A business can run Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and still manage some of its most important trade processes in Excel, email and personal notes.
A creditors controller receives a supplier statement, compares it with the Business Central ledger, identifies a difference and begins an email trail. A debtors controller keeps a separate follow-up list for promised payments. Procurement knows that a delayed freight invoice or an exchange-rate movement will affect the true cost of imported stock, but that information does not always reach the people responsible for pricing.
None of these processes are unusual. The problem is that they become difficult to see, control and audit when they happen outside the ERP.
Braintree Trade Assistant adds four practical modules to Business Central: Vendor Reconciliation, Debtors Collection Management, Forward Exchange Contracts and Landed Cost. The modules are available individually or as a suite, giving finance, credit control and procurement teams a more structured way to manage supplier balances, customer collections and import-related costs.
When trade control lives outside the ERP
Most businesses do not choose spreadsheets because they prefer them. They use them because the daily process needs somewhere to go.
A supplier statement may not match the creditor ledger. A payment may have been made but not reflected by the supplier. An invoice may be missing from the business’s records. Goods may have arrived damaged, quantities may differ, or the price on the supplier invoice may be wrong.
The same pattern appears in accounts receivable. A customer misses a payment date. The credit controller calls, sends an email, records a promise to pay and plans the next follow-up. If that activity sits in an inbox or a spreadsheet, the business has limited visibility of what is happening across the debtor book.
Finance cannot easily see what is truly owed to suppliers. Management does not have a consistent view of aged debt or collection activity. Auditors may find reconciliation work difficult to follow. Supplier relationships can suffer when valid payments are delayed or disputed amounts are not clearly managed.
Trade Assistant is designed to bring those trade logistics and financial-control activities into Business Central, alongside the vendor, customer, purchase and inventory data the teams already use.
Department one: Creditors and procurement
For a creditor controller or accounts payable team, vendor reconciliation is the practical starting point.
A vendor reconciliation compares what a supplier says the business owes with the entries recorded in the business’s creditor ledger. It is the foundation for deciding what to pay, resolving differences and maintaining a reliable supplier relationship. It should be done regularly for active credit suppliers, not only when a supplier puts an account on hold or an auditor requests evidence.
The difficulty is that the supplier’s view and the business’s view do not always match.
The business may have paid an invoice that the supplier has not processed. The supplier may have issued an invoice that has not yet been captured in Business Central. There may be an unresolved dispute over damaged goods, oversupply, an incorrect price or a supplier rebate. Both parties can make mistakes. What matters is being able to identify and explain the difference before a payment is processed.
What Vendor Reconciliation adds
The Vendor Reconciliation module enables teams to match supplier statements against entries processed through Business Central’s Accounts Payable module. A practical workflow looks like this:
- Create a vendor reconciliation document.
- Load the unsettled entries from the creditor ledger.
- Match entries against the supplier statement, with the option to import the supplier statement from Excel.
- Add statement documents that are missing from the ledger.
- Flag disputed entries and record the reason.
- Apply deductions for withholding tax, supplier faults or rebates where appropriate.
- Calculate and process payment from the reconciliation.
- Produce or email the reconciliation and payment advice.
The benefit is not simply faster payment processing. It is a clearer, auditable explanation of the balance.
A procurement manager can see whether a payment is being delayed because of a disputed delivery or incorrect pricing. A finance manager can see whether the issue is a missing invoice, an unprocessed payment or a genuine creditor difference. Supplier conversations become based on a shared, documented position instead of a series of disconnected emails.
This is particularly important for businesses that rely on suppliers to keep stock moving. Slow reconciliation delays payment. Delayed payment damages trust. Damaged supplier trust can affect credit terms, priority allocation and willingness to supply when stock is under pressure.
Department two: Debtors and credit control
The debtor book is a different process, but the visibility problem is familiar.
Most credit controllers have a working understanding of their largest or most overdue accounts. They know which customer has promised payment, which account is disputed and who needs another call. The risk appears when that knowledge lives with one person.
If the controller is absent, leaves the business or simply has too many accounts to manage, the collection process becomes inconsistent. Follow-ups are missed. Promises to pay are not recorded. Management sees the aged debt balance but cannot see the action being taken to reduce it.
Trade Assistant’s Debtors Collection Management module is designed to structure that work inside Business Central.
What Debtors Collection Management adds
The module provides a debtors collection dashboard that shows the list of debtor accounts, including balance and ageing. This gives finance and credit teams a single working view of where the collection risk sits.
At a customer level, users can create a collection note that shows outstanding invoices and captures the relevant collection activity. This includes:
- Interactions with the customer.
- Reasons for non-payment.
- A planned follow-up date.
- The outstanding invoices that sit behind the account balance.
This changes the conversation from “Why has this customer not paid?” to “What has happened, what is outstanding and what is the next agreed action?”
For a credit controller, it means the collection history is attached to the customer process rather than kept in a separate spreadsheet. For a Finance Manager or CFO, it creates better visibility of whether the business is actively working its debtors or merely reporting an ageing figure at month-end.
It also supports continuity. Another authorised user can see the last customer interaction, the stated reason for non-payment and the next follow-up date without relying on someone else’s inbox or handwritten notes.
Where import purchasing fits
Trade Assistant also supports the teams managing imported inventory.
The Forward Exchange Contracts module records forward exchange contracts, links purchase documents to a contract and applies the FEC exchange rate to inventory receipts. The Landed Cost module supports the application of supplementary costs, including import tariffs, freight and foreign-currency costs, to incoming shipments.
For procurