Introducing: Sustainability in Business Central (2024 release wave 1)

Overview

The video explains why sustainability reporting matters for Business Central customers, with a focus on the EU CSRD regulation and the SMB segment. It separates the embedded Business Central functionality, aimed at SMBs, from Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.

It then walks through the first-wave foundation: the sustainability setup page, a chart of sustainability accounts, sustainability journals with manual or formula-based emission entry, posted ledger entries, and three standard Excel-based reports. It also shows the sustainability demo data module in the Contoso demo tool. The speaker describes this as a multi-wave investment, with regulatory reports and APIs planned for later.

Key points

• First wave focuses on recording and reporting emissions; reducing, removing and replacing are not covered in this wave.
• Tracks three emission types: carbon footprint, methane and nitrogen dioxide. The scope is extensible by partners and potentially Microsoft later.
• Each sustainability account has a category that defines the scope, which emissions are tracked and the calculation foundation. The chart supports heading, posting and totaling accounts like the G/L chart of accounts.
• Sustainability journals (standard and recurring) accept manual amounts or calculations (distance, fuel and similar) using emission factors defined in subcategories. Posting creates sustainability ledger entries, which feed the reports.
• Setup page options include unit of measure (with a separate reporting unit and conversion factor), rounding, decimal places, and mandatory usage settings such as country/region or responsibility center.
• Three standard reports: Total emissions, Emission per facility, Emission by category. Excel layout is the default, RDC layout is still available.
• Regulatory-specific reports are not included yet. APIs are announced for the next one or two minor releases.

Features

AL objects mentioned

As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

• other “sustainability journal” at 11:14
• other “chart of sustainability account” at 11:39
• other “sustainability ledger entries” at 12:19
• page 6221 “Sustainability Setup” at 15:07
• table “Chart of sustainability accounts” at 16:12
• page 6219 “Sustainability Journal” at 17:10
• table “Sustainability ledger entries” at 23:15
• report 6212 “Total Emissions” at 18:01
• report 6211 “Emission Per Facility” at 18:01
• report 6210 “Emission By Category” at 18:01

Not found in BC28-30: table “Chart of sustainability accounts”, table “Sustainability ledger entries”.

Quotes

• 2:59 “in European Union we have now CSRD Act. Uh if we start for 2024, it is starting with 2024 reporting in this year for”
• 4:48 “approximately 11,700 companies, a little bit more than that, are affected with this regulation. But with new regulation starting from the next year, more”
• 5:24 “difference between sustainability functionality embedded inside the business central this is for smbs and on the other side microsoft cloud for sustainability or”
• 5:50 “80% of our customers are in SMB, small and mid-size size. And for them, it will be too complicated to work in a different”
• 8:05 “they must track their changes from 2026, beginning of 2026. Now, when we talk about Business Central sustainability, let’s see what we can track”
• 8:30 “In total sustainability journal, we will start with recording, reporting, but reducing, removing, and replacing. This is full sustainability journal uh journal journey”
• 11:01 “In this release we deliver foundational part for sustainability, so everything will go much easier further because this is the most important. If you”
• 13:45 “sustainability functionality in general is pretty new for all of us, for us in Microsoft, but for you as a partner and customer, this”
• 15:18 “maybe it it will come in three years, depends from country to country and right now you do not know if you need to”
• 16:22 “you can determine which kind of scope you want to track with this account, then which kind of emissions you want to track there”
• 18:30 “RDC exist, but Excel layout will be by default. So, we are looking in Excel layouts much more serious”
• 18:40 “regulatory reports are still not here. This is something what will come in the future.”
• 25:00 “Our functionality is still not everything what we will deliver. So, this is multi-wave investment.”
• 25:35 “you all can expect very soon APIs, so you can easily connect with this solution from any outside solution”

Disclaimers in the video

• 8:41 preview: we are focused in our first waves to record and report. It doesn’t mean maybe we will not extend in some moment to maybe to even reducing with some ideas, with some recommendations, maybe
• 12:32 coming-later: we will add some uh regulatory reports as well. What we will have more on the top of that, it will come probably in next one or two minors, we will enable all these entities through APIs
• 14:17 other: this is not some regulation based. This is just demo. Just for demo purpose.
• 18:40 not-in-this-release: regulatory reports are still not here. This is something what will come in the future.
• 25:00 other: Our functionality is still not everything what we will deliver. So, this is multi-wave investment.

Presenters (as heard): Volodymyr Synchuk, Aleksandar Totovic, Alexander, Vladimir.