Dynamics 365 for Sales Configuration

In the previous activity, we explored the concepts and features of Dynamics 365 for Sales. In this step, we’re going to demonstrate how to configure various settings in Dynamics 365 when setting the application up.

Many of the settings that need to be configured can be found in the Power Platform Admin Portal. Here we will configure sales territories, default revenue groups, auto number settings, business closures, the fiscal year and currencies.

Sales Territories

You can improve sales potential revenues by creating territories for customers in market segments. These territories can be assigned to the appropriate salespeople to handle the sales and revenue opportunities for those territories.

Advantages of setting up sales territories include:

• Improved sales potential because the member of the territory is focused on the services or sales within a specified territory
• Simplified business analysis by associating territories and its members to the fiscal year
• The ability to define sales methodologies and training required based on the sales territory types and sizes.

Although territory implies geographical segments, it can also apply to many other organisational reasons. Unlike business units that segregate users and data based on security and teams that can own and interact with shared data, territories are organisation for convenience, not for security.

Default Revenue Groups

Dynamics 365 for Sales make provision for two types of revenue: estimated revenue and actual revenue. The estimated revenue is system calculated but it can be overwritten and the user can provide the revenue data.

You can lock revenue editing in the form if you want to prevent users from selecting something other than the estimated revenue. This setting is however not found in the group or other settings, but rather in the entity definition of the opportunity entity.

Auto Number Settings

The auto-number settings in Dynamics 365 for Sales allows you to change the settings for quotes, orders and invoices, and you can change prefixes and the length of suffixes.

You can also add auto-number attributes for an entity and you can add attributes programmatically.

Fiscal Year

Organisations use sales goals to track and report on sales performance. To set your sales goals up correctly in Dynamics 365 for Sales, you will need to specify the fiscal year that you want to measure your goals against.

In the fiscal year settings, you can specify the start date for the fiscal year as well as various periods, such as quarters, annual, semiannual and monthly or four week periods.

Once you have set up your fiscal year options, you can change the options if required but will need to validate any dependencies that will be affected by the changes.

Currencies

Multiple Currencies

Dynamics 365 for Sales provides you with the option to transact in multiple currencies. It provides currency records to manage conversion rates. Your currency records are linked with your product catalogue and sales process flow and tracks pricing as it relates to transactions.

The multicurrency functionality within Dynamics 365 for Sales tracks all transactions in a base currency for easy roll-up reporting and analysis. The transactional currency settings that you can configure include the currency type, code, name, precision or number of decimal places, symbol and the conversion.

It is important to remember that the exchange rate is intended as a point in time reference to the base currency. If you require true and accurate exchange rates, you can interact with a third-party service for assistance.

Transaction Currency

Within Dynamics 365 for Sales, records can be associated with its own currency. This is referred to as transaction currency. This means that you can perform financial transactions such as opportunities, quotes, orders and invoices in multiple currencies and choose the relevant currency when the fiscal transaction occurs.

Base Currency

You have the functionality to aggregate, compare and analyse records in different transaction currencies in a single currency using an exchange rate. This is known as the base currency and is the first currency that is defined for the organisation. Exchange rates are defined based to associate with the base currency and transaction currency.

The base currency is the currency in which other currencies are quoted, and the exchange rate is the value of the transaction currency equal to one base currency.

By using the transaction currency properties, you can:

• Select the currency in which you want to define and transact the opportunities, quotes, orders and invoices
• Define currency exchange rates relative to the base currency
• Define transaction currency and an exchange rate to associate the base currency with the transaction currency
• Capture the value of the transaction in the base currency, the transaction currency and all financial transactions
• Define product priceless for each currency

Goals

Dynamics 365 for Sales uses two record types known as goal metrics and goals. These record types combine to provide a powerful, flexible set of goal management features. Goal management allows organisations to track individual, team and organisation progress towards specific goals.

Goal Metrics

To set up goals, you first have to define goal metrics. You can use goal metrics to specify:

• The type of data in which the goal is defined
• The record type and field for which goal targets are entered and actual and in-progress values are tracked
• The goal metric for the opportunity record

Goal Creation

After goal metrics are defined, you can create goals.

Goals contain more specific information than goal metrics and include:

• The goal metric on which the goal is based
• The goal owner, user or team to which the goal is assigned
• The fiscal period for which the goal is created
• The target value of the goal for the financial period