Business Central

AI Finance Team connects to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: it pairs your companies with the ones in Business Central, copies their master data, and can create your partners there as vendor cards.

Before anything else, we have to switch Business Central on for the workspace. It is off by default, and while it is off the menu is not there at all. Ask us, and we will turn it on.

What Is Read, and What Is Written

AI Finance Team reads the companies in your Business Central, and for each paired company its accounts, VAT and posting groups, units of measure, currencies, bank accounts, payment methods and terms, dimensions and dimension values, vendors and customers. No balances are read. Documents and ledger entries are read only to answer a specific question: what became of an invoice or a journal line we created (still a draft, posted, or gone); whether the invoice a bank payment pays is posted and still open in Business Central; and, in the troubleshooting checks, which customers and outgoing invoices exist and which fields Business Central exposes.

AI Finance Team writes three kinds of record, all behind a second switch that only we can turn on:

  • a vendor card, created from one of your partners;
  • a purchase invoice, created from one of your expense invoices;
  • a general journal line, created from one of your bank lines.

Even then:

  • Nothing is ever posted. The purchase invoice is created as a draft, the bank line as an unposted journal line, and both are left there. Posting is available over the interface and we deliberately do not use it: a document posted from wrong data has to be reversed, which marks the ledger for good, while a draft is deleted in one click. Posting stays the bookkeeper's act, inside Business Central.
  • An existing record is never rewritten. A vendor card with the same tax number is linked to your partner instead, and an existing document is never edited. Sending an invoice again replaces a draft we created by deleting it, never a posted invoice (see Sending an invoice again).
  • We only ever delete what we created. Four controls on the send screen delete: the probe removes the throwaway draft it just made, the bank journal probe removes its made-up lines and the AIFTSZONDA batch it created for them, the numbering trial removes its made-up AIFT-TESZT draft (and one an earlier trial left behind), and the cleanup removes drafts AI Finance Team recorded sending but never managed to link. Sending an invoice again, from its own page, deletes the draft it replaces. Apart from these, the PDF upload deletes an empty attachment row it has just made itself (see The PDF), and the bank send deletes a journal line it has just written when Business Central recorded it differently from what we sent (see Sending Bank Lines). Nothing else is ever deleted, and nothing Business Central does not call a draft.

Setting Up the Connection

Setting it up needs two separate approvals, usually given by two different people. Granting one does not grant the other. That is the single thing most worth understanding before you start.

  1. Microsoft approval. Someone with Global Administrator rights in your Microsoft 365 approves AI Finance Team once. This is usually your IT administrator or IT provider. It takes about a minute, on a Microsoft page.
  2. Business Central registration. Someone with SUPER rights inside Business Central adds our application there and gives it a permission set. This is often the accountant rather than the IT administrator.
  1. 1
    You create the approval linkWaiting for Microsoft approval

    Copy it before you leave the page, and send it to whoever administers the Microsoft 365.

  2. 2
    A Microsoft Global Administrator approvesWaiting for Business Central registration

    One minute, on a Microsoft page. Our sign-in works from here on, but Business Central still refuses.

  3. 3
    Someone with SUPER rights registers the application in Business CentralConnected

    By hand, per environment, with D365 BUS FULL ACCESS and the Company field left empty.

At any point something can fail. The page shows the code, and says when the fault is ours.Error

The two approvals, and the state the connection sits in between them.

The second one cannot be automated: Business Central has no interface for it, so a person does it by hand. Approval alone leaves the connection refusing every request, which is why AI Finance Team tells the two states apart.

Open Settings → Business Central Connection and click Set up the connection.

Choose Create the approval link. You get a link and a ready-written message to send to whoever administers your Microsoft 365.

  • Copy the link now. It is stored hashed, so it cannot be shown again once you leave the page, and creating a new one cancels the old one. Each link lasts 7 days.
  • If you are the Global Administrator yourself, use I am the Microsoft admin, approve now. That also mints a new link and cancels the current one.
  • Microsoft will warn that the publisher is not verified. That is normal here and does not stop an administrator approving.
  • The page the administrator sees does not name your company, because anyone holding the link can open it.

