How Dynamics 365 Business Central unified expense approval across an International financial group

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Customer: NDA
Industry: Finances
Technology: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

An international financial group brought expense approvals, source document processing and management reporting into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Awara IT delivered the global rollout across several countries where the group operates.

About the Customer

A financial group operating across several countries in Asia and the Middle East.

Before the Project

The group processes a wide variety of expenses every day, with each type of cost following its own approval workflow.

Management reporting was maintained in Excel, while data had to be manually consolidated from several sources. This resulted in discrepancies and errors.

The finance function was fragmented, preventing management from having a single transparent view of expenses across the organization.

Business Challenge

Bring approvals for different types of expenses into a single system.
Automate approval scenarios according to internal corporate rules.
Reduce manual entry of source documents by the accounting team.
Eliminate the dependency on disconnected Excel files and manual consolidation in management reporting.

Solution

The group already had positive experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, so the decision was made to roll out the solution across all countries of operation. Awara IT was responsible for delivering the global project.

Expense Approval Module

Awara IT developed an expense approval module with automated workflows. Since the customer's approval processes were based on its own internal rules, the standard configuration was not sufficient and the approval logic was extensively customized, including mobile approvals for users.

Source Document Automation

Document recognition was introduced for source documents. Multi-line invoices are generated automatically, while bank statements are imported into the system through bank integrations without manual data entry.

Management Reporting

Management reporting was moved into Business Central. Users still perform part of their work in Excel, but the resulting data is available directly in the system without manual transfer between different sources.

Results

The group now operates in a single Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central environment across several countries.
The accounting team spends less time entering source documents. AI-based recognition processes invoices and statements faster than manual entry and at a lower processing cost.
The approval process has become simpler for users.
Management reports are consolidated within one system without manually combining data from several sources.

Project Highlights

The key challenge was that the standard configuration could not fully support the customer's requirements for either expense approvals or management reporting. Almost every functional area had to be customized around the customer's own processes and requirements.

Azure AI-Based Bank Statement Recognition

A notable part of the project is bank statement recognition powered by Azure AI. This is Awara IT's proprietary functionality, already used by several companies to parse documents, invoices and bank statements.

The project continues to evolve. The next planned areas are budgeting and plan-versus-actual analysis within management reporting.

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