Microsoft: Finance Insights Features for Dynamics 365 Finance

Dynamics 365 Finance’s finance insights features have reached general availability. The new tools encompass intelligent budget proposals, cash flow forecasting, and customer payment insights.

According to Dynamics 365 GM Georg Glantschnig, using AI tools, the new features allow D365 Finance customers to “improve the efficiency and quality of financial processes by leveraging intelligent automation.

In 2020 it looked as though Microsoft was planning to brand these features as a product in the D365 suite called Finance Insights, however they have now classified them as a set of capabilities within Dynamics 365 Finance.

These capabilities will make error-prone and routine financial management tasks more focused, accurate, and efficient.

Customer payment insights can be used to help predict when clients will pay invoices. By analysing historical customer data it can then “use these insights to set up a more proactive collections process.” To correctly train the model it needs at least a year’s worth of customer invoices, according to Microsoft’s documentation. Contrary to Glantschnig’s announcement, the documentation also warns in various areas that many of the features are still in preview mode.

Forecast accuracy is improved by cash flow forecasting which can automate integration of data from external systems and reports. Glantschnig explained that it uses machine learning to generate better forecasts.

According to Microsoft, intelligent budget proposals give “a streamlined mechanism to prepare multiple years of history, analyse the data, and predict what the budge or forecast should look like based on what has happened over time.”

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