Business Central Has More Than You’re Using: What the Community Wants You to Know

Real talk — I’m in marketing. I’m not a Dynamics 365 Business Central power user by any stretch. But one thing I do get to do is spend a lot of time in this community, talking to people who know BC inside and out.

And one thing I keep hearing? So many users are only scratching the surface of what BC can actually do. Not because they don’t care, but because go-live happens, the day-to-day takes over, and nobody hands you a map to everything else sitting under the hood.

So, I started asking around, “What features do you wish more people knew about?” Here are the features and functions that kept coming up.

Saved Views: Seriously, Just Save the Filter

You know how you apply the same filter to the same list over and over? Customers, vendors, items — same filter, every single time. Saved Views let you store them so it’s just… there. It also gives you more screen real estate to see more data at once. It takes about a minute to set up. The community consensus: almost nobody does it, and almost everybody should.

Keyboard Shortcuts: The Thing Nobody Talks About Enough

BC has a ton of shortcuts. ALT+Q alone — opens Tell Me from anywhere — is a game-changer once you start using it. The community take: A one-hour team refresher on shortcuts could pay for itself fast. Most people just never learned them because no one made it a priority. And you still have favorites from Dynamics NAV, like using F8 to copy from the line above, which is a huge time-saver that is still there in BC.

The Tell Me Search Bar: It Does More Than You Think

Speaking of the Tell Me feature, most people use it to find a page. But type in a customer name instead and BC surfaces the customer record plus related transactions, contacts, and ledger entries — all at once. It’s way faster than clicking through menus. It’s right there at the top of your screen, and most people are leaving half of its value on the table.

Dimensions: The Reporting Upgrade Nobody Sets Up at Go-Live

This one came up a lot. Dimensions let you tag transactions with extra context — department, project, region, cost center — so you can filter and slice your financials without needing a separate GL account for everything. Is your team ever frustrated that reports don’t quite show what they need? This is probably the fix. It just requires someone to intentionally set it up, and that doesn’t always happen during implementation, which is a huge mistake because setting up Dimensions after go-live is no easy feat.

Cash Flow Forecasting: Already in BC, Almost Never Turned On

This pulls from your receivables, payables, budgets, and fixed assets to project cash position weeks or months out. It’s not a premium add-on; it’s built in! Yet, so many finance teams are still doing this in Excel. It takes some initial configuration, but if cash visibility matters to your business (and when doesn’t it?), this one is worth a serious look.

Bookmarks: Your Own Shortcut Menu

On almost any page or report, there’s a little bookmark icon. Click it, and that page gets pinned right to your Role Center navigation. If you’re digging through menus to reach the same report every week, this 10-second fix saves you time every time going forward.

The Bottom Line

None of these are hidden in some advanced settings menu. They’re all documented on Microsoft Learn, they ship with BC, and they’re just waiting to be used.

The pattern I kept hearing: Most users learn Business Central by doing their job, not by exploring the platform. This makes sense, but it also means there’s almost always a faster way to do exactly what you’re already doing.

I’d love to know — what underused BC feature would you add to this list?

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