Personalized Reports to Customers & Vendors with Dynamics 365 for Financials

I’ve previously written about how a report can have multiple layouts/templates in Dynamics 365 for Financials. You can find that blog here. With multiple templates per report, we can assign different templates to customers/vendors which enables us to provide a personalized experience!

Let’s consider a scenario where, for some of the customers we want the Sales Invoice to include some special instructions, customer’s logo or any other information. For such cases, we can use the Document Layouts option that is available in Customer card and Vendor card pages to personalize the reports.

Document Layouts option enables us to select report templates for the recipients.

For example, report 1306 (Sales – Invoice) has 6 templates/report layouts out of the box. We can view the different templates by going to page Custom Report Layouts . Select any of the template and click on Run Report to view the Template.

Let’s consider customer Coho Winery in the demo databaseand they would like to receive an invoice from our company which includes all the shipment details like Shipment Method, Shipping Agent Code, Package Tracking No. etc.. Hence, For Coho Winery, we can assign the US Sales Invoice – Red template as it includes all the requirements of the customer.

In Customers page, find the relevant customer (Coho Winery) and click on Edit to open the card. Under Navigate tab, click on Document Layouts option.

In the Document Layouts window, select the values as shown below:

Usage: Specifies the report kind. The options are Quote, Confirmation Order, Invoice, Credit Memo, Customer Statement, Job Queue.

Report ID and Report Caption: Specifies the report that has to be printed.

Custom Layout Description: Specifies the custom layout that applies for this customer/vendor when the report is run or printed.

Use for Email Body: Selecting Yes specifies that we want to include the custom layout in the email body, when the email is sent from within the product to the customer/vendor.

Email Body Layout Description: Specifies the custom layout that is used in the email body for this customer/vendor when we send the email from within product.

With the above setup, we’re telling the system to use sales invoice template US Sales Invoice – Red for customer Coho Winery when the report is run and when a user tries to send the invoice to the customer through email from within the system.

To test this, let’s open the Posted Sales Invoices:

Select any invoice related to Coho Winery and click on Send Action . In the Send Document to window, select the Printer option as shown below and click on OK.

This opens the Sales – Invoice report with the template that we’ve assigned for Coho Winery:

If we select any other customer’s posted invoice document and print the report, the report will have a different layout all together (unless of course same template has been assigned to that customer as well :)).

We’ve also selected a custom layout for the email body when emails are being sent from within the product. Let’s select the invoice related to Coho Winery again and click on Send Action. This time, choose the Email option as shown below and click on OK.

This opens up the Send Email window with the entire report in the body of the report and a copy of the report as an attachment. We can click on OK to send the email directly from within Dynamics 365 for Financials.

Hence, Dynamics 365 for Financials enables you to create and manage multiple templates per report and use different templates for customers/vendors.