The permission granted is read and write on the Business Central API. It does not allow creating or deleting environments.

Step 2: register the application in Business Central

The steps are on the page from the start, marked After step 1 until Microsoft approval lands. Copy these steps puts the Application ID and all of them on your clipboard in one block, ready to send on.

  1. In Business Central, press Alt+Q and search for Microsoft Entra Applications.
  2. Choose New and paste in the Application ID.
  3. Set the description to AI Finance Team integration.
  4. Set State to Enabled.
  5. Add the permission set D365 BUS FULL ACCESS.
  6. Leave the Company field on that line empty.

Three things go wrong here more often than anything else:

  • Naming a company on that line silently limits AI Finance Team to that one company. Everything appears to work and the other companies never show up. Leave it empty.
  • Using D365 AUTOMATION. The connection succeeds and returns nothing useful, because that permission set covers administrative APIs rather than business data.
  • Using SUPER. It works and grants far more than the integration needs.

The registration is per environment. Doing it in Production does not cover a Sandbox.

What the statuses mean

StatusWhat it meansWho acts next
Not connectedNo approval link is waiting: none has been created yet, or the last one expired (links last 7 days) or was cancelled.You.
Waiting for Microsoft approvalThe link exists but nobody has approved it.Your Microsoft administrator.
Waiting for Business Central registrationOur sign-in works; Business Central is still refusing, so step 2 is not done.Your Business Central administrator.
ConnectedWe can read your companies.Nobody.
ErrorThe page shows the code, and says whether this one is ours to fix.Depends on the code.

If the status says the environment could not be found, the page offers an environment field. It is Production for most customers; check the name in your own Business Central address. Saving it makes the connection unverified until the next successful check, so the Master data menu below disappears for a moment.

That menu, Master data → Business Central, appears only once the connection has worked at least once.

Pairing Companies

Open Master data → Business Central → Companies. Every company in your Business Central is listed, grouped by what can be done with it: already paired, a suggested match, no match, already in AI Finance Team, and not a company.

Each Business Central company can be paired with one AI Finance Team company, and the other way round. There are two ways:

  • Create a company from a Business Central company. The name, tax number, country and address are taken from Business Central. Tick several to create them in one go; creating one at a time shows you the values first and lets you correct the name.
  • Pair with a company you already have.

A suggestion based on the tax number is reliable. A suggestion based on the name is only a suggestion.

You can also start from Master data → Companies, where Create companies from Business Central sits next to Add company and lists only what is not paired yet.

One company per tax number

A workspace holds each company once. If a Business Central company's tax number already belongs to a company here, the row offers Pair only, never Create company, and it is left out of bulk selection. If that company is already paired with another Business Central company, a test copy of the same firm for example, the row says which one; unpair that first.

Where several Business Central companies share one tax number, the page says so and asks you to pick the right one, rather than guessing.

Notices on a row

  • Different currency. Business Central keeps that company's books in another currency than your base currency. A warning only.
  • Different country.
  • Different tax numbers. Check which is right before accepting.
  • The tax number is a VAT group identifier. Your company states the group's number while Business Central states the member's own.
  • Details could not be read.

A Business Central company whose tax number is a group registration rather than a company cannot become a company here. Leave it unpaired: it is a filing arrangement, not a business.

What pairing writes

When you pair with an existing company you can copy the address and the tax number across. Only empty fields are filled. A value already in AI Finance Team is never overwritten, whatever you tick; edit the company itself to change it.

Unpairing

Unlink on the row, or on the company's own page. It removes the pairing and deletes the copied master data of that company along with the links to any vendor and customer cards. The VAT mapping and the record of what was pushed are kept, and nothing changes in Business Central.

Keeping the Copy Fresh

The copied master data refreshes itself: once a company's copy is more than 20 hours old, an hourly check reads it again, a few companies per run, oldest first. You do not need to ask for it.

