Business Central Finance: Features and AI Benefits for Australia

Business Central Finance is Microsoft’s mid-market ERP finance suite designed for Australian SMEs, combining local compliance, AI-driven automation, and deep Microsoft 365 integration in one platform. It goes beyond standalone systems by automating and integrating BAS, GST, withholding tax, ATO reporting, and Peppol e-invoicing, with EFT support for major banks. Copilot adds AI forecasting, reconciliation, and report summaries, as nearly every large ANZ organisation now uses generative AI, with 51% reporting employees save over an hour a day (Microsoft News, 2024).

This article explains how Business Central Finance strengthens compliance, cash flow, consolidation, digital finance, and AI forecasting. Then, we’ll compare it to legacy tools and outline its future-ready advantages for Australian SMEs.

Core Finance Management

Core finance management in Business Central delivers a compliance-ready general ledger, flexible chart of accounts, and automated budgeting that meet Australian SMEs’ daily and statutory needs. It centralises recurring postings, accounting periods, and cost allocations with precision, reducing reliance on error-prone spreadsheets.

Features like traceable postings, BAS-aligned chart structures, and approval workflows create both operational control and audit readiness. This foundation enables transparent reporting, scalable multi-ABN support, and efficiency gains, ensuring finance teams move from manual work to reliable, regulator-ready processes. See the general ledger setup page within Business Central in the image below:

Key capabilities:

• General Ledger & postings: Multi-dimensional posting, recurring journals, deferrals, reversals, and direct G/L postings keep books accurate and auditable.
• Chart of Accounts: Configurable structures aligned with Australian reporting needs (e.g., BAS lines, GST groupings).
• Budgeting & controls: Build and maintain G/L budgets, allocate recurring costs/income, and lock posting periods to enforce discipline.
• Operational guardrails: Preview posting results, edit posted documents with traceability, and use job queues to automate recurring tasks.
• End-to-end traceability: Source codes, reason codes, and related-entry lookups for every transaction.
• Audit exports: One-click exports of ledger data for ATO queries and external reviews.
• Policy enforcement: Approval workflows and user tasks to standardise postings and journals.

Outcomes for Australian SMEs:

• Efficiency: Automated postings and job queues reduce manual errors and workload.
• Transparency: Built-in reporting makes every transaction traceable.
• Scalability: The Chart of Accounts adapts to growing structures, including multiple ABNs.

This structured approach creates the solid foundation for advanced reporting and analytics, the next layer in financial transformation.

Financial Reporting and Analytics

Financial reporting and analytics in Business Central provide Australian SMEs with accurate, compliance-ready statements and real-time insights that support both statutory obligations and strategic decisions. Reports are designed to meet ATO requirements, reconcile GST and BAS settlements, and deliver transparency for boards, lenders, and investors. This ensures finance leaders can trust the numbers while using them to guide planning and performance management.

Users can find built-in financial reports in Business Central’s report explorer, shown in the following page:

Key capabilities:

• Ready-to-use statements: Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Trial Balance reconcile ledgers and expose discrepancies early.
• Regulatory-focused outputs: GST statements and reconciliation reports tailored for Australian compliance.
• Accounts receivable/payable aging: Clear visibility into overdue invoices and vendor obligations to manage working capital.
• Configurable account schedules: Custom views by business unit, dimension, or consolidated entity.
• Integration with Power BI: Pre-configured dashboards covering profitability, liquidity KPIs, budget comparisons, and receivables/payables.
• Role-based drill-downs: CFOs and managers can analyse data by project, subsidiary, or cost centre without IT support.
• Audit-ready trails: Change logs and export options to satisfy ATO queries and external reviewers.

Outcomes for Australian SMEs:

• Compliance: Built-in reports reduce the risk of late or inaccurate ATO submissions.
• Transparency: Automated reconciliation ensures every entry is traceable.
• Decision-making: KPI dashboards link finance to performance, enabling proactive strategy.

By unifying statutory reporting with advanced analytics, Business Central creates the base for automating receivables, payables, and wider transaction processing.

Accounts Payable and Receivable Automation

Accounts Payable and Receivable automation in Business Central Finance eliminates manual processing, accelerates cash flow, and ensures compliance with Australia’s BAS and GST obligations. Manual AP/AR creates delays and risks; automation instead captures invoices electronically, reconciles payments in real time, and provides clear visibility into outstanding liabilities and receivables. This structured process not only reduces errors but also safeguards businesses from penalties linked to overdue settlements and reporting gaps.

The following image shows the bank account card setup for Business Central users:

Key capabilities include:

• Invoice automation: Capture, post, and reconcile vendor bills and customer invoices without rekeying.
• Automated reconciliation: Match payments and receipts against open transactions, with Copilot support for bank reconciliation.
• Reminder workflows: Issue systematic follow-ups for overdue invoices, improving collection cycles.
• Vendor payment suggestions: Prioritise settlements based on due dates, discounts, and cash flow forecasts.
• Consolidation of accounts: Manage entities that act as both vendor and customer, improving liquidity planning.

