Sustainability in Business Central

You never know when the right time is to start a newsletter for new functionality—whether it's from day one or after reaching a certain level of features. I decided to wait and, in the meantime, communicated through various channels. Now, we have more advanced functionality, and I would like to share more information about what we are doing, our future plans, and how you can influence what comes next.

Let's start by remembering how we began. Sustainability is an important topic for everyone who cares about the future of our planet. However, business and life don't always align perfectly. While proving you are "green" can make it easier to be chosen as a vendor in some cases or improve your marketing position, the most significant trigger for most businesses is when it becomes a regulatory requirement. At that point, it's no longer a choice but an enforcement. Personally, I care about the environmental impact because I want to leave a good place for living for my son and grandson. However, we needed bigger motivators for most companies, and this big motivator came to the EU with the name CSRD. Of course, there are other regulations globally, but this one will affect even small businesses.

Even though Microsoft has a great industry-specific solution—Microsoft Sustainability Manager—we decided to develop a simplified solution for SMBs, which led to the creation of Sustainability feature in Business Central. The Business Central sustainability solution can be used by companies of all sizes, but it is primarily focused on enabling SMBs to track their sustainability goals and be ready for reporting to authorities. If your company needs more complexity and features, we still recommend choosing Microsoft Sustainability Manager, as it can support even the largest enterprises. We are proud to offer solutions for businesses of all sizes and complexities.

Now, let's focus on what is available in Business Central related to sustainability. Currently, we are in the third wave of delivering new features. Let's look at what was included in the previous two waves.

2024 Release Wave 1

After extensive preparations for the strategy on how we would deliver this solution and how far we would go, we decided that the first wave needed to deliver a solid and stable foundation. The focus was not on features but on the fundamentals, creating a good framework for future extensions. The initial releases focused on measuring greenhouse gas emissions, primarily CO2, CH4, and N2O. We created a Chart of Sustainability Accounts, maintaining a similar structure to our financial accounts. We introduced Account Categories where users can configure which gas or gases they want to track and which formulas to use for calculations, as well as Account Subcategories for setting up emission factors. Sustainability Journals were the only place for posting emissions, allowing users to enter accurate emissions or information for the system to calculate emissions based on formulas and emission factors. Once posted, entries would appear in the Sustainability Ledger Entries. We also provided three reports (all with Excel layouts) and demo data for easier understanding of the module.

2024 Release Wave 2

The second wave focused more on adding new features. We enabled posting emissions not only through journals but also using Purchase documents to avoid double entry of incoming data. We introduced carbon credits, internal emission fees, and recalculations from different gases to carbon equivalents (CO2e). A new Sustainability Manager role center was created for those working primarily with these features, offering many KPIs and charts. We also added a new forecasting section with Scorecards and Goals, allowing users to use previous periods as a baseline but also to forecast future emissions. Based on your feedback, we enabled the use of multiple subcategories for the same account in journals and made other small improvements.

What's Next?

At this moment, I won't outline what will be delivered in the next wave—you'll have to wait a bit longer. However, I want to announce that in the upcoming newsletters, I will explain previous features in more detail so you can understand how and where they can be used. Additionally, I have some exciting news—a few minutes ago, the Sustainability app was published on AppSource here. If you accidentally uninstall it, you can always find it there and reinstall it.

I hope you enjoy this way of communication, and as promised, I will soon publish more details. If you have ideas, please add them as comments.