10 Things Manufacturers Need to Do Before a Business Central Implementation

The success of a Business Central implementation is usually decided before the project kicks off. Software rarely sinks an ERP project. Unclear goals, messy data, and a team with no time to give it do.

For small and mid-sized manufacturers, the stakes are high. You are moving bills of material, routings, inventory, costing, and your books into one system — often while still shipping product every day. The shops that go live smoothly are the ones that did their homework first.

We built a 10-point readiness checklist for manufacturers moving to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Below are the 10 points, why each one matters, and what you can do now to get ready.

1. Get Leadership Behind It and Build the Business Case

An ERP project needs an owner or general manager who actively sponsors it. When priorities collide — and they will — someone with authority has to say the ERP comes first.

Before you talk to a partner, write down the top three problems you want Business Central to solve. Maybe it is stockouts that stop jobs, product costs you cannot trust, or a month-end close that takes a week. Then define what success looks like 12 months after go-live, with numbers you can measure:

• Inventory accuracy
• On-time delivery
• Days to close the books

What to do now: Get a budget approved that covers licenses, implementation services, training, and a 10 to 20% contingency. Pick a go-live window that avoids your busiest season.

2. Build Your Project Team

The most underestimated part of any ERP project is your own team's time. Your partner configures the system, but your people know how the business runs.

Name a project lead who can give the project 20 to 40% of their time. If no one on your team has the bandwidth or expertise to manage the project internally, consider hiring a project management coordinator or a company that specializes in ERP project management. Then assign a key user from each department — sales, purchasing, production, warehouse, and accounting — to work alongside your project management resource. Key users take part in design sessions, test the system with real scenarios, and help train their coworkers.

What to do now: Free up time for your key users before the project starts, not after it falls behind. Tell your staff why the change is happening and what to expect. Decide who will own the system after go-live.

3. Map Your Processes

You cannot configure a system around a process nobody has written down. It does not need to be a polished flowchart. A rough outline of how work moves through your shop is enough to start.

Focus on three core flows:

• Quote to cash: from the customer's request to the payment in your bank
• Procure to pay: from a material need to paying the vendor
• Order to shipment: how a job moves from the sales order through production to the dock

As you map them, list the workarounds you want to stop — the extra spreadsheet, the double entry, the sticky note on the monitor.

What to do now: Agree as a team to adopt standard Business Central processes where they fit. Recreating every old habit raises cost and makes future updates harder. Customize only where it gives you a real competitive edge.

4. Clean Up Your Master Data

Bad data in means bad data out — only faster. Cleaning your master records before migration is one of the most valuable steps in the whole project, and your team is the only one who can do it.

Work through these lists:

• Customers: current, with duplicates removed
• Vendors: current, with payment terms and tax information
• Items: every item has a unique part number, description, and unit of measure
• Item type: you know which items are purchased, manufactured, or both
• Item costs: standard or average costs are known and reasonably accurate
• Chart of accounts: reviewed and simplified where needed

What to do now: Start with the item list. Duplicate or inconsistent part numbers cause problems in purchasing, production, and costing all at once. Your partner can provide guidance and data templates to load the cleaned data.

5. Get Your Manufacturing Data Ready

Manufacturing data is where most small shops have the biggest gaps. It is also what lets Business Central plan material, schedule work, and calculate true cost per unit.

You will need:

• Bills of material for manufactured items, with quantities and units
• Routings, or at least a list of operations and the work centers that perform them
• Setup and run times, measured or estimated
• Labor and overhead rates by work center
• Lead times and reorder points for key purchased items

You also need to decide whether you need lot or serial number tracking, and for which items. Customers in regulated industries often require it, and it is much easier to set up at the start than to add later.

What to do now: If your BOMs live in spreadsheets or CAD files, gather them in one place and check them against what the shop floor actually builds. Estimated times are fine to start. You can refine them once real production data comes in.

6. Get Control of Your Inventory and Warehouse

Your opening inventory in Business Central is only as good as your last physical count. If the system starts with the wrong numbers, planning will suggest the wrong purchases from day one — and people will stop trusting it.

Before go-live, make sure:

• You can do an accurate physical count close to cutover
• Storage locations, and bins if you use them, are clearly labeled
• You know how many warehouses or sites you will set up
• You have decided whether to use barcode scanning now or add it later

What to do now: Run a practice count on a section of the warehouse. It will show you how long a full count takes and where your labeling needs work. Consider using vendor barcodes or creating your item numbers as barcode labels to make counting easier.

7. Get Your Finances in Order

Business Central posts every shipment, receipt, and invoice to the general ledger automatically. That only helps if the balances you start with are right.

Make sure your books are reconciled and up to date. Choose a go-live date at the start of a month or fiscal period — this makes opening balances and reporting much cleaner. Decide whether you will bring over opening balances only or some transaction history. In most cases, opening balances plus open documents are enough, and you can keep the old system available for lookups.

What to do now: Identify your sales tax setup and any multi-currency needs. Document how you handle banking, payments, and collections today so they can be set up to align with your accounts receivable and payable processes.

8. Plan Your Technology and Integrations

Business Central runs in the cloud and works closely with Outlook, Excel, Teams, and Power BI. Your team will get more from it if you already use Microsoft 365 or are ready to.

Make a list of every system that needs to connect to the ERP. Common ones for manufacturers include e-commerce, EDI, CAD or PLM, shipping, payroll, and CRM. Each integration adds scope, so knowing them early keeps your estimate honest.

Don't forget the basics:

• Reliable internet in the office and on the shop floor
• Devices for production and the warehouse — PCs, tablets, or scanners
• A list of the documents you must produce: invoices, packing slips, labels, and certificates

What to do now: Walk the shop floor and the warehouse with your IT team or resource. Note where people will enter data and whether they have a device and Wi-Fi signal there.

9. Understand Licensing and Choose the Right Partner

Manufacturing features — production BOMs, routings, production orders, capacity planning, and MRP — require the Business Central Premium license. Not everyone needs a full license, though. Users who mostly view data or approve documents can often use lower-cost Team Member licenses, so count your full and light users before you request pricing.

Your implementation partner matters as much as the software. Look for:

• Business Central experience with manufacturers of your size
• References you can call
• A clear methodology and a written scope, timeline, and estimate
• A support plan after go-live

What to do now: Ask every partner you interview who will do the work day to day and who will support you after go-live. Ask other companies in your industry for referrals.

10. Plan Your Go-Live and Support

The first few weeks after go-live need as much planning as the build. Most manufacturers go live at the start of a month after a weekend of final counts and data loads, then spend a week or two adjusting.

A smooth go-live depends on four things planned well in advance:

1. Testing with real data. Run real orders, real BOMs, and real receipts through the system before cutover.
2. Role-based training. Schedule training for every user, built around the tasks they actually do.
3. A cutover plan. Cover final counts, open sales and purchase orders, open production orders, and opening balances.
4. Post-go-live support. Plan for 30 to 90 days of hands-on help while the team stabilizes.

What to do now: Put the cutover weekend on the calendar early and protect it. Make sure your key users and your partner are both available that week.

Where Do You Stand?

Most manufacturers start with gaps in several of these areas — and that is normal. The point of a readiness check is to find them before kickoff, when they are cheap to fix, instead of during testing, when they delay go-live and add cost.

Score yourself one point for each of the 10 areas you are confident is ready. As a rough guide:

• 8 to 10 points: You are ready to start
• 5 to 7 points: You should prepare first
• Fewer than 5 points: A discovery workshop is the right first step

If you would like a copy of the checklist, or want to walk through your results with one of our Business Central consultants, reach out to us at ASTC Solutions. We will help you create a phased roadmap that helps you start where you are.