Dynamics 365 Business Central for oil and gas

Manage vendor invoices, customer billing, payments, collections, and receivables within Business Central. Accounts payable tools help finance teams process invoices, manage vendor payments, and use approval workflows. Accounts receivable connects invoicing, payment tracking, customer balances, and collections. Keeping these processes in the ERP gives finance teams a clearer view of cash coming into and going out of the business.

Manage bank accounts, payments, cash flow forecasts, and bank reconciliations from Business Central. Finance teams can use data from payables, receivables, purchases, sales, projects, and service orders when forecasting cash flow. Copilot can also help reconcile bank accounts by identifying additional transaction matches and suggesting general ledger accounts for unmatched activity. This can reduce manual reconciliation work while helping teams maintain accurate cash records.

Track the financial lifecycle of machinery, vehicles, equipment, buildings, and other capital assets. Business Central supports acquisitions, depreciation, write-downs, appreciation, disposal, insurance, and maintenance costs. Companies can also allocate fixed asset transactions to projects or departments. This gives finance teams a structured way to account for valuable equipment and other assets throughout their lifecycle.

Create budgets, financial statements, management reports, and operational analysis using Business Central data. Teams can compare general ledger activity with budgets and analyze financial information using built-in reporting, Excel, or Power BI. Business Central also supports analysis directly within lists, allowing users to group, filter, pivot, and summarize data. This gives oil and gas leaders more timely insight without relying on manually combined spreadsheets.

Build project plans with tasks, budgets, resources, expected costs, and project-specific pricing. Projects can be structured into multiple tasks and task groups based on how work will be performed. Teams can plan resources and costs before work begins and monitor activity against that plan. This creates a stronger financial foundation for managing project-based work.

Calculate and post work in process for projects that are still underway. Business Central can estimate the financial value of ongoing project activity and post that value to the general ledger. This helps finance teams account for work that spans reporting periods. It also keeps project activity connected with financial reporting during longer projects.

Invoice customers based on project activity and the billing structure established for the work. Business Central supports full or partial project invoicing, scheduled billing, and billing for individual project planning lines. Multiple planning lines can also be combined into a single sales invoice. This helps connect project execution, customer billing, and financial records in one system.

Track employee, equipment, and other resources assigned to projects. Business Central supports resource planning, capacity management, time sheets, and manager approvals. Resources can be organized into groups or tracked individually, with usage and costs connected to project activity. This helps companies understand how labor and other resources contribute to project costs and profitability.

Maintain vendor information, payment terms, purchasing details, lead times, prices, and discounts in one system. Companies can also manage alternative vendors for the same item and maintain different purchasing agreements. This gives purchasing teams better information when sourcing materials or services. Finance and procurement can work from the same vendor records instead of maintaining separate information.

Route purchases and other transactions through defined approval workflows. Business Central includes workflow templates for purchase orders, quotes, invoices, vendor changes, price changes, and other common events. Additional approval scenarios can be created with Power Automate when standard workflows do not cover the requirement. This can help oil and gas companies strengthen purchasing controls while reducing manual approval tracking.

Connect procurement directly with project activity so purchased materials and services can become part of project costing. Business Central can create purchase orders directly from a project when materials or outside services are required. The related costs can then flow into project records and financial reporting. This helps teams see the financial impact of purchasing decisions at the project level.

Connect purchase orders, receipts, vendor invoices, approvals, and financial posting within the accounts payable process. Business Central supports electronic documents and tools for reviewing incoming invoices before they are processed. Copilot can help match incoming vendor invoices with purchase orders when the information does not align exactly. This can reduce invoice research and manual data entry while keeping finance in control of final processing.

Maintain inventory costs and valuation while keeping inventory transactions connected with the general ledger. Business Central supports FIFO, LIFO, average, specific, and standard costing methods. It can also account for expected costs when goods have been received or shipped but not yet invoiced. This gives finance teams a more consistent view of inventory value and its effect on financial results.

Track inventory using serial, lot, and package numbers when greater traceability is required. Business Central can also maintain expiration and warranty details for tracked items. Users can trace the origin or destination of specific serial or lot numbers. This helps companies maintain clearer records for equipment, components, parts, and other controlled materials.

Plan material requirements using current inventory, expected demand, incoming supply, and replenishment rules. Business Central can generate replenishment suggestions for purchases, transfers, assembly, or production based on demand and availability. Its Sales and Inventory Forecast extension can also use Azure AI to forecast potential sales and expected stockouts. These tools help teams maintain needed materials while reducing unnecessary inventory.

Track materials as they move between warehouses, yards, branches, and other inventory locations. Business Central records inventory in transit as well as inventory held at each location. This provides a clearer record of where materials are throughout the transfer process. For businesses with distributed operations, that visibility can help teams move inventory where it is needed while maintaining accurate financial records.

Consolidate financial results across companies within the same Business Central tenant or across separate environments. Business Central supports multiple currencies, dimensions, and budgets during consolidation. Data from other business management applications can also be brought into the consolidation company. This gives finance teams a more structured process for producing consolidated financial results.

Manage transactions between related companies through Business Central’s intercompany functionality. Sales documents, purchase documents, and journal transactions can flow between partner companies using mapped charts of accounts and dimensions. Inbox and Outbox functionality helps automate the exchange of intercompany documents. This can reduce duplicate entry and make intercompany activity easier to reconcile.

Give finance leaders a broader view of financial activity across multiple Business Central companies and environments. The Company Hub provides a landing page for users who work across companies, including financial information and assigned tasks. Combined with consolidation and reporting tools, this makes it easier to move between entity-level and organization-wide information. Leadership can gain visibility without manually gathering reports from each company.

Synchronize common master data across companies that operate within the same Business Central environment. Customers, vendors, items, employees, and other non-transactional information can flow from a source company to subsidiary companies. Updates to connected records can then be synchronized through scheduled job queue entries. This reduces duplicate setup and helps maintain more consistent data across related entities.

Use Business Central workflows, Power Automate, and background processing to automate repetitive business processes. Flows can respond to events such as creating or changing a record, run on a schedule, or connect Business Central with other applications. Job queues can also run recurring reports, integrations, data updates, and processing in the background. This reduces routine administrative work and helps keep processes moving consistently.

Manage service orders, service items, contracts, warranties, parts, labor, and service pricing with Business Central Premium. Teams can assign personnel, track service history, manage customer agreements, and record parts and labor used during service. Service activity remains connected with inventory and financial processes in Business Central. This can support oil and gas companies with equipment service and after-sales requirements.

Connect Business Central with Dynamics 365 Field Service when operations require more advanced field service capabilities. D365 Field Service can manage work orders, field resources, service tasks, and consumption details, while completed activity can flow back to Business Central for financial processing and invoicing. This helps connect field execution with inventory, procurement, and finance while reducing duplicate data entry. We can cover the oilfield-specific use cases for this integration in greater detail later on the page.

Connect Business Central with Microsoft 365, Power Platform, other Dynamics 365 applications, and third-party systems. Business Central provides built-in APIs and web services for exchanging data with external applications, while Dataverse can connect data across Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. This allows oil and gas companies to build a connected technology environment around the ERP rather than forcing every process into one application. Rand Group can also develop custom integrations when standard connectors do not meet the requirement.