Dynasys Insights for Business Central — Documentation

Overview

Dynasys Insights is a ready-made analytics dashboard inside Business Central. It reads your posted documents and ledger entries and shows them on five pages:

• Sales — Total Sales, Annual Target, Realization and Customers; Sales by Salesperson (with the target realization), Monthly Sales Trend (actual against target), Sales by Country (world map), Sales by Customer, Sales by Item, Pareto Analysis of customers, Year-to-Date Cumulative Sales and a Salesperson Performance radar.
• Purchases — Total Purchases, Vendors, Countries, Annual Target and Realization; Purchases by Vendor, by Country and by Item, and Purchase Target against actual.
• Finance — Total and overdue receivables, total payables, net receivables less payables and a 30-day cash forecast; Monthly Revenue against Expenses, Receivables and Payables Aging, G/L Budget against Actual (net result), Gross Margin by Item and a 30/60/90-day Cash Flow Projection.
• Stock — Total Inventory Value, Low Stock Items, Slow-Moving Items and Total SKUs; Top Items by Stock Value, Low Stock Items (at or below the reorder point) and Slow-Moving Items (in stock but not sold in the period).
• Analysis View — up to four charts from Business Central analysis views, by any of their dimensions, with dimension filters and optional budget figures.

How figures are calculated: sales and purchases are net (invoices less credit memos), without VAT, in local currency, taken from the customer and vendor ledger entries. Cancelled documents and their corrective credit memos are left out. Receivables and payables are the remaining amounts of open entries.

Prerequisites

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central version 23 (2023 release wave 2) or later, online or on-premises.
• To install: the Business Central administrator role (or the Extension Management permission).
• Users need read permission for the Business Central data they should see (see Permissions and data access).

Installation

Initial setup

1. 1
   Permissions. Assign the permission sets described below.
2. 2
   Company settings. Open Dynasys Insights Setup and choose:

   • Default Tab and Default Date Range (current year, current month, last 30 or 90 days);
   • Top N Items — how many customers, items, vendors or countries the charts show;
   • Enable Purchase Tab and Enable Finance Tab — a page that is switched off is neither shown nor calculated;
   • Show Target Overlay and the Colour Theme;
   • G/L Budget Name — the budget used for G/L Budget against Actual and in analysis views (blank = all budgets);
   • Additional Currency Code and Rate — to switch amounts to a second currency.
3. 3
   Targets. Enter monthly sales targets per salesperson under Sales Targets (Amounts) and purchase targets per vendor under Purchase Targets (Amounts), per year.
4. 4
   Personal settings. Each user can override the default page, date range and Top N, choose dark mode, a favourite salesperson to highlight, and whether the KPI strip starts collapsed, under Settings in the dashboard (My Dashboard Settings).

Permissions and data access

Insights reads Business Central data with each user's own permissions, so users see only what their administrator allows.

• Assign DTK INSIGHTS USER (or ADMIN) to every Insights user.
• Give access to the data either with the user's existing Business Central permission sets, or with DTK INSIGHTS DATA for users who may see all of the company's sales, purchase, finance and stock figures.
• A chart or KPI whose data the user may not read is covered with "No permission to read this data" and the tables to ask for. Data access (under Tools in the dashboard) lists every page section, whether it is available, and what is missing.
• Security filters are respected: a user limited to part of a table sees totals for that part.

Using the dashboard

• Pages and tools. The sidebar holds the five pages and the tools: Export, Print, Sales Targets, Purch Targets, Help and Data access, plus Settings and the light/dark theme switch. The sidebar can be narrowed to icons.
• Period. Choose a Year, or a custom range with From and To, and Apply. Reset returns to the current year.
• Year/Year. Tick Year/Year and choose the comparison year to show the earlier year next to the selected period.
• Currency. When an additional currency is set up, switch between LCY and the additional currency.
• Drill-down. Click a bar, a slice or a clickable KPI to open the lines behind it. Show Document opens the posted document or ledger entry.
• Export. Export creates an Excel workbook of the selected period, one worksheet per chart.
• Print. Print prints the current page with the company logo, period and KPIs.
• Analysis View. In each of the four panels choose an analysis view, the dimension to measure by, any dimension filters and, optionally, Include Budget Target, then Show. Selections are remembered per user.

Licensing and trial

• The trial starts automatically the first time Insights is opened in a company: 30 days, up to 3 users. The first users who open it take the trial seats.
• A licence key is issued per company. Open License Setup (or search for Dynasys License Setup), copy the Company License ID and send it with Request a License, or to licenses@dynasys.tech.
• Paste or import the key you receive and choose Activate. Then choose which users may use Insights under Licensed Users.

FAQ

Support

E-mail info@dynasys.tech. We aim to reply within one business day.