Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central brings together a host of features through a powerful ERP interface, adding more operational value to your SME.
If you’re looking to bypass manual and repetitive tasks and improve your operational efficiency, you’ll need to maximise the power of Business Central’s automation functionalities.
In this guide, we’re outlining the tasks you can automate in Business Central.
Why Automate Business Processes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Here are four reasons why automating business processes in Business Central is a good idea.
Save on Time and Resources
Automating your repetitive tasks and manual process flows can save valuable business time and resources, making your operations more efficient and effective. Your employees can use this saved time to focus on other important strategic tasks.
Improve Operational Reliability
Automation features in Microsoft Business Central can help you detect issues early and provide quick feedback.
Flexibility in Workflow Design
With features that support automation, you have the flexibility to design and manage workflows according to your needs.
Scalable and Accurate
Automation is something you’ll need to rely on as your business grows and expands. The automation-friendly functionalities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central expand to accommodate your increased workloads, without making any significant changes or upgrades to your IT infrastructure.
Using Power Automate and Copilot in Business Central
Now you know the key benefits, let’s look at the capabilities of Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft 365 Dynamics Business Central.
Power Automate
Power Automate in Business Central is a key enabler for automating your business processes by allowing you to create automated workflows between applications and services with minimal coding knowledge.
This is a popular Business Central product that Brookland Solutions can integrate, comprising hundreds of prebuilt connectors and process flow templates that can automate various business operations.
The key features of Power Automate include:
Pre-built Flows and Templates
Microsoft 365 Power Automate in Business Central has built-in templates that can be customised according to your needs. Whether you’re looking to send notifications or manage approvals, Brookland Solutions can help you implement automation solutions.
End-to-End Business Process Flows
Your users can create end-to-end business process flows with Power Automate. Define the sequence of business operations as well as set conditions for progress.
Brookland Solutions can help you make the most of this feature, simplifying any complex business process that involves multiple systems and stakeholders.
Data Transformation Functions
Your users can use the built-in expressions, functions, and actions in the Power Automate platform to extract and consolidate data.
These features go beyond allowing you to format and filter data. You can manipulate, transform, and enrich volumes of data flowing through automated workflows.
Approval Management Workflows
Create and manage automated approval processes with Power Automate for various business-related tasks, such as requests, documents, and more. We can help you customise your approval processes with delegation rules, escalation paths, and parallel or sequential approvals.
Microsoft Copilot
Copilot is an in-built AI feature in Dynamics 365 Business Central that offers advanced capabilities. It assists users in automating a variety of tasks, from generating sales reports to predicting future sales trends.
Key Features of Microsoft Copilot include:
Chat with CoPilot
Users can chat and interact with Copilot like they’re having a normal conversation. This is powered by AI and natural language, helping you retrieve business information instantly.
Bank Reconciliation Assist
Bank reconciliation is an automated solution that makes it quicker to match transactions without the need for manual reconciliation. It cuts the time for this task by up to 80% and improves the accuracy of your financial transactions.
Late Payment Predictions
This feature uses predictive analytics to help you identify and prevent cash flow risks.
Along with these capabilities, Brookland Solutions can help you integrate various Business Central automation APIs to fast-track your business processes.
Use Business Central Automation for These 5 Tasks
Instead of engaging your team in manual, repetitive tasks that waste time and resources, consider using Business Central’s automation APIs and features. Using automation for your routine operational processes can help improve your business output and deliver the desired results.
Here are the top use cases where Business Central’s automation features eliminate manual effort:
1. Invoice Processing
By integrating the Power Automate platform, you can automate purchase requests, orders, or payment approval processes. These approval flows can be set into motion by predefining rules, such as order value thresholds, and also allow approval directly from email or Microsoft Teams.
2. Payment Matching
You can also reduce the time and effort spent on matching vendor invoices to purchase orders. E-documents have been enhanced by Microsoft Copilot and can raise errors, map lines, and even create lines when needed. This valuable feature allows you to save hours in recombining data.
3. Schedule Reporting and Notifications
With the Job Queue entries feature, you can automatically generate and distribute daily reports of customer activity, low stock alerts, and financial summaries. This helps you stay on top of important stats at all times.
4. Sales Order Capturing
The new Sales Order Agent (powered by Copilot) introduced from April 2025 can automatically scan inbound customer emails for item requests and quotes, as well as convert approvals into sales orders, and email confirmations with minimal user intervention.
5. Instant Flows for Recurring Tasks
You can manually trigger follow-up emails on outstanding sales quotes or block overdue customers directly from the BC interface with a single click.
Choosing the Right Tasks to Automate
When you’re choosing the tasks you want BC to automate for your business, consider selecting:
- High-frequency and volume activities, like order processing
- Tasks that are more likely to generate mistakes, like order-invoice matching
- Processes that account for stakeholders’ involvement, including approvals or generating notifications
- Tasks that need multiple systems
Get Started with Automation in Microsoft Business Central with Brookland Solutions
With Brookland Solutions as your Microsoft partner for Business Central, you can expect nothing but the best in implementation, support, training, upgrades, and customisation services.
If you’re finding it difficult to use Microsoft’s ERP to its full potential, we’re here to help. Our team of industry experts can assess the opportunities where your business can make the most of Business Central’s automation APIs, features, and functionalities.
Contact us today for a demo to understand how Business Central’s automation functionalities can be a game-changer for your business.
