Invite External User to Your Dynamics 365 Business Central

Very often organizations engage with external parties such as CPA, Auditor, Tax Consultants for managing financial activities like bookkeeping, managing financial reporting, auditing financial results, tax reporting for their organization. During such a time the organization requires an additional license for external parties apart from their regular business process users license. To avoid hassle of license and access, sometimes organizations need to bear additional cost for an extra license for ERP application.

With the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central release organizations can now invite external parties to their Business Central instance so they can work with their financial data at free of cost 😄

     Invite Your External Accountant to Your Business Central:

Once External Accountant has gained the access to your Business Central, they can use Accountant Role Center that gives them adequate access to manage organization financial transactions.To invite External Accountant we need to follow below mentioned steps: 

Open the Assisted Setup from Setup & Extensions

From SMTP Mail setup first we need to configure SMTP Server, SMTP Server Port and mode of Authentication. Here I have used Basic Authentication with my User ID & Password of SMTP server. Once SMTP Setup is configured, we just need to click on Invite External Accountant from Assisted Setup. Same invitation we can send from Users window.

While sending invitation we need to define External Accountant’s work email address that is based on organization’s Active Directory. If the External Accountant uses another type of email, then the invitation cannot be sent.

Once the invitation is sent successfully we get a confirmation message in Business Central and External Accountant (Email Recipient) will receive email message with Business Central instance link. External Accountant needs to accept the invitation for getting access to Business Central.

Behind the scenes, the accountant is added to your Active Directory tenant. Your administrator can verify that the accountant has accepted the invitation and is assigned the correct External Accountant license. The steps for doing this depends on the type of account that you use when you sign up for Business Central. This topic is based on the use of an Office 365 account, which uses Microsoft Azure Active Directory.

Benefits of the Business Central External Accountant License

i.            No extra cost of an additional license. Because this license is Free

ii.            Streamline communication between organization and external parties (CPA, Auditor, Tax        Consultants)

iii.            Improve control of the data and business

iv.            Limit errors and ensures the correct data entry, financial reporting, tax reporting

PS: This article is based on my best knowledge of the Dynamics NAV, any suggestions/feedback are welcome!

Thanks!

Jaymesh Shah