AI-driven enhancements:

• The Late Payment Prediction extension uses historical behaviour to identify customers likely to delay, enabling finance teams to adjust terms or credit proactively.

Outcomes for Australian SMEs:

• Efficiency: End-to-end automation reduces manual workload and reliance on spreadsheets.
• Compliance: Ensures timely GST settlement and BAS reconciliation.
• Resilience: Predictive AI reduces exposure to late payments and cash flow shocks.

By embedding AP/AR automation, Business Central Finance transforms compliance from a reactive burden into a proactive, controlled process. This paves the way for deeper localisation and AI-driven finance.

Tax, GST, and Compliance for Australia

Business Central Finance delivers a localised compliance framework that automates BAS, GST, withholding tax, and ATO reporting for Australian SMEs. By embedding these functions directly into day-to-day finance, it eliminates manual workarounds, reduces errors, and safeguards against penalties. This integration ensures accuracy today and readiness for future regulatory change.

Below, the picture describes the steps to embed the invoice PDF into the XML setup:

Localisation highlights:

• BAS and GST automation with reconciliation and settlement
• Withholding tax setup and posting with audit support
• ATO-ready reports for GST and activity statements
• Payment Times Reporting (2025 roadmap)
• Peppol e-invoicing compliance

Generative AI adoption is already mainstream in ANZ, with 51% of decision-makers saying it saves employees over an hour per day (Microsoft News, 2024). Embedding audit trails and secure e-document workflows ensures that compliance data in Business Central remains reliable as automation scales.

By reducing manual effort and strengthening audit confidence, Business Central allows finance leaders to focus on strategic cash flow and cost control.

Cash Flow and Cost Accounting Control

Business Central Finance ensures robust cash flow forecasting and precise cost accounting, giving Australian businesses proactive control over liquidity and expenses. By uniting predictive analysis with cost allocation, it delivers the transparency required for compliance and competitiveness in volatile conditions. See the page of the Cash Flow Forecast Card in Business Central below:

Key dimensions of control:

• Cash Flow Forecasting: Goes beyond static reporting by analysing receivables, payables, purchase commitments, and GST/BAS obligations. Copilot enhances this with “what-if” scenario testing, allowing managers to adjust assumptions dynamically and anticipate liquidity gaps. This is critical, as late settlements can strain working capital.
• Cost Accounting: Allocates indirect costs such as utilities, logistics, and shared labour across projects or departments. Produces detailed statements by period, compares actual vs. budgeted expenses, and analyses variances. Inventory revaluations flow directly into the general ledger, ensuring accurate margins and compliance-ready reporting.
• Compliance Impact: Ensures liquidity for timely BAS/GST lodgements while providing transparent audit trails that satisfy ATO requirements and board-level reviews.

By linking liquidity forecasts with detailed cost control, Business Central Finance enables finance leaders to move from reactive oversight to proactive decision-making. This feature lays the foundation for multi-entity consolidation.

Multi-Entity and Intercompany Consolidation

Business Central Finance delivers multi-entity and intercompany consolidation by unifying general ledger data across subsidiaries into one auditable financial view. This capability is essential for Australian groups operating under multiple ABNs, where manual spreadsheets create risks of errors and compliance breaches.

The diagram below demonstrates the setup one example company used for three business units in Business Central:

Key capabilities include:

• Entity Consolidation: Combine financials from multiple entities, streamline statutory reporting, and prepare consolidated BAS in line with ATO requirements.
• Intercompany Automation: Generate and reconcile intercompany journals, invoices, and orders automatically, with elimination rules that prevent double-counting.
• Efficiency Gains: Reduce reconciliation time, improve accuracy of consolidated trial balances, and deliver visibility into profitability and cash flow at both entity and group levels.
• Compliance Support: Maintain audit-ready records for external reviews while aligning with Australian reporting obligations.
• Future-Ready Integration: Support Peppol e-invoicing (PINT A-NZ format), ensuring intercompany and external transactions meet evolving electronic document standards.

By automating consolidation and reconciliation, Business Central Finance removes administrative burdens and establishes a trusted financial foundation, enabling Australian enterprises to scale with compliance and confidence.

E-Documents and Digital Finance Integration

Business Central Finance enables e-documents and digital finance integration by embedding electronic invoicing, EFT banking, and Microsoft 365 connectivity directly into finance workflows. This ensures Australian enterprises meet compliance mandates, reduce fraud risk, and accelerate settlement cycles.

The screenshot below shows the Australia local functionality page for Business Central, listing feature availability such as tax, electronic documents (Peppol e-invoicing in PINT A-NZ format), and more for Australian users:

Key capabilities with details:

• Peppol e-invoicing (PINT A-NZ format): Enables secure, real-time invoice exchange for government contracts and B2B trade, eliminating paper delays and ensuring audit traceability. Microsoft confirms this feature is available now under Australian localisation.
• EFT integration with AU banks: Direct settlement through NAB, ANZ, CBA, and Tyro, aligned with Australian banking standards. Automated reconciliation and audit-ready reports support Payment Times Reporting compliance, which is also available now.
• Excel and Outlook connectivity: Import, analyse, and reconcile finance data inside Excel; capture invoices from Outlook and post them directly in Business Central.
• Teams and Microsoft 365 integration: Collaborate on approvals, workflows, and reporting without leaving familiar applications, ensuring transactions move quickly and securely.

By embedding these digital-first foundations, Business Central positions finance teams to adopt AI features such as Copilot forecasting and anomaly detection, transforming compliance execution into strategic insight.

AI-Enhanced Forecasting and Copilot Support

Business Central Finance delivers AI-enhanced forecasting and Copilot support by integrating predictive insights and automation directly into financial workflows. This transforms forecasting from a static, spreadsheet-driven exercise into a dynamic process that adapts with every receivable, payable, and expense posted. For Australian SMEs, it ensures liquidity visibility and proactive financial control in volatile markets.

See the Cash Flow Forecast Chart within Business Central in the following image:

Core AI capabilities include:

• Cash flow forecasting: Projects liquidity using real-time receivables, payables, and commitments.
• Bank reconciliation assist: Copilot automatically matches bank transactions, reducing reconciliation time.
• Report summarisation: Generates executive-ready summaries of balance sheets and income statements.
• Predictive budgeting: Suggests budgets based on historical data, seasonal demand, and growth patterns.
• Anomaly detection: Flags unusual transactions or payment behaviours before they escalate into risks.

These features are fully integrated with Microsoft 365 and Power BI, allowing CFOs and finance teams to test scenarios, monitor KPIs, and collaborate securely without IT reliance. Copilot further automates approvals, journal postings, and reconciliation tasks, ensuring accuracy while freeing teams to focus on planning.

By embedding AI into day-to-day operations, Business Central Finance positions SMEs to move beyond compliance and efficiency. It enables strategic agility, where finance leaders base decisions on predictive insights rather than retrospective reporting.

Why Australian SMEs Are Moving Beyond Xero and MYOB to Business Central Finance

Australian SMEs are switching because Business Central Finance delivers multi-entity control, AU/NZ localisation (BAS, GST, withholding, Peppol PINT A-NZ), and embedded Copilot capabilities that entry-level tools lack at scale. It unifies compliance, consolidation, and analytics across one Microsoft cloud platform.

Growing firms often stretch Xero and MYOB beyond their design limits: multi-entity consolidation requires manual exports, advanced reporting depends on third-party tools, and collaboration is disconnected from daily workflows. Business Central Finance standardises these needs by embedding company consolidation, intercompany posting, dimensional reporting, and Power BI dashboards in one system. Copilot for Business Central further automates bank reconciliation and financial summaries, while deep integration with Microsoft 365 (Excel, Outlook, Teams) ensures finance data flows seamlessly across the business.

For a broader look at its setup, our Dynamics 365 Business Central guide outlines licensing options, integrations, and feature depth tailored for local SMEs.

Is Business Central Finance more compliant than MYOB?

Both Business Central Finance and MYOB/Xero meet Australia’s core compliance requirements. The difference lies in how compliance is managed at scale. Business Central offers multi-entity BAS units, intercompany GST, Peppol PINT e-invoicing, and audit trails with approval workflows. With AI anomaly detection and Microsoft cloud governance, it ensures stronger assurance for complex Australian groups.

What makes Business Central Finance different from Xero?

Business Central is a full ERP: multi-entity consolidation, intercompany journals, dimensions-based analytics, native e-documents/EFT, deep Microsoft 365 integration, and Copilot. These features are beyond a single-entity accounting system. The article Business Central ERP For Australia: NAV Evolution, Pros & Cons with A Local Case further explains how the platform evolved from Dynamics NAV, including pros and cons specific to Australian businesses.

Which SMEs gain most from Business Central Finance?

Multi-ABN groups, inventory-intensive distributors, project-based services firms needing dimensions and WIP control, and organisations requiring governed e-invoicing and bank automation.

How does Business Central Finance compare with Dynamics 365 Finance?

Business Central targets small–mid market with faster deployment and standard processes. Dynamics 365 Finance suits large, complex multinationals needing advanced global finance and supply-chain controls. Both leverage Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and Azure. For a detailed comparison, Business Central vs Dynamics 365: Key Differences For Australia breaks down which ERP tier best fits each business type.

In conclusion, Business Central Finance outpaces Xero/MYOB with multi-entity consolidation, intercompany automation, dimensional reporting, and Copilot forecasting. Integrated with Microsoft 365 and Power BI, it unifies compliance, collaboration, and analytics, offering Australian SMEs a future-ready, growth-focused finance platform.

Havi Technology, a certified Microsoft partner, specialises in tailoring Business Central Finance for local compliance and growth. Book a consultation today to explore how we can future-proof your finance operations.

References:

• Microsoft News (2024). From hype to habit: Microsoft report highlights best practices for Generative AI adoption by industry leaders.
• Microsoft Learn. Financial management. Business Central