Automating Manual Tasks with Business Central

Automating Manual Tasks with Business Central

Many businesses spend far too much time on tasks that could easily be automated. From processing invoices and chasing approvals to updating inventory and reconciling bank accounts, these manual processes slow teams down and leave room for errors. Over time, they affect customer service, profitability, and team morale.

Automation is no longer reserved for large enterprises. Today, small and mid-sized businesses can leverage powerful tools like Microsoft Business Central to streamline repetitive processes, reduce errors, and empower teams to focus on higher-value work.

As an all-in-one cloud ERP platform, Business Central offers built-in automation tools that remove the need for manual data entry, eliminate approval bottlenecks, and connect workflows across departments. Whether you’re in finance, sales, operations or projects, automation in Business Central can help you save time, improve accuracy, and grow sustainably.

In this article, we’ll explore the real cost of manual work, the processes you can automate in Business Central, and how Wolfe Systems helps Australian businesses unlock the full value of automation.

The Hidden Costs of Manual Business Processes

Manual tasks may seem manageable in the short term, but over time they create inefficiencies that cost your business more than just time. They drain resources, increase the risk of human error, and reduce your team’s capacity to focus on strategic work. Even small inefficiencies — like entering the same data twice or waiting for approvals via email — can have a significant cumulative impact.

Common issues caused by manual processes:

• Delays in invoicing lead to slower cash flow
  
• Missed follow-ups impact customer satisfaction
  
• Errors in data entry result in financial discrepancies
  
• Time spent reconciling records reduces productivity
  
• Staff become disengaged doing repetitive admin work
  

In addition to wasting valuable hours, manual workflows create silos that make it harder for teams to collaborate. They also leave businesses more vulnerable to compliance risks, especially when approvals and audit trails are handled via disconnected systems.

With increasing pressure to do more with less, automation becomes essential — not optional. Microsoft Business Central addresses this challenge by automating routine tasks and connecting data across your business in real time.

What Can Be Automated in Business Central?

Microsoft Business Central is built with automation in mind. It includes a wide range of built-in tools that allow businesses to replace repetitive tasks with streamlined workflows — without needing advanced coding or third-party systems.

Whether you’re handling financial transactions, processing orders, managing inventory, or tracking projects, Business Central helps you reduce manual effort through intelligent automation features.

Key areas where Business Central enables automation:

• Finance – automate recurring journals, payment reminders, and bank reconciliations
  
• Sales and purchasing – streamline quotes to invoices, order approvals, and credit checks
  
• Inventory – automate reordering, movement postings, and warehouse shipment updates
  
• Projects – link time entries, automate billing, and set up milestone reminders
  
• Approvals – create rule-based approval workflows for purchases, sales, and expenses
  

Business Central also supports Power Automate integration, allowing you to build custom workflows across Microsoft 365 apps, such as triggering alerts in Teams when a new invoice is approved or automatically saving attached quotes from Outlook to SharePoint.

With Wolfe Systems, your automation journey is guided by local experts who map your business processes, identify time-saving opportunities, and configure Business Central to align with your goals.

Automating Financial Tasks for Greater Accuracy

Financial management is one of the most time-consuming areas in any business — and one of the most critical. Manual processes like data entry, invoice tracking, and reconciliation not only take up valuable time but also increase the risk of costly errors.

Microsoft Business Central helps finance teams work smarter by automating routine tasks and creating structured workflows. This reduces admin time and ensures greater accuracy and consistency across all financial records.

Financial tasks that can be automated with Business Central:

• Recurring general journals: Automatically post entries for rent, depreciation, and payroll allocations
  
• Bank reconciliation: Match bank statements with ledger entries and flag discrepancies
  
• Customer invoicing: Generate, send, and follow up on invoices automatically
  
• Payment reminders: Automatically notify customers about overdue payments based on defined terms
  
• Expense approvals: Route requests to the right approvers using custom workflow logic
  

For example, your business might set up a rule where any invoice over $5,000 is automatically routed to a senior manager for approval. Once approved, the system can post the invoice, update the customer record, and schedule a follow-up reminder — all without manual intervention.

At Wolfe Systems, we work closely with finance teams to customise Business Central’s automation features so they reflect your chart of accounts, approval levels, and reporting structure.

