Perk Spend Management Connector for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central lets you combine the strength of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Perk’s AI-powered spend management solution.

With Perk’s integration, data automatically flows back and forth with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, enabling you to automate the process, wherever spend is incurred.

Overview

MS Dynamics 365 Business Central is responsible for managing data flows to and from Perk. It uses the Perk API (OAuth2.0 authentication) to send master and transactional data such as POs and GRs to Perk and to retrieve invoice data for posting. Perk’s webhooks notify Business Central about changes in the document status, giving Business Central control over when data is retrieved and posted. For expenses, Perk is responsible for sending expense data to Business Central. Business Central retrieves receipts and attachments from the Perk API.

Each Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central company is associated with a Perk legal entity. If you have more than one company, you must set up a separate legal entity in Perk.

Non-PO invoices, PO invoices, and PO invoices with purchase receipt (GR)

With the integration, you can send purchase orders and purchase receipts to Perk for processing with the invoices, matching PO and/or GR line items with invoice line items (two-way matching and three-way matching). The integration supports item, fixed asset, and item charge line types. It does not support resource and allocation account line types.

Invoice PDF

Invoice documents are retrieved by Business Central as a base64 encoded PDFs and attached to the purchase order or purchase invoice. The document can be viewed in the Attachments tab for the purchase order or purchase invoice.

Invoice posting to vendor ledger

Perk communicates changes in Perk invoice states to Business Central using webhooks. Business Central is then responsible for retrieving the invoice data from Perk and posting as posted purchase invoice documents (if automatic posting is enabled).

You can choose to post invoices in Business Central on submission, either updating the purchase order with a payment block or creating a temporary purchase invoice with a payment block, or when invoices are fully approved and ready to export, booking the invoice data as posted purchase invoice and creating the corresponding vendor ledger entry.

Expense posting to general journal

In the case of expenses, Perk is responsible for posting expenses directly to the general journal.

Reporting currency for invoices & expenses

With the invoice export, currency conversion is handled entirely by Business Central. This means that you use Business Central’s exchange rates to handle all conversion to the company currency and any adjustments as appropriate.

Invoice and expense approval

The approval flow for invoices and/or expenses is managed entirely by Perk using either a standard line manager or cost object workflow or by using a custom workflow.

Requirements

The Perk for MS Dynamics 365 Business Central integration supports these versions:

The integration can be installed as an extension either as an extension package (for on premise deployment) or from the Microsoft AppSource.

Note: If you install the integration as an extension package directly in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you will not receive any automatic updates with any new features. You will be responsible for updating the extension package to the latest version.

Processing expenses with the integration

Expenses are processed in Perk according to the company’s workflow; in other words, submit > approve > review.

Once processed, they are exported to Business Central by Perk either manually (as triggered by the Finance team) or automatically using an export job.

Exporting and posting expenses

Expenses (single expenses, card transactions, and travel expenses) are posted to GL accounts. The integration can be configured to automatically post expenses to the corresponding ledgers or to create the corresponding entry in the General journal, so that the Finance team can post the entry manually.

Expense credit notes

Perk lets you post credit memos to Business Central (provided the option create credit notes has been enabled for the legal entity). Credit notes are handled as a credit memo in Business Central.

Expense receipts and attachments

You can choose to import expense receipts (and attachments) into Business Central. If you import receipts, they are linked to the corresponding general journal entry. The receipt (and any attachments) is made available in the Incoming documents tab for each journal entry. In addition, when the journal entry is posted, receipts are made available from the Vendor journal entry.

Processing invoices with the integration

Perk invoices are booked as purchase invoices (for non-PO invoices) and purchase orders (for PO invoices) for processing in Business Central as vendor payments.

Invoice documents are retrieved by Business Central as a base64 encoded PDF and attached to the purchase purchase/invoice. The document can be viewed in the Attachments tab for the purchase order/invoice.

The Perk integration can be configured to automatically post all purchase orders / purchase invoices as posted purchase invoices. Alternatively, finance users can post purchase orders or purchase invoices manually with the corresponding Business Central feature.

Business Central is responsible for all calculations of the net amount, gross amount, and tax amount, based on the quantity and unit price fields provided by Perk.

Caution:  If your Purchase Order card contains any required custom fields, you must manually update these fields in Business Central. Otherwise, an error may be triggered when exporting PO invoices from Perk.

In addition, you can decide to post journal entries on:

• Approval and export: standard invoice export flow
• Provisional posting: posted purchase invoice with payment block to prevent it from being taken in the payment run.