Where the Two Systems Differ

Master data → Business Central → Differences compares five kinds of record: Accounts and invoice categories, VAT mapping, VAT product and service groups, Custom category lists and Partners. Accounts and partners are compared in both directions; the other three exist only in AI Finance Team, so their Business Central side reads not applicable. Each cell offers what makes sense there, such as importing what is missing or opening the record.

Read the counts carefully. A count can read not applicable (there is nothing to compare on that side) or not read (the copy has not been read yet), and neither of those means zero. A genuine zero shows as 0.

Accounts as Categories

Business Central cannot create a ledger account through its API, so the client's chart of accounts stays theirs. To let a category name a ledger account, bring the accounts in as categories.

Open Master data → Accounting categories and choose Import, then Import accounts from Business Central. The dropdown is on both the Invoice and the Cash tab.

Create as decides what each ticked account becomes: Invoice categories, Cash categories, or Both, which makes one of each with the same account number. They stay separate afterwards, so renaming one does not rename the other.

The review step is a spreadsheet-style grid, not a list of tick boxes. You can edit the name of a row, set its direction, filter by account kind, search by the start of an account number, and paste a column of numbers copied from Excel to tick them. Then choose Create: the next screen shows what was created and what was skipped, with a reason each.

The account number identifies the category. Two accounts with different numbers become two categories even with the same name, and an account number that already has a category of that kind is skipped.

Copying invoice categories to cash categories

On the Cash tab, Copy from invoice categories creates a cash category for every invoice category the cash side lacks, with the same account number, name and direction. It shows the counts first and changes nothing that exists. Built-in categories are not copied.

Vendors and Customers as Partners

Import → Vendors from Business Central on Master data → Partners, and Import on the Partners row of the Differences tab, brings vendor cards in as partners. They are matched on the tax number, and a card without a tax number on its name, so a vendor that already exists here is shown as such and cannot be added twice. Vendor cards without a tax number can still be added, but only the name can match them afterwards.

Import → Customers from Business Central does the same for customer cards. Business Central keeps a company you sell to as a customer card and a company you buy from as a vendor card, each with its own number. In AI Finance Team both are the same partner. So when a customer's tax number already belongs to a partner here, no new partner is created: its customer cards are linked to that partner, and the partner itself is not changed. The customer card of one of your own companies (a group company that invoices a sister company) is linked to that company's partner. Cards without a tax number are listed but never ticked in advance.

The partner's page lists, per company, its vendor card and its customer card, each with its number and its kind, and the same numbers appear under the partner's AI Finance Team code. A card blocked in Business Central is marked in both places: Blocked when it is blocked for everything (its number is greyed under the code), Blocked for payments when only payments are refused and invoices still post to it. Neither import offers a card that is blocked for everything.

VAT Mapping

Master data → VAT codes → Business Central maps each of your (product/service group, rate) pairs to one Business Central tax group code. It is saved a row at a time, and it survives unpairing.

Pushing Partners as Vendors

Master data → Business Central → Push creates vendor cards in Business Central from your partners. This is one of the places AI Finance Team writes into your accounting system; the others are sending invoices (with their PDF) and sending bank lines, below. It needs three things:

  • the write side switched on for the workspace, which only we can do;
  • the permission "Push into the accounting system", which the accountant admin holds by default;
  • posting groups for each paired company, which the screen asks for first and pre-fills from your own vendor cards.

You choose the partners, then the companies each one should be created in, and review the list before it runs. At most 200 partner and company pairs go in one run. Afterwards each row says what happened: Created; Already there, when a card with the same tax number and a matching name exists and is linked instead; Refused, when a card with the same tax number has a different name; Unknown, when Business Central's answer was lost (the next run looks the card up by tax number before creating anything); or Failed, with Business Central's own words.

A vendor number that comes back is shown on the partner's page under its AI Finance Team code, one line per company. That number belongs to a company in Business Central, so do not type it into the partner's own code field.

Sending Invoices

Exports → Business Central is where expense invoices go up, as draft purchase invoices. It is a different screen from the vendor push, under a different menu, behind a different permission.

The top half is a read-only funnel: how many invoices are ready to send, how many are in the period, and what stops the rest. Eleven things can stop an invoice, and only the first one found is shown: no company on the invoice, the company not paired, the company not read yet, the partner not verified, no vendor card for that partner in that company, the partner's vendor card blocked in Business Central, a line with no category, the category's ledger account missing from that company, a line's unit has no Business Central code (see Units of Measure below), no invoice number or delivery date, and bookkeeping approval missing (see Filing and Bookkeeping Approval). Each one expands to the invoices behind it with a link that takes you where it is fixed. Two more are warnings rather than blockers: an unmapped VAT pair, and a currency that company does not hold.

Only expense invoices are considered, and never a duplicate or an archived one. The invoice's own PDF goes with it (see The PDF below), and a missing PDF never blocks a send.

What to know before you press Send

  • At most 200 invoices go per press.
  • The send runs in the background. Pressing Send returns at once, and a block above the list shows the progress: a bar, the counts, and one row per invoice. You can close the page, the send keeps going. The Uploads panel in the bottom-right corner shows it on every page of the workspace.
  • One send runs at a time in a workspace. While it runs, Send is disabled and says why, and the invoices waiting in it leave the list, so nothing is picked twice. Under Invoices ready to send a line says how many of them are being sent right now.
  • Stop stops the invoices that have not started. The one being sent finishes.
  • The send stops after three failures in a row and marks the rest Not sent, so one broken setting cannot burn the whole batch.
  • Each invoice shows its state: Queued, Sending, Created, Failed, We do not know or Not sent. A failed row shows Business Central's own words, and a row that was not sent says why.
  • A finished send stays on the screen, also after a reload, until you press Close.
  • The draft's posting date is the invoice's own posting date in AI Finance Team, the Posting date you see on the invoice. By default that is the delivery date (Fulfillment date on the invoice); if you changed it on the invoice, the changed date is what Business Central gets. An invoice that never received a posting date goes with its delivery date.
  • Each line goes up with the quantity and unit price printed on the invoice when the two give the line's net amount to the cent, for example 102 hours at 15,000 Ft. Otherwise the line goes up as quantity 1 with its net amount as the unit price, as before, so the amount booked is the same either way. The line also carries its unit of measure, translated to the code that Business Central company has (DB, ÓRA, HÓ, KG and so on). A line is never sent with an empty unit. If a line goes up with its own quantity and that company has no code for its unit, the invoice waits until you map the unit or correct the line (see Units of Measure below). A line that goes up as quantity 1 carries no unit, so it never waits for one. Under each invoice in the list, Lines: shows how its lines will go up.
  • A partner with several vendor cards in one company goes to a card Business Central accepts: a card linked to the partner first, otherwise one matched by tax number, the lowest card number first, so the same partner always gets the same card.

Each invoice is checked again at the moment it is sent, with the permissions of the person who pressed Send. An invoice that became blocked while it waited is not sent, and its row names what blocks it.

"We do not know" is the one that matters. It means the request went and the answer did not come back. Do not create the invoice again by hand: Business Central does not refuse a second purchase invoice carrying the same supplier invoice number, so a second one leaves two drafts for one invoice. AI Finance Team does not send it again either until it is resolved. Use Resolve interrupted sends under Troubleshooting, which asks Business Central what actually happened and sends nothing.

An invoice already up there leaves the sendable count, and the screen says how many of your selection are already in Business Central.

Sending an invoice again

An invoice that is already in Business Central can be sent again from its own page: on the Overview tab, in the Business Central section, the Send again to Business Central button. It is for the case where the first draft went up with something missing, for example a VAT mapping that was completed only afterwards. Pressing it sends nothing yet: AI Finance Team first asks Business Central what happened to the document it created, and does only what the answer allows. If the document is still a draft, it is deleted and a new one is created from the invoice as it is now (with the AIFT id as its number when that setting is on); anything edited by hand on that draft in Business Central is lost, and the confirmation says so. If it has been posted, nothing is sent: a posted invoice is corrected in Business Central, with a credit memo or a correction. If it is no longer there, the invoice goes up as new. If several documents carry the supplier's invoice number, or Business Central cannot be reached, nothing changes and the screen says why. The retired document stays in the invoice's History tab, so two "sent" rows on one invoice explain themselves, and the PDF goes up again with the new document.

The PDF

The invoice's own PDF goes up as an attachment of the draft, in its Attachments box. Business Central copies it to the posted invoice when you post.

  • Each row of the list says whether a PDF goes with it: PDF or No PDF. An invoice that came from NAV has no file. That is not an error, and it never blocks a send.
  • Once the invoice is created, its row shows the PDF: Uploading the PDF, then PDF attached, or The PDF did not upload. with Business Central's own words and a Send the PDF again button.
  • Only the invoice's own PDF goes. Other documents attached to the invoice in AI Finance Team stay there.
  • If the content of a file fails to upload, we delete the empty attachment row we have just made, because Business Central refuses to post an invoice that carries an empty attachment.
  • When invoices sent earlier have no PDF in Business Central, a line above the list says how many, with an Add the PDFs (N) button. It asks first, then uploads them in the background. A PDF that reaches an invoice after it was sent goes up only this way: nothing uploads by itself.

The maintenance buttons

Seven buttons sit under the list, in the Troubleshooting section, in two groups, Check and Resolve, which is closed until you open it. The section is there even when nothing is sendable, because a stray draft in the client's ledger is invisible to anyone without a Business Central login.

  • Probe creates a real throwaway draft from a real invoice and deletes it again. It answers whether this tenant accepts a duplicate supplier invoice number, and shows what we sent beside what Business Central stored. It also puts the invoice's PDF on the throwaway draft, to show whether this tenant takes attachments. Its source is the invoice you tick in the list (exactly one); with none ticked it uses the first invoice ready to send in the workspace, or one already sent. A line under the button names the source, so tick one whose lines carry what you want to test.
  • What BC exposes about a vendor reads a vendor card and writes nothing.
  • What BC holds about customers and outgoing invoices reads the customer cards and where each outgoing invoice stands in Business Central, and writes nothing.
  • Numbering trial (made-up invoice) creates one made-up purchase invoice draft numbered AIFT-TESZT-…, clears its posting number series, adds a line and deletes it again. It shows whether this Business Central accepts our own number as the invoice number (see The AIFT Id as the Invoice Number below). It asks for confirmation first.
  • Bank journal probe (made-up lines) creates a journal batch named AIFTSZONDA and writes four made-up lines of 1 into it (two G/L lines, a supplier payment and a customer receipt applied to an open invoice), reads each one back, then deletes the lines and the batch. Nothing is posted. It asks for confirmation first.
  • Resolve interrupted sends asks what happened to a send whose answer was lost. It neither sends nor deletes.
  • Look for drafts left behind finds drafts we recorded but never linked. Deleting them is a separate, red Delete from Business Central button: the check and the delete are two steps on purpose.

Sending Bank Lines

The Exports → Business Central → Bank lines tab sends bank lines into the Business Central general journal as unposted lines. The bookkeeper posts them, in Business Central.

First, on Master data → Business Central → Bank accounts, set:

  • the journal, per bank account, in the Journal column of its row: the journal template and the batch, picked from the list AI Finance Team reads from that account's company in Business Central (every batch of every template; refresh it on Master data → Business Central). Business Central keeps batches per company, so there is no workspace-wide default: an account without a journal sends nothing. We recommend a batch of AI Finance Team's own, so its lines never mix with lines typed by hand. If Business Central does not publish the batch list for a company, the two fields can be typed;
  • for each bank account, the Business Central bank account its lines balance against. When the IBAN matches we propose it, but it only takes effect once you save it;
  • for each bank account, the start date. Lines before it are not sent, because the bookkeeping has recorded them already. Without a start date no line of that account is sent. Pick the day after the last day the bank was booked by hand.

Three kinds of line go:

  • a no-invoice line (a bank fee, for example) as a G/L line on its category's account number, without VAT;
  • a line matched to an expense invoice as a vendor payment, applied to that invoice;
  • a line matched to a sales invoice as a customer receipt, applied to that invoice.

The posting date is the value date and the document number is AI Finance Team's id (for example AH2-TXN-2026-0412). The external document number is left empty, because none of the sources carries a statement number today. The amount goes in its original currency; Business Central converts it with its own exchange rates.

Not sent, and the tab says why:

  • a line that is neither matched to an invoice nor marked "No invoice needed";
  • a payment whose invoice is not posted in Business Central yet, because a payment cannot be applied to a draft;
  • a payment whose invoice is already paid in Business Central: someone has recorded it already, and it would go in twice;
  • a single transfer that pays several invoices: for now this is booked in Business Central by hand;
  • a line that pays another company's invoice, from a cash pool for example;
  • a vendor payment to a vendor card that is blocked for payments in Business Central (blocked entirely or for payments);
  • a customer receipt to a customer card that is blocked in Business Central.

Before You Send

  • One press sends at most 500 lines, in the background, with the same bar and list as the invoice send. One send runs in a workspace at a time, invoices or bank lines.
  • A payment only goes to a posted, open invoice. Before sending, the tab asks Business Central (read only) whether each payment's invoice is posted and not yet paid. When someone who may send opens the page, it asks for the payments that are due an answer, and Refresh asks again, for example after you have posted the invoices. Until there is such an answer the payment does not count as sendable, and the What holds the rest back list says why: not posted yet, not found (the line shows which Business Central partner was searched), already paid, several open invoices match, or not asked yet.
  • The Send button in the page title is on both tabs and sends everything sendable in the period and company set on the page, without picking rows: Everything, Invoices only or Bank lines only. With everything it is one send, invoices first, then bank lines. A payment whose invoice goes in the same send waits until the invoice is posted in Business Central, and goes with the next send.
  • Nothing goes twice. Business Central does not refuse a second identical payment, so before every write we ask it whether a line with the same AI Finance Team id is already in that bank account's journal batch or among the posted entries. If it is, we do not write it again.
  • Every line written is read back. If Business Central recorded it differently from what we sent (a VAT group on a G/L line, for example), the line is deleted and its row says why.
  • A line that went is marked "In Business Central already" and no longer counts as sendable.
  • We do not know means here too that the request went out and no answer came back. Do not book the line by hand. Such a line is not sent again until it is resolved: later sends skip it and say that an earlier send lost its answer. Use Resolve interrupted sends under Troubleshooting on the Invoices tab. It asks Business Central whether the line is in the journal batch or already posted, and it sends nothing. If the line is there, it is recorded as sent. If it is nowhere, it can be sent again.

Payment Methods

Master data → Business Central → Payment methods maps each AI Finance Team payment method (transfer, cash, card, voucher, other) onto one Business Central code, as a workspace default or per company. A code is proposed only where exactly one Business Central code reads as that method.

The mapping is applied to the draft immediately after it is created, because the interface has no payment-method field on the document itself. A missing mapping is not an error and never blocks a send. An individual invoice can override the mapping on its own payment tab, and the send list shows the code each invoice will go up with.

Units of Measure

Master data → Business Central → Units lists every unit found on the invoices that can be sent, with the Business Central code it goes up as. Most units match by themselves: the unit is the code, the code's name, or a common spelling of it (darab and PIECE are DB, óra and HOUR are ÓRA). The units that hold invoices are at the top, with the number of lines and invoices waiting on them.

For a unit with no match, choose a code from the list of codes your companies have. One choice applies to every line with that unit, now and later, in every company that has the code. A company that does not have the chosen code is named on the row: create the unit in Business Central, and it is read with the next refresh. OWN (the seller's own unit, with no text) cannot be mapped, because it means something different on every invoice.

On the invoice's Lines & VAT tab, each line shows what it goes up as: the quantity, the unit price and the unit code, or quantity 1 with the net amount and the reason. Someone who may edit invoices can press Correct quantity and unit and change the Quantity, the Unit and the Unit price together. The net amount never changes, so quantity times unit price must give the net to the cent, and the form shows whether it does before you save. The previous values stay in the invoice's history. An invoice already posted in Business Central cannot be corrected here; a draft that was already sent goes up corrected when you send it again.

Posting Description

In the same step as the payment method, each draft also gets its Posting Description: the invoice summary from AI Finance Team, so the vendor ledger entry and the general ledger show what the invoice is about instead of just "Invoice" and a number. Business Central allows 100 characters there. A longer summary is cut at the last whole word and ends with "…". The text keeps the invoice's own language, and no AI is used to shorten it.

The send list shows the text under each invoice before you send it. An invoice without a summary keeps Business Central's own default text, and that never blocks a send. The draft stays editable in Business Central, so you can change the text before you post.

Whether the text also appears on the expense lines of the general ledger depends on a Business Central setting: with Copy Line Descr. to G/L Entry switched on in Purchases & Payables Setup, those lines carry each invoice line's own text instead, and the Posting Description stays on the vendor side.

The AIFT Id as the Invoice Number

A switch under Settings → Numbering makes invoices sent from AI Finance Team take their AIFT id as their number in Business Central (for example AH2-INV-2026-0295), instead of the next number of the company's own series. It becomes the draft's number and, once posted, the posted invoice's number too. Invoices typed into Business Central keep their own numbering.

Two things to know first:

  • The numbering will have gaps, and two formats run side by side. The AIFT sequence runs across every company in the workspace and across sales and purchase invoices, so within one company the AIFT-numbered invoices are not consecutive. The year is the invoice's issue year.
  • The AIFT id does not replace the supplier's invoice number. That still goes into the vendor invoice number field.

To keep the number after posting, we clear the posted-invoice number series on the draft. Business Central then carries the draft's number over to the posted invoice.

What has to be set in Business Central

The switch works only if AI Finance Team can read which number series purchase invoices use, and whether it accepts manual numbers. For that, the Business Central administrator publishes two pages as web services, on the Web Services page (Alt+Q):

Object TypeObject IDService NamePublished
Page460PurchasesPayablesSetupticked
Page456NoSeriesticked

Both are read only. On top of that, Manual Nos. must be switched on for the purchase invoice number series (Invoice Nos.). Invoices typed into Business Central still get their numbers automatically.

Copy these steps on the Numbering page puts these instructions on your clipboard, ready to forward to the administrator.

Checking and refusing

When you switch it on, AI Finance Team checks every paired company at once and shows, per company: Ready, Not ready or Cannot check. For the last two it also shows the Business Central step that fixes it.

Every send checks again. If a company is not ready, or cannot be checked, its invoices are not sent, and the send list says why. Nothing goes out with a Business Central number instead, because an invoice already sent cannot be renumbered.

The switch needs the "Push into the accounting system" permission.

Who Can Do What

Connecting, disconnecting and pairing need the permission "Manage connections", held by default by the accountant admin and the finance lead. A custom role or an exception can change that. Everyone else sees the status and cannot change it.

Sending anything into Business Central needs two permissions: "Run accounting exports" to reach the send screen at all, which the accountant admin and the accountant hold, and "Push into the accounting system" to actually send, which only the accountant admin holds. An accountant without the second one can open the screen and read it, but the send buttons and Refresh are not shown, and the invoice check says that someone with the send permission can ask. Saving the Bank accounts page needs the "Edit master data" permission.

Disconnecting

Disconnect on Settings → Business Central Connection. The confirmation says what goes: the pairings, the copied master data and the VAT mappings are deleted. The payment method mapping goes too, which the dialog does not mention. Your companies, categories, partners, the links to vendor cards, the bank account settings (Business Central bank account, start date, journal) and the record of which invoices and bank lines were sent are all kept.

Reconnecting afterwards needs both approvals again, and every company paired again. Your Microsoft administrator can also revoke the approval in your own Microsoft 365 without telling us.