Sales and Purchasing Automation

Manual handling of sales and purchasing tasks often leads to delays, missed opportunities, and data entry errors. When quotes, orders, invoices, and approvals are processed across different platforms or by email, visibility is lost and communication becomes fragmented.

Microsoft Business Central automates the entire sales and purchasing workflow — from quote to cash and procure to pay — so that your team can respond faster, reduce processing time, and maintain full visibility into every transaction.

How Business Central automates sales and purchasing:

• Sales quotes to invoices: Convert approved quotes to sales orders and invoices in just a few clicks
  
• Order approvals: Set rules for automated approval routing based on thresholds, customers, or product types
  
• Purchase order creation: Automatically generate POs when stock falls below set levels
  
• Vendor tracking: Monitor supplier performance and automate invoice matching
  
• Customer credit control: Prevent sales processing if credit limits are exceeded or accounts are overdue
  

For example, if your team sends a sales quote through Business Central, the system can track when it’s approved, convert it into a sales order, allocate inventory, create a shipment, and generate the final invoice — all within the same workflow.

Wolfe Systems helps you tailor these workflows to reflect your internal sales and procurement processes, ensuring automation supports your team’s day-to-day reality without adding complexity.

Inventory and Warehouse Efficiencies

Inventory and warehouse operations are often among the most manually intensive areas of a business. Stocktaking, reordering, tracking, and fulfilment involve countless small tasks that, if done manually, slow down your operations and increase the risk of costly mistakes.

Microsoft Business Central automates many of these processes, helping your warehouse and inventory teams improve accuracy, reduce stockouts, and streamline order fulfilment.

Key inventory and warehouse tasks you can automate:

• Inventory reordering: Set minimum and maximum stock levels to trigger automatic purchase orders
  
• Movement posting: Automatically record internal transfers and stock movements
  
• Bin and put-away suggestions: Optimise stock placement based on product, size, and frequency
  
• Shipment processing: Automate the creation of warehouse shipments and pick lists
  
• Barcode scanning: Integrate with mobile devices to reduce manual entry during receiving and dispatch
  

For example, Business Central can automatically notify your purchasing team when inventory for a high-demand product reaches its reorder point, generate a purchase order to a preferred supplier, and track its arrival — all without manual input.

Wolfe Systems configures these features to match your warehouse layout, product flow, and stock policies so your team can focus on delivering value, not chasing paperwork.

Approvals and Workflows That Keep You in Control

Approvals are a vital part of maintaining control in any business — but when they rely on paper forms, scattered emails, or manual follow-ups, they become a source of frustration and delay. Microsoft Business Central transforms the approval process with automated workflows that ensure the right actions happen at the right time, with full transparency and accountability.

With Business Central, you can create approval rules for purchases, sales, payments, journals, and more — all without writing code. Approvers receive instant notifications, and once a request is approved, the system proceeds automatically.

Common approvals you can automate:

• Purchase orders based on amount, vendor, or department
  
• Sales discounts or special pricing approval
  
• General journal entries requiring finance oversight
  
• Payment runs that exceed set limits
  
• Timesheets or expense claims for project billing
  

You can even set conditions, such as sending a notification only if the purchase is over $10,000 or routing certain vendors to a specific approver. This keeps your controls tight without slowing down operations.

The result is faster approvals, fewer missed steps, and a clear audit trail of who approved what and when. Wolfe Systems ensures your Business Central workflows match your internal controls and compliance needs — so you get automation without losing oversight.

Time-Saving Tools for Project and Job Management

Managing projects manually — whether for internal work, client services, or billable jobs — often involves chasing time entries, reconciling costs, and manually preparing invoices. This slows down project delivery and increases the risk of missed revenue or budget overruns.

Microsoft Business Central simplifies project and job management with automation tools that connect tasks, time tracking, resources, and billing into a single streamlined workflow.

How Business Central automates project tasks:

• Job journals: Automatically post time, materials, and expenses to jobs
  
• Resource allocations: Auto-assign team members based on availability and role
  
• Recurring tasks: Schedule routine project activities and milestone reminders
  
• Progress billing: Generate invoices based on percentage completion or fixed intervals
  
• Budget tracking: Monitor project costs in real time with variance alerts
  

For example, if a team member logs time through a timesheet connected to a project, Business Central can instantly update the project cost, adjust the work-in-progress ledger, and queue the job for billing — with minimal human input.

Wolfe Systems helps businesses tailor project templates, reporting tools, and resource workflows so Business Central supports how your teams actually deliver work.

Integrating with Microsoft 365 for Seamless Automation

One of the greatest advantages of using Microsoft Business Central is its deep integration with Microsoft 365. This means your team can work more efficiently without switching between apps or platforms, while still benefiting from automated workflows and secure cloud-based tools.

By connecting Business Central with familiar applications like Outlook, Excel, Teams, and SharePoint, you create a seamless digital environment where your business processes happen naturally — and automatically.

Key automation benefits from Microsoft 365 integration:

• Outlook: Create and send quotes, process sales orders, and approve documents directly from your inbox
  
• Excel: Export and analyse live Business Central data with full refresh capability
  
• Teams: Send real-time alerts, approvals, and notifications to the right team members
  
• Power Automate: Build no-code workflows that connect Business Central with other Microsoft and third-party apps
  
• SharePoint: Automatically store and manage documents generated from Business Central processes
  

For example, your accounts team can receive a supplier invoice by email, process it in Business Central via Outlook, trigger an approval in Teams, and archive the final invoice to SharePoint — all with minimal clicks and no data duplication.

Wolfe Systems helps businesses configure and optimise these integrations to match how you work, ensuring automation enhances your workflow instead of disrupting it.

10 Manual Tasks You Can Automate with Business Central

To give you a clear overview, here are ten of the most common manual tasks that businesses automate using Microsoft Business Central. These tasks span finance, operations, sales, and projects — and each one saves time, reduces errors, and improves workflow efficiency.

10 time-consuming tasks you can automate:

• Creating and sending customer invoices
  
• Posting recurring general ledger entries (e.g. rent, payroll accruals)
  
• Reconciling bank statements with your general ledger
  
• Generating payment reminders for overdue customer accounts
  
• Approving purchase orders based on custom business rules
  
• Reordering inventory when stock drops below minimum levels
  
• Converting sales quotes to invoices automatically
  
• Assigning project resources and updating job costs
  
• Triggering notifications for pending approvals or document changes
  
• Exporting real-time reports to Excel or Power BI for instant analysis
  

These automations remove the need for repetitive admin work and give your team more time to focus on service delivery, customer experience, and business growth.

Wolfe Systems helps you implement these automations with minimal disruption and maximum impact — starting with the processes that will deliver the most immediate value.

Why Choose Wolfe Systems to Set Up Your Business Central Automation

While Microsoft Business Central offers powerful automation features out of the box, getting the most value from the platform requires a thoughtful setup tailored to your operations. That’s where Wolfe Systems comes in.

As a trusted Business Central partner based in Australia, Wolfe Systems helps businesses streamline their processes, eliminate inefficiencies, and unlock automation that delivers real impact. We don’t just implement software — we help you map your workflows, understand your business goals, and build a system that works for your people.

What sets Wolfe Systems apart:

• Local expertise in Australian accounting, tax, and compliance
  
• Business process mapping to identify automation opportunities
  
• Tailored configuration to match your approval levels, teams, and roles
  
• End-to-end support, from setup to post-launch optimisation
  
• Staff training to ensure your team is confident and empowered
  

Whether you’re looking to automate financial reporting, warehouse operations, or sales approvals, Wolfe Systems can guide you through the process — step by step — with a solution that scales with your business.

Let Your Team Focus on What Matters Most

Automation is not about replacing people — it’s about helping them work smarter. By automating routine and repetitive tasks, Microsoft Business Central frees your team from the busywork that slows them down and distracts them from strategic, customer-focused activities.

Whether it’s finance automating reconciliations, sales accelerating quotes, or operations reducing warehouse bottlenecks, every team benefits when your systems work in sync and your workflows run automatically.

The result?

• Faster processes
  
• Fewer errors
  
• Better decisions
  
• A more engaged and efficient team
  

If your business is still relying on spreadsheets, disconnected tools, or manual approvals, it’s time to explore a better way. Microsoft Business Central, paired with expert guidance from Wolfe Systems, can help you streamline your operations and prepare for the next stage of growth.