Installing the Perk Connector in Business Central adds an additional field Perk Payment Status to the Purchase Order and the Purchase Invoice cards in Business Central. Only invoices with Perk Payment Status Approved are considered in the Suggested Vendor Payments report/available for application. If the Perk Payment Status is not approved (regardless of whether you post on approval or provisionally before approval), the invoice is blocked for payment & application.

If you set up the invoice workflow for provisional posting (i.e. data sent to Business before it is fully approved) in the workflow designer in Perk, the Perk Payment Status is Not approved until the invoice is approved and exported from Perk, at which point the status is changed to Approved. It is strongly advised that you do not change the Perk Payment Status manually from 'Not Approved' to 'Approved' as this disrupts the coherence with the provisional posting concept.

Posting on approval and export

When the finance user exports the invoice (which may have been set up to be done automatically), Business Central fetches the invoice data from Perk, generates the vendor ledge entry, and books the invoice as a posted purchase invoice (for non-PO invoices) and a posted purchase invoice via the purchase order (for PO-invoices).

The Perk Payment Status is updated to Approved when the invoice exported.

Typical process in Perk

Note: the statuses given in parenthesis are the resulting state of the action.

1. Upload invoice (new status)
2. Adjust coding, if necessary. (draft status)
3. Submit invoice for approval, if required. (in approval status)
4. Approve invoice (in review status)
5. Review invoice. (ready for export status)
6. Export invoice (exported status).
7. Post invoice as a Posted purchase invoice on Business Central without payment block.

Provisional posting

When an invoice is created in Perk, vendor ledger entries are also created in Business Central, although posted purchase invoices are flagged with a payment block to prevent being taken by the Suggest Vendor Payments (339) report. When the invoice is approved in Perk and then exported (either manually or automatically), the Perk Payment Status is updated to Approved. Business Central removes the payment block flag and updates the vendor ledger entries.

If the invoice is rejected, you can set up Perk to automatically book a credit memo to offset the posted purchase invoice. You can choose whether you want Perk to automatically post credit memos or whether you want to handle rejected invoices manually.

Typical process in Perk

Note: the statuses given in parenthesis are the resulting state of the action.

1. Upload invoice. (new status)
2. Adjust coding, if necessary. (draft status)
3. Submit for approval (in approval status) and create posted purchase invoice on Business Central with payment block.
4. Approve invoice (in review)
5. Review invoice (ready for export)
6. Export invoice (exported)
7. Remove payment block in Business Central (exported).

If the invoice is rejected, then the posted purchase invoice with payment block is canceled in Business Central with a credit memo.

In this example, the invoice is provisionally posted after submit, but the workflow could equally be set up to post the invoice in Business Central after approval but before review.

Invoice document, VAT, and posting dates

When exporting invoices to Business Central, the Perk connector maps invoice dates as follows:

If no posting date is specified in Perk, the Perk connector takes the invoice issue date as the posting date.

Any due dates set in the Perk invoice are not reflected in Business Central since due dates are taken from the associated payment term.

Purchase credit memos

Non-PO invoice credit notes are exported to Business Central as Purchase Credit Memos. Currently, the integration does not support PO invoice credit notes.

Purchase Credit Memos can be automatically or manually posted as required (in the same way as invoices). Purchase Credit Memos are posted in Business Central with approved status when they are exported from Perk. If a credit note is recalled or sent back in Perk, there is no impact in Business Central since the Purchase Credit Memo is only created when the credit note is exported.

If you revert a credit note manually in Perk, you need to manually adjust the corresponding Credit Memo in Business Central. The integration does not automatically adjust any associated Purchase Credit Memos associated with a credit note in Perk.

Item charges in non-PO credit notes

For credit notes of non-PO invoices, usually line items are G/L account or fixed asset type. However, item charges may be used, although you must assign the corresponding receipt lines in Business Central.

Synchronizing master and transactional data

The integration allows you to manage all master data in Microsoft 365 Business Central and synchronize it with Perk:

• users
• dimensions (cost objects or custom fields)
• G/L accounts
• vendors (suppliers)

You can choose to synchronize all master data types or only specific data types (i.e. only vendors) as required. Master data synchronization is automated using jobs, however, you can also manually sync specific records directly from the card.

Users are synchronized directly from Business Central, creating Perk users in active or inactive status, as required. Perk users can be created from the Employee card. You can choose to import individual or multiple vendors/employees. Suppliers can be created from the Vendor card.

You can map financial dimensions (projects, departments, areas, etc.) as specific cost objects or custom fields in Perk, allowing you greater flexibility in your financial accounting setup.

Master data synchronization is automated using jobs, however, you can also manually sync specific records directly from the card.

Note: Users must have a Perk integration permission set in Business Central to perform synchronization tasks.

