9 Questions to Ask Before Automating a Finance Process in Business Central

A finance process is taking too long, so automation feels like the obvious next step.

Invoices are waiting for approval. Bank reconciliations are falling behind. Expense reports require repeated follow-up. Payment preparation depends on a spreadsheet. Month-end close takes longer as transaction volume grows.

The team wants to move faster, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central already contains much of the financial data. Why not automate the process?

Because automating the wrong process can make the wrong work happen faster.

A poorly designed workflow may route transactions to the wrong people, repeat unnecessary approvals, create more exceptions, or allow inaccurate data to move further into the accounting process. Finance may replace one manual workaround with a more complicated automated one.

Successful automation begins before software is configured. The team first needs to understand what the process is trying to achieve, which steps follow predictable rules, where judgment is required, and what information Business Central needs to support the workflow.

Here are nine practical questions to ask before automating a finance process in Business Central.

1. What Problem Are We Actually Trying to Solve?

“Reduce manual work” is a reasonable objective, but it is not specific enough to guide an automation project.

Finance needs to identify where the process is breaking down. Is the problem slow data entry, limited visibility, approval delays, repeated errors, too many emails, unclear ownership, or duplicate work between Business Central and spreadsheets?

These problems may require different solutions.

Consider an AP team that wants to automate invoice approvals. The team may assume approvals are the main bottleneck, but a closer review could show that invoices spend most of their time waiting for purchase order receipts or missing dimensions.

Adding faster approval reminders will not resolve those issues. It may simply route incomplete invoices to managers more quickly.

A useful problem statement should describe the current issue and the desired outcome. For example:

Current problem: AP manually tracks invoice status across email, spreadsheets, and Business Central.

Desired outcome: Finance can see each invoice’s current status, owner, exception, and next action without maintaining a separate tracker.

That level of clarity makes it easier to choose the right workflow and measure whether it worked.

2. Is the Process Frequent Enough to Justify Automation?

Not every manual activity needs to be automated.

A process performed once a year may not justify the same investment as one completed hundreds of times each week. The most valuable automation opportunities are usually recurring, time-consuming, and predictable.

Finance should look at more than transaction volume. It should also consider how many people touch the process and how much effort each transaction creates.

A company may process only 200 expense reports each month, but each report could involve an employee, manager, finance reviewer, project owner, and accountant. A relatively modest volume can still create substantial work when every transaction requires several handoffs.

Truvio Expense Management for Business Central helps connect expense capture, policy checks, approvals, and posting so employees and finance do not have to repeat the same work across templates, emails, and the ERP.

When evaluating the opportunity, review:

• How often the process occurs
• How many transactions are involved
• How many people participate
• How much time is spent per transaction
• How often information is entered more than once
• How much follow-up the process requires

The best automation candidate is not always the process with the highest volume. It may be the process creating the most repeated effort across the organization.

3. Is the Process Consistent Enough to Automate?

Automation works best when the organization follows a reasonably consistent process.

When every department handles the same transaction differently, the first step may be standardization rather than automation.

Suppose one business unit requires purchase orders for nearly every supplier invoice, another uses purchase orders only for inventory, and a third approves invoices through email. Building one AP workflow across all three units will be difficult unless the organization first agrees on which rules should apply.

The same issue appears in banking, expenses, payments, and reconciliation.

One entity may reconcile bank accounts daily while another waits until month-end. Some managers may approve expenses based on amount, while others approve based on department or project. Payment procedures may vary depending on the bank or legal entity.

Automation does not require every scenario to be identical, but it does require clear rules for the most common situations.

Before configuring the workflow, document:

• Where the process begins
• What information is required
• Which steps happen every time
• Which steps vary
• Who owns each step
• What allows the transaction to continue
• What causes it to stop

When the process cannot be explained clearly, it will be difficult to automate reliably.

4. Is the Business Central Data Reliable Enough?

An automated workflow can only make good decisions when the underlying information is accurate.

Business Central may need to validate vendors, customers, bank accounts, purchase orders, receipts, dimensions, posting groups, currencies, payment terms, approval limits, and other master data.

When those records are incomplete or inconsistent, transactions will stop frequently or move forward incorrectly.

For example, invoice automation may struggle when:

• Suppliers have duplicate vendor records
• Purchase order numbers are missing
• Receipts are not recorded promptly
• Dimensions are entered inconsistently
• Payment terms do not reflect supplier agreements
• Vendor bank details are incomplete
• Approval limits are outdated

For invoice processing, reliable automation begins with reliable data capture. Truvio Data Capture for Business Central uses AI to extract invoice information and validate it against Business Central records such as vendors, purchase orders, and dimensions before the data moves further into the AP process.

Issues that appear to be automation problems are often data or process problems. Before implementation, review which Business Central fields the workflow will use and whether those fields are maintained consistently.

The organization should also assign clear ownership for correcting and governing the data. Finance may own payment terms and posting information, while purchasing owns purchase order quality and operations records receipts.

Automation can reduce data entry. It cannot compensate indefinitely for unreliable master data.

5. Which Steps Follow Rules, and Which Require Judgment?

A strong automation project separates predictable work from decisions that need human attention.

Predictable steps are good candidates for automation. These may include importing a bank statement, capturing invoice data, checking for duplicates, validating required dimensions, comparing an invoice with a purchase order, or routing an expense based on an approval threshold.

Judgment-based decisions should remain visible to the right person.

For example, a system may identify that an invoice price is higher than the purchase order. It can calculate the difference, compare it with a tolerance, and route the exception. A purchasing manager may still need to decide whether the price is acceptable.

Truvio AP Automation for Business Central supports this exception-based approach by connecting invoice capture, validation, purchase order matching, approval workflows, posting, and status tracking directly with Business Central. Routine invoices can follow predefined rules, while finance and operational teams focus on the transactions that need judgment.

The same principle applies to other finance processes.

A bank transaction with a clear reference and matching amount may be reconciled automatically. An unidentified deposit may require investigation. A routine expense within policy may follow a standard route, while an unusual claim may need additional review.

Automation should handle the work the organization has already decided how to handle. People should focus on transactions where a decision still needs to be made.

6. What Exceptions Are Most Likely to Occur?

Automation is often designed around the ideal transaction.

The invoice contains every required field. The purchase order is accurate. The receipt is complete. The bank transaction matches perfectly. The expense complies with policy.

Real processes contain exceptions.

A supplier may omit the purchase order number. A manager may be unavailable. A customer may combine several invoices into one payment. An employee may submit an expense in a foreign currency. A bank fee may appear without a corresponding Business Central entry.

Before automating the normal path, identify the most common reasons the process stops.

Banking processes provide a good example. Predictable statement transactions may be imported and matched through established rules, while bank fees, rejected payments, missing entries, and unidentified receipts are directed to finance for review.

Truvio Banking Automation for Business Central connects bank statements, vendor payments, bank communication, and reconciliation with the ERP, helping teams automate routine activity while maintaining visibility into unresolved transactions.

For each exception, define:

• What went wrong
• How the user will see it
• Who should resolve it
• What information that person needs
• What action allows the transaction to continue
• When the issue should be escalated

An exception message such as “validation failed” is not enough. Users need to know which field failed, what Business Central expected, and what needs to be corrected.

Clear exception handling is one of the biggest differences between automation that saves time and automation that creates more work.

7. Are the Existing Approvals Adding Real Control?

Finance automation projects often preserve every existing approval without asking why it exists.

That can make the new process faster in some areas while leaving the main delay untouched.

Consider a purchase that has already been requested, reviewed, approved, ordered, and received. When the supplier invoice matches the purchase order and receipt, does the same manager need to approve the invoice again?

The answer may be yes for certain purchases, but the approval should add a meaningful control or decision.

Before building approval rules, ask:

• What is the approver confirming?
• Has that decision already been made?
• Which amount or risk should trigger additional review?
• Can matched transactions move without another approval?
• Should exceptions be sent to a specialist instead of a general manager?
• What happens when the approver is unavailable?

Approvals should reflect financial risk, company policy, and decision-making authority. They should not exist simply because someone has always received an email.

Removing unnecessary approvals can be as valuable as automating the remaining ones.

8. Where Will Documents, Decisions, and Status Be Visible?

A finance process is not fully automated when users still need email and spreadsheets to understand what is happening.

Business Central may contain the posted transaction, while the supporting document sits in a shared folder, the approval remains in an email, and the exception status is maintained in a workbook.

The transaction is recorded, but the process is fragmented.

Before implementation, decide where users will find:

• Source documents
• Captured transaction data
• Approval decisions
• Comments and supporting explanations
• Exception details
• Current status
• Ownership
• Posting information
• Audit history

Finance should not need to recreate process visibility outside Business Central.

This does not mean every document and conversation must appear on one screen. It means users should have a connected path from the transaction to the evidence and decisions behind it.

A reviewer should be able to understand what happened without searching several inboxes, folders, and spreadsheets.

9. How Will We Know the Automation Is Working?

A successful go-live does not automatically mean the process has improved.

Finance needs to measure whether manual effort, delays, errors, and exceptions have actually decreased.

For accounts payable, finance might track:

• Invoices entered without manual data entry
• First-time purchase order match rate
• Approval time
• Exception rate
• Time spent resolving exceptions
• Invoices posted without manual intervention
• Overdue invoices

For banking and reconciliation, useful measures may include:

• Transactions matched automatically
• Unreconciled items by age
• Time required to complete reconciliation
• Number of manual journal entries
• Rejected or failed payments
• Unidentified receipts

Expense automation may be measured through submission time, missing receipt rates, policy exceptions, approval time, and the number of claims re-entered by finance.

It is also important to establish a starting point before automation begins. Without a baseline, the team may know that the process feels different but struggle to show what improved.

Measurement should continue after go-live. Exception patterns can reveal poor master data, unclear policies, supplier problems, missing training, or workflow rules that need adjustment.

Automation is not a one-time configuration exercise. It is a process that should improve as finance learns from the results.

Start With a Process That Can Demonstrate Value

The first automation project does not need to solve every finance problem.

A focused process is often a better starting point than a large transformation covering AP, expenses, payments, banking, reconciliation, and reporting at the same time.

Choose an area with:

• A clearly defined problem
• Consistent transaction volume
• Available Business Central data
• Predictable rules
• Known exceptions
• An engaged process owner
• Measurable outcomes

For AP, that may be purchase order invoices from a group of established suppliers. For banking, it may be one high-volume account with predictable transactions. For expenses, it may be one entity or employee group with a consistent policy.

A focused rollout gives finance an opportunity to test the rules, improve exception handling, and build confidence before expanding the process. It also produces clearer results because the team can show exactly how much data entry, follow-up, reconciliation effort, or approval time was removed.

As the organization expands automation, the processes should remain connected. The Truvio Finance Suite for Business Central brings together AP automation, expense management, banking, payments, cash activity, and reconciliation in a Business Central-connected environment.

This helps finance improve one workflow at a time without creating another set of disconnected systems.

Automate the Process, Not the Workaround

Finance teams often begin automation by looking at the spreadsheet or email process they use today.

That is a useful starting point, but it should not become the design specification.

A workbook may contain fields that no longer serve a purpose. An email approval may repeat a decision already made during purchasing. A manual check may exist because information was not validated earlier. A report may be maintained only because users cannot see current status elsewhere.

Recreating every existing step can preserve the same inefficiency inside a new system.

Instead, design the process around the outcome finance needs.

What information must be correct? What decisions must be made? What controls must be applied? Which transactions can continue automatically? Which exceptions require attention?

The goal is not to make the existing process move faster. It is to build a better process around Business Central.

Better Finance Automation Creates More Visibility, Not Less

Some finance leaders worry that automation will reduce control because fewer people will touch each transaction. A well-designed workflow should do the opposite.

Automation can make controls more consistent by validating required information, applying approval rules, recording decisions, and identifying exceptions before transactions move forward. Finance gains clearer visibility because the process no longer depends on someone updating a spreadsheet or forwarding an email.

Routine transactions move with less intervention, while unusual activity becomes easier to identify. Employees can see what they need to do, and finance can monitor where transactions are waiting, why they stopped, and who needs to act.

That is the real value of automating finance processes in Business Central. It does not remove finance from the process. It removes repetitive work so finance can focus on accuracy, exceptions, financial risk, and continuous improvement.

Before automating your next finance process, start by identifying the problem, understanding the exceptions, and deciding what a better outcome should look like.

Truvio extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with connected solutions for AP automation, AI-powered invoice data capture, expense management, and banking automation. Each solution is designed to keep workflows, decisions, documents, and financial records connected to the ERP. To explore where automation could create the most value for your finance team, request a Truvio demo