Accountant experiences in Business Central
Note
Azure Active Directory is now Microsoft Entra ID. Learn more
Any business must do its books and sign off on the accounting. Some businesses employ an external accountant, and others have an accountant on staff. No matter what type of accountant you are, you can use the Accountant Role Center as your Home in Business Central. From here, you can access all pages that you need in your work.
Accountant Role Center
The Role Center is a dashboard with activity tiles that show you real-time key figures and give you quick access to data. The ribbon at the top of the page gives you access to more actions. For example, to open financial reports and statements in Excel. In the navigation bar at the top, you can quickly switch between the lists you use most often. Here, you see other areas, such as Posted Documents with the various types of documents that the company posted.
If you're new to Business Central, you can launch a list of videos right from your Role Center. You can also launch a Getting Started tour that points out key areas.
Company Hub
If you work in multiple Business Central companies, you might find it useful to use the Company Hub page to keep track of work. Learn more in Manage Work across Multiple Companies in the Company Hub.
Inviting Your External Accountant to Your Business Central
If you use an external accountant to manage your books and financial reporting, your administrator can invite them to your Business Central so they can work with you on your fiscal data. Business Central includes three licenses of type External Accountant. For more information about licensing, download the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide.
Once your accountant has access to your Business Central, they can use the Accountant Role Center for easy access to the pages for their work. They can also use the company hub in their own Business Central to manage their work. Learn more in Manage Work across Multiple Companies in the Company Hub.
It's easy to invite your external accountant. Open the Users page, and then select the Invite External Accountant action in the ribbon. An email is made ready for you, just add your accountant's work email, and send the invitation.
Note
This requires that you have set up SMTP email. Learn more in Set Up Email.
Important
The accountant's email address must be a work address that is based on Microsoft Entra ID. If the accountant uses another type of email, then the invitation cannot be sent.
This task requires access to managing users and licenses in Microsoft Entra ID. The user who sends this invitation must be assigned at least the User Administrator role in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Learn more in About admin roles in the Microsoft 365 admin content.
Add your accountant to your Microsoft 365 in the Azure portal
If your administrator or reselling partner don't want to use the Invite External Accountant guide, they can add an external user in the Azure portal and assign this user the External Accountant license. Learn more in Quickstart: Add guest users to your directory in the Azure portal.
Add your accountant as a guest user
Open the Microsoft admin center.
In the navigation pane on along the left side, select Users > Guest users.
Select Add a guest user.
You're redirected to the Azure Active Directory portal.
On the New user page, select Invite user and then add the accountant's email address and information about your external accountant.
Optionally, include a personal welcome message to the accountant to let them know that you're adding them to your Business Central.
Select Invite to automatically send the invitation.
A notification appears in the upper right with the message Successfully invited user.
After you send the invitation, the guest user receives an email invitation to join your organization. Once they accept the invitation, the user account is automatically added to the directory as a guest.
Next, you must assign the new guest user a license to Business Central.
Give your accountant access to your Business Central
In the Microsoft admin center, Users > Guest users.
Select the accountant's guest user account in the list, then select Manage product licenses to open the guest user profile pane.
Under Licenses and apps, select Dynamics 365 Business Central External Accountant license.
If this license isn't available, contact your reselling partner to add the license to your subscription.
Specifically for evaluation purposes in a trial tenant, you can use an available Dynamics 365 Business Central for IWs license instead. However, you can't use this type of license if you already purchased Business Central.
Select Save changes.
If successful, the license is assigned to the guest user, and the guest account is created.
Import the new user into Business Central
The accountant receives an email that notifies them that they have access to your Microsoft Entra ID. Next, you must give them access to the right company in Business Central.
To add the accountant to the right company
- Open the Business Central company that you want to give the accountant access to at https://businesscentral.dynamics.com.
- Select the
icon, enter Users, and then chose the related link. - Select the Get New Users from Microsoft 365 action.
This action imports the user account that you created in the Azure portal to the company. Learn more in To add a user in Business Central.
If you want to give access to multiple companies, then you must log into each company and repeat this process. Alternatively, you can update the permission groups for the accountant's user profile in Business Central, such as assigning them the D365 Bus Premium user group. Learn more in Assign Permissions to Users and Groups.
Related information
Finance
Setting Up Finance
The General Ledger and the Chart of Accounts
Closing Years and Periods
Work with Dimensions
Analyzing Financial Statements in Excel
Manage Work across Multiple Companies in the Company Hub
Work with Business Central
Setting Up Cash Flow Analysis