Understanding Business Central Modules: Essentials, Premium, and Beyond

The finance management module included in Business Central ERP is very powerful. It offers tools to manage financial operations like budgeting, forecasting, compliance, and cash flow management. This module enables users to handle complete financial processes and regulatory compliance while providing real-time insights into their finances. Users can easily manage complex tasks such as multi-currency transactions, fixed asset management, and the consolidation of financial data across different companies or locations.

Key Features:

• General ledger management
• Accounts receivable and payable management
• Bank account management and bank reconciliations
• Budgeting, financial reporting, and basic cash flow forecasting
• Fixed assets management
• Cash management
• Subscription billing

The sales & marketing module in Business Central gives you tools that help improve your sales process, enhance customer relationships, and run marketing campaigns. From managing customer information and sales orders to dealing with complicated pricing setups, this module allows businesses to make their sales work more efficient and tailor interactions for each customer. Users can generate and handle sales documents with AI tools like Copilot, launch focused sales campaigns, and track chances. These capabilities form the core Business Central CRM and Sales module, tightly integrated with Outlook and Copilot.

Key Features:

• Contact management and tracking of sales opportunities
• Create quotes, orders, and invoices with flexible pricing and discounts.
• Shopify connector to align eCommerce data, handle online orders easily, and better manage inventory - all from one place.

The purchasing and payables module streamlines workflows for procurement and vendor management. It helps businesses maintain accurate purchasing records control spending effectively ensuring timely payment to vendors. This module allows users to administer vendor details; automate the processing of purchase orders; apply discounts on invoices; manage returns; and handle invoicing. Flexible pricing structures along with multi-vendor support empower businesses to negotiate better terms to optimize purchasing costs.

Key Features:

• Vendor management
• Purchase order creation and tracking
• Purchasing invoicing
• Invoice and line discounts
• Receiving goods or services and handling returns

Inventory module gives businesses complete control over inventory levels, tracking of items and costs to ensure that products are available when needed and financial records are accurate. Users can manage items across multiple locations, track the movement of stock, define methods for valuing costs, and gain insights into the performance of their inventory to improve planning. This module works with physical and non-inventory items, integrates with purchasing and sales processes, and comes equipped with analysis tools to help you make strategic decisions. This is the Business Central Inventory & Item Ledger module, supporting FIFO, LIFO, Average, Standard costing and serial/lot tracking.

Key Features:

• Set up item data management for units of measure, costs, prices, and posting groups.
• Use FIFO, LIFO, average cost, specific identification, or standard costing methods for inventory valuation.
• Keep track of serial numbers, lot numbers, expiration dates, and warranty information in order to support recalls and quality assurance
• Manage inventory across multiple locations including warehouses and service vehicles.
• Carry out periodic cycle counts as scheduled to ensure accuracy in your inventory records.
• Create customized reports for analysis of your inventory data or budgeting purposes using Excel.

The supply chain planning module in Business Central helps organizations optimize inventory availability and streamline procurement by automating material planning, forecasting demand, and improving order accuracy. It uses real-time data and intelligent suggestions to generate replenishment plans to keep the right stock levels while reducing excess inventory. With features like order promising and flexible planning methods, teams can manage supply and demand with confidence. The module is powered by the Business Central Planning Worksheet (MRP engine) to generate requisitions and production plans.

Key Features:

• Automated supply planning: Generate optimal replenishment suggestions based on demand, availability, and planning parameters.
• Demand forecasting: Input and manage forecasts by item, variant, or location using daily, monthly, or quarterly views.
• Sales and inventory forecasting: Use AI-powered tools to predict sales trends and prevent stock-outs.

The project management module (previously called jobs) is for businesses that plan and track projects for customers. You can create projects with tasks and budgets, assign resources to those tasks, and monitor project costs and progress. Because it’s integrated with your finances, you can also track project expenses, billing, and profitability in real time.

Key Features:

• Create jobs with tasks, deadlines, and budgets
• Cost and pricing management
• Resource and capacity management
• Monitor project budgets vs. actual costs and analyze profitability

The warehouse management module in Business Central provides the tools to manage inbound, outbound, and internal warehouse activities efficiently. With customizable workflows, flexible bin management, and task automation, this module ensures smooth and accurate warehouse operations across multiple locations. Whether you’re working with simple shelves or advanced pick-and-put-away systems, BC adapts to your operational needs. Business Central offers Basic Warehouse and Advanced WMS modules, configurable based on location complexity.

Key Features:

• Set up warehouse locations and bins
• Manage inventory picks and put-aways
• Warehouse receipts and shipments
• Advanced templates and optimization

What you do determines what you need:

• Distributors? Financials, Supply Chain, and maybe Warehouse Management to start.
• Project-based companies? You’ll want Project Management and maybe Time Sheets right away.
• Manufacturers? Production is key but don’t forget Inventory and Capacity Planning.
• Service companies? Sales, Customer Service, and possibly Service Management will do most of the lifting.

Where in your business does it feel like you are holding things together with duct tape? That’s where to start. If it takes days to invoice or inventory is a guess, fixing that with the right module will give you the quickest ROI and create pull for adoption.

You don’t need every module set-up and configured for you on day one; these can be implemented in waves based on your business, processes, and goals. If your operations allow it, get core finance, supply chain/inventory, and sales up and running smoothly then add in advanced warehousing and service dispatch when your organization is ready. Business Central allows scaling without starting over.

The right Business Central partner will help narrow down exactly what you need, configure it correctly, and set up a plan for growth so that you don’t end up complicating your system too much or wasting money on features that won’t be used. The right partner will configure modules, integrations, and security while providing ongoing Business Central Support services after go-live.