Accountant Experiences in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Article
10/19/2023

Note

Azure Active Directory is now Microsoft Entra ID. Learn more

Any business must do its books and sign off on the accounting. Some businesses employ an external accountant, and others have an accountant on staff. No matter which type of accountant you are, you can use the Accountant Role Center as your Home in Business Central. From here, you can access all pages that you need in your work.

Accountant Role Center

The Role Center is a dashboard with activity tiles that show you real-time key figures and give you quick access to data. In the ribbon at the top of the page, you have access to more actions, such as opening the most commonly used financial reports and statements in Excel. In the navigation bar at the top, you can quickly switch between the lists you use most often. Here, you will see other areas, such as Posted Documents with the various types of documents that the company has posted.

If you are new to Business Central, you can launch a list of videos right from your Role Center. You can also launch a Getting Started tour that points out key areas.

Company Hub

If you work in multiple Business Central companies, you might find it useful to use the Company Hub page to keep track of work. For more information, see Manage Work across Multiple Companies in the Company Hub.

Inviting Your External Accountant to Your Business Central

If you use an external accountant to manage your books and financial reporting, your administrator can invite them to your Business Central so they can work with you on your fiscal data. Business Central includes three licenses of type External Accountant. For more information about licensing, download the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide.

Once your accountant has gained access to your Business Central, they can use the Accountant Role Center that gives easy access to the most relevant pages for their work. They can also use the company hub in their own Business Central to manage their work. For more information, see Manage Work across Multiple Companies in the Company Hub.

We have made it easy for you to invite your external accountant. Simply open the Users page, and then choose the Invite External Accountant action in the ribbon. An email is made ready for you, just add your accountant's work email, and send the invitation.

Note

This requires that you have set up SMTP email. For more information, see Set Up Email.

Important

The accountant's email address must be a work address that is based on Microsoft Entra ID. If the accountant uses another type of email, then the invitation cannot be sent.

This task requires access to managing users and licenses in Microsoft Entra ID. The user who sends this invitation must be assigned the Global admin role or User admin role in the Microsoft 365 admin center. For more information, see About admin roles in the Microsoft 365 admin content.

Adding your accountant to your Microsoft 365 in the Azure portal

If your administrator or reselling partner do not want to use the Invite External Accountant guide, they can add an external user in the Azure portal and assign this user the External Accountant license. For more information, see Quickstart: Add guest users to your directory in the Azure portal.

To add your accountant as a guest user

Open the Azure portal.
In the left pane, select Microsoft Entra ID.
Under Manage, select Users.
Select New guest user.
On the New user page, select Invite user and then add information about your external accountant.

Optionally, include a personal welcome message to the accountant to let them know that you are adding them to your Business Central.
Select Invite to automatically send the invitation. A notification appears in the upper right with the message Successfully invited user.
After you send the invitation, the user account is automatically added to the directory as a guest.

Next, you must assign the new guest user a license to Business Central.

To give your accountant access to your Business Central

In the Azure portal, on the newly added user, choose Profile, and then choose Edit
Update the Usage Location field to the relevant country/region, and then choose Save.
Choose Licenses, and then open Assignments.
Choose the Dynamics 365 Business Central External Accountant license.

If this license is not available, contact your reselling partner to add the license to your subscription.

Specifically for evaluation purposes in a trial tenant, you can use an available Dynamics 365 Business Central for IWs license instead. However, you cannot use this type of license if you have already purchased Business Central.
Save the assignment.

If successful, the license is assigned to the guest user, and the guest account is created.

Importing the new user into Business Central

The accountant will receive an email that notifies them that they have been given access to your Microsoft Entra ID. Next, you must give them access to the right company in Business Central.

To add the accountant to the right company

Open the Business Central company that you want to give the accountant access to at https://businesscentral.dynamics.com.
Choose the icon, enter Users, and then chose the related link.
Choose the Get New Users from Microsoft 365 action.

This imports the user account that you created in the Azure portal to the company. For more information, see To add a user in Business Central.

If you want to give access to multiple companies, then you must log into each company and repeat this process. Alternatively, you can update the permission groups for the accountant's user profile in Business Central, such as assigning them the D365 Bus Premium user group. For more information, see Assign Permissions to Users and Groups.