Caution: Tax rates are not imported from Business Central. You need to set up tax rates manually in Perk. Perk associates the business posting group and the product posting group in the tax rate, so that tax information can be successfully exported into Business Central.

For transactional data, you can configure how and when Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central sends purchase orders (POs) and purchase receipts (GRs) to Perk so it can be used to perform two-way and three-way matching with invoices, checking both header and line item data for any deviations.

Business Central displays information on which POs and GRs have been sent to Perk in the Purchase Order and Purchase Receipts cards, respectively.

User data

Users can be created in Perk from the Business Central Employee cards as required.

Reporting structure (i.e. line managers) is not replicated from Business Central. You need to set up reporting in Perk if you plan to use line manager approval (or a custom workflow that uses line manager approval for approval escalation).

Line manager threshold, delegates and assistants (if appropriate), assigned cost object, and language preferences must be set up manually in the user profile.

The Perk integration sends this information from Business Central to Perk:

Finance dimension data

The Perk integration supports the synchronization of dimensions. You can choose to link dimensions with Perk cost centers (object) and Perk custom fields. Since Perk supports only one cost center per line item/journal entry, additional dimensions can be associated using custom fields.

Dimensions that you may want to sync in Perk:

• Area
• Business group
• Customer group
• Department
• Purchaser
• Sales campaign
• Salesperson

For example, you can set up to sync the Business Central dimension values of Department as cost objects, and the Area dimension values Europe North, Europe North (EU), Europe North (Non EU) to the Perk custom field dimension Country, creating custom fields Europe North, Europe North (EU), Europe North (Non EU).

Caution: The Perk integration does not support hierarchical dimensions (i.e. hierarchical cost objects), meaning you can’t set up a parent cost object with child cost objects for department level reporting. For example, IT department parent cost object with Software, Hardware, and Licensing child cost objects.

Note: While financial dimensions (cost objects) can be used to approve invoices and expenses in Perk, you must assign the cost object approver directly in Perk once the cost object has been replicated from Business Central. The integration does not take approvers or approval limits from Business Central.

Dimensions as Perk cost objects

All active dimensions are automatically imported as active cost objects. If the dimension or the dimension value is blocked in Business Central, they are still imported into Perk as cost object but with inactive status. Approval limits, cost object approvers, auto-approval limits, and cost object delegates must be set manually in Perk.

Dimensions as Perk custom fields

All active dimensions are imported as active custom fields. If the dimension or the dimension value is blocked in Business Central, they are still imported into Perk as custom fields but with inactive status. Approvers for expenses and invoices must be set up in Perk.

GL account data

For every GL account, you can synchronize them as an invoice and/or expense category in Perk, as required.

The integration creates the basic definition of the category in Perk (name, description, account), but you can edit the categories once synchronized in Perk to display a symbol in Perk.

Supplier data

Vendors are mapped to Perk’s suppliers. Changes in the Vendor card are automatically synced with Perk. However, you can manually push changes from Business Central.

Business Central provides basic details for the Perk supplier:

• Address
• Tax ID(s)
• Bank information

Default supplier settings must be set up manually. Payment terms for the legal entity are not synchronized from Business Central.

Purchase orders

Business Central purchase orders are used in two-way and three-way matching in Perk.

With the connector, the Purchase Order card contains additional fields to track whether the PO has been created in Perk, the corresponding Perk purchase order ID, and the Perk Payment status.

The Perk Payment status tracks the approval status of the associated invoice. This field is used to determine whether a payment block should be applied to the Posted Purchase Invoice entry to prevent payment in the event you have set up Vendor Ledger posting on submission instead of posting on export.

The integration supports these lines in the purchase order:

• Items: standard order line items. These appear as Perk line items. Line items are posted to the GL account (via the posting group given in the Item card).
• Item charges: records the costs of handling items such as freight charges, loading and unloading items, custom duties, insurance, and other similar costs. These are tracked via custom fields in Perk. The posting account is derived from the item charge.
• Fixed assets: These are tracked via custom fields in Perk. The posting account is derived from the fixed asset.

Caution: Perk does not support resource and allocation account line types.

PO header data

PO line item data

Note: Unlike fixed asset and item charge line types, item type PO lines don’t include the GL account (invoice category). This information is not displayed or matched in Perk. The GL account is determined by the item’s posting group in Business Central and posting to the corresponding GL account is determined by Business Central when the invoice is imported into Business Central.

Posted purchase receipts (goods receipts)

Posted purchase receipts are processed as goods receipts in Perk.

Goods receipts are always associated to a purchase order and are used to perform three-way matching.

In general, item (charge) and fixed asset line item types are considered Non-GR line items in Perk. However, you can associate them to a posted purchase receipt, if required.

GR header data

GR line item data