administrative effort adds up quickly.
Business Central supports incoming document processing to lessen the work. Using supported electronic document processes or optical character recognition (OCR) services, you can capture information from incoming vendor documents and use it to create purchase invoices or journal entries.
For example, when a vendor sends an invoice as a PDF, an incoming document process can help extract the relevant information and prepare a record in Business Central. An employee can then review the captured details, resolve any exceptions and continue processing the invoice.
The specific functionality depends on your Business Central configuration and any supporting services or extensions.
4. Trigger Actions Outside Business Central When Something Changes
Not every business process begins and ends inside your ERP. An inventory change might require someone to notify a purchasing manager, while a sales quote approaching its expiry date might need a follow-up email. When employees are responsible for monitoring these events and passing information between applications, important follow-ups can be delayed or missed.
But with Microsoft Power Automate, you can build workflows connecting Business Central with Teams, Outlook, SharePoint and other supported applications. Depending on the available triggers and connectors, you could configure a flow to:
- Notify a purchasing team in Teams when inventory reaches a defined threshold.
- Send an Outlook reminder when a sales quote is approaching its expiry date.
- Trigger a customer notification when an order status changes.
- Initiate a related process when an ERP record is created or updated.
The value comes from connecting the systems employees already use, so information can move between them without someone having to manually coordinate every step.
For more on extending ERP functionality, read our article on how to modernize your ERP using Power Apps.
5. Turn Customer Emails into Sales Quotes and Orders
Imagine a customer sends an email requesting pricing and availability for several products. Someone on your sales team needs to read the request, identify the customer, locate the products in Business Central, check availability and prepare a quote. Once the customer confirms the order, there’s more information to process.
Microsoft’s Sales Order Agent introduces an AI-assisted approach to this workflow. Depending on the available functionality and configuration, the agent can help:
- Identify customers and requested products from incoming emails.
- Prepare sales quotes using information in Business Central.
- Check product availability.
- Convert confirmed quotes into sales orders.
Human review and approval checkpoints remain part of the process, particularly where confirmation, exceptions or judgment are required. You should also confirm the agent’s availability, licensing and supported capabilities in your Business Central environment before planning an implementation.
If your team handles a high volume of customer requests, this could help accelerate order processing while giving employees more time to focus on customer relationships.
6. Identify What Inventory Needs to Be Replenished
As an organization grows, purchasing teams need to balance more than what’s currently sitting on the shelf. Customer demand, incoming supply, lead times and existing commitments all affect what needs to be ordered and when.
Manually comparing these factors across spreadsheets can make it difficult to identify shortages before they become urgent. Business Central’s planning functionality helps organizations evaluate supply and demand using configured planning parameters and available inventory information.
For example, if expected demand exceeds available inventory and incoming supply, Business Central can identify the shortage and recommend a replenishment action. Depending on the planning setup, that might involve creating a purchase order, production order or transfer order to address the need.
Purchasing and operations teams can review these recommendations before taking action, giving them a more consistent way to identify replenishment needs without manually piecing together supply and demand information every time inventory plans need to be updated.
Where Does Copilot Add Value Alongside Traditional Automation?
It’s worth understanding where Copilot and agents fit into your broader ERP automation strategy. Traditional automation remains well suited to predictable, rules-driven processes. But Copilot becomes more relevant when a process involves information that isn’t as straightforward.
Consider bank reconciliation. Business Central already offers automatic matching capabilities to help reconcile bank transactions with ledger entries, but some transactions may remain unmatched because the information doesn’t align neatly.
Copilot can assist with these exceptions by suggesting matches and proposing general ledger accounts for certain unmatched transactions. A finance professional can then review the suggestions and determine how to proceed.
The Sales Order Agent we discussed earlier is another example of AI in action. By interpreting information in customer emails, it can help prepare quotes from requests that don’t follow a predefined format.
In both cases, AI supports a specific part of the process while employees remain responsible for reviewing information and making important decisions.
The takeaway is to consider what the workflow requires before choosing the technology. A straightforward approval or notification may only need a conventional automation, while a process involving unstructured information or exceptions may benefit from AI assistance.
Where to Start with Business Central Automation
With so many automation opportunities available, where should your organization begin? A good starting point is to look at the processes that create the most manual work, delays or opportunities for error.
Look for opportunities involving:
- High volumes of repetitive tasks: Activities employees perform frequently, such as entering invoices or preparing routine communications.
- Manual handoffs: Work that depends on someone sending an email, updating another system or reminding a colleague to take action.
- Duplicate data entry: Information that needs to be entered or transferred between multiple applications.
- Frequent delays or errors: Processes where manual intervention regularly creates bottlenecks or inconsistencies.
From there, you can evaluate which approach fits the process. Some opportunities may already be supported by native Business Central functionality, while others may require Power Automate, an extension or an AI-assisted solution. Starting with a clearly defined business problem makes it easier to choose the right tools and measure whether the automation is delivering the intended improvement.
Get More Value from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
If your team is still spending significant time on manual approvals, data entry or follow-ups, it may be worth taking a closer look at the automation capabilities available in your ERP. You could find opportunities to improve existing processes without replacing your system or introducing another standalone application.
At Convverge, we help organizations implement, configure and optimize Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central around their business requirements. Explore our ERP consulting services to learn how we can help you identify practical automation opportunities and get more value from your ERP.
