Every year, Microsoft releases two major waves of updates to its business management software systems – one in the spring and one in the fall. These updates include new features, bug fixes, and enhancements to existing functionality. The latest release of Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management (previously called Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations) is the 2020 Wave 1 release, which is a collection of updates that will become available to the public between April and September. This set of updates focuses on automation, predictive analysis, and core capabilities. All of the improvements are designed to empower financial and operational managers to continually move their organizations forward. We will outline six key features included in this release that can assist organizations in achieving their business goals.
Dynamics 365 Finance
Add Vendor ID, Customer ID, Vendor Name, and Customer Name to the voucher transactions list page
This feature adds new columns, including Vendor ID, Customer ID, Vendor Name, and Customer Name to the Voucher Transactions list page. With these additional columns, the information you need can be more readily available and accessible.
Automatic vendor payment proposal
There is a new process automation framework that allows accounts payables managers to define automation schedules that outline what vendors will be paid and when. The payment proposal series allows the accounts payables manager to define the criteria for selecting vendor invoices for payment. This automation helps organizations apply their own schedules to create vendor payment proposals more consistently and efficiently than is possible using a manual process. This feature is not yet released and is scheduled for general availability in July 2020.
Apply changes to 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC forms for 2020
The IRS has made changes to 1099 reporting in regards to non-employee compensation which will go into effect for the 2020 tax year. Non-employee compensation will be submitted on the new Form 1099-NEC instead of Form 1099-MISC. Some of the boxes on Form 1099-MISC have been renumbered to reflect the removal of non-employee compensation. This release adds new 1099 fields for the 2020 Form 1099-NEC and updates the 1099 fields for the 2020 Form 1099-MISC. Electronic filing for 2020 will not be impacted by this feature since the IRS has not published the corresponding changes for electronic filing for the 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC forms. With these updates, organizations can rest assured that they have enough time to update their 2020 transactions before the end of the year and remain in compliance with the 2020 IRS requirements.
Notify Requester about All Changes for an Approval Request
As an approval request works its way up the approval chain, this feature will notify the original requester about changes to their approval request. When the status of an approval request changes, the original requester will be notified without the need for them to navigate to their approval request entries. This helps ensure that approval requests can be processed as fast as possible.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Business events uptake for asset management
With this update, users can interact with asset management business documents externally by leveraging Microsoft Power Automate (previously known as Flow) and logic apps. The functionality provides triggers for maintenance requests and work order state changes to the business events framework. The following business events are now supported:

Maintenance request is created
Asset property is changed
Maintenance work order is created for maintenance request
Maintenance work order is reported or completed
Maintenance work order is scheduled

Field Service integration with asset management
This functionality enables asset maintenance lifecycle process flows between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Supply Chain Management using the Common Data Service (CDS). Organizations can leverage the combined capabilities of asset management and Dynamics 365 Field Service and can manage both internal and external assets.
IoT intelligence core insights
The updates made to Supply Chain Management include greater use of IoT (Internet of Things) intelligence. IoT intelligence is used in the following core insights and action scenarios:

Delayed orders: Provides notification services and actions for managing delayed production orders. Users can define order-delay metrics for combinations of resources and products, and be notified when exceptions to these thresholds occur. This enables users to take relevant business actions for delayed orders, including the ability to view impacts or create a maintenance request.
Equipment down: Provides notification services and actions for managing equipment-down scenarios. Users can define metrics for machine-down thresholds and be notified when an exception to these thresholds occurs. This enables users to take relevant business actions for delayed orders, including the ability to view impacts or create a maintenance work order.
Quality anomaly: Provides notification services and actions for managing quality anomalies. Users can define quality attributes for products and be notified when exceptions to these attributes occur.

The Spring Release of Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management includes a wide variety of new features and enhancements centered on automation, intelligence, and core functionality expansion. While we have discussed six key features included in this release, there are many more, the full list of which is accessible here for Dynamics 365 Finance and here for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
Existing Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management clients can opt to do an early deployment of these features, pause the update, or accept the automatically rolled out update. If you have questions about these updates or moving to Dynamics 365, contact a Rand Group representative today. We are a certified Gold Microsoft partner with over 20 years of experience implementing and supporting ERP systems for our clients. We can help you establish your requirements and talk through how you can benefit from robust cloud ERP systems such as Finance and Supply Chain Management.

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