Expense management has been a common area where companies use external tools to capture receipts, submit expenses and manage reimbursements.
Business Central is now bringing this process into the system with the new Expense Management capabilities. And with Expense Agent, AI can also help automate the process.
What is Expense Management?
Expense Management allows employees to record business expenses, create expense reports, submit them for approval and process reimbursements directly in Business Central.
It can be used for expenses such as:
An expense report can contain multiple expense lines and can then go through the approval and posting process.
What is Expense Agent?
Expense Agent is the AI-powered part of the solution.
Instead of manually entering every receipt, an employee can submit a receipt through the Expense Agent web app, email or supported mobile experience.
The agent can extract information such as:
Merchant
Amount
Date
Expense category
The employee can then review and correct the information before submitting it.
How does the process work?
The basic flow is:
Receipt → Expense → Expense Report → Approval → Posting/Reimbursement
For example:
An employee pays €45 for a business dinner.
They upload the receipt to Expense Agent. The agent extracts the receipt details and creates the expense.
The employee reviews it and adds it to an expense report. The report is then submitted for approval.
After approval, the expense can be posted and reimbursed.
What if we don't use Expense Agent?
Expense Management can also be used without the AI agent.
In that case, employees create the expense report directly in Business Central and enter the expense lines manually.
You still get features such as:
Expense reports
Expense categories
Mileage
Per diem
Itemization
Rule validation
Approval
Reimbursement posting
So Expense Agent is the automation layer, while Expense Management provides the underlying expense process.
How do you set it up?
From Business Central, search for:
Expense Agent Setup
Microsoft recommends starting with the assisted setup. Default settings can also be applied and then adjusted according to the company's requirements.
The setup includes areas such as:
Expense users
Expense categories
Expense posting groups
Employee posting groups
Approval settings
Expense rules
Agent and mailbox configuration
One useful feature: Expense Rules
Expense Management can validate expenses against company rules.
For example, a company may have a limit for meals or specific requirements for certain expense categories.
The system can show warnings or prevent submission when an expense violates configured rules.
Where can users work with expenses?
Depending on the setup, employees can work with expenses through:
Business Central
Expense Agent web app
Email
Mobile app
Microsoft Copilot experiences
This is particularly useful for employees who are travelling and don't want to wait until they are back at their desk to enter receipts.
Why is this interesting for BC implementations?
Previously, expense management often meant integrating Business Central with another expense management solution.
With the new functionality, more of the process can be handled inside the Business Central ecosystem:
Receipt → Expense → Approval → Posting → Reimbursement
And with Expense Agent, part of the data entry and receipt processing can be automated using AI.
For BC consultants, this is another area where it is worth understanding the standard functionality before suggesting a third-party solution.
One thing to keep in mind: this functionality is still evolving, and Microsoft currently documents several parts of Expense Management and Expense Agent as preview/production-ready preview functionality.
Business Central is moving expense management from a mostly manual process towards a more integrated and AI-assisted process.
If your customer currently uses a separate expense management solution, this is definitely a feature worth evaluating in the next BC implementation or upgrade.
Reach out to me if you have any questions or suggestions.
Check out other blogs, if you haven’t already.
Kindly suggest what else you want me to blog about. Keep following and supporting!
You can also email me at jyotsnaoberainav@gmail.com
Also, visit my website [JONAV](https://jyotsnanav.wordpress.com/) if you are looking for NAV/D365BC Training and/or Services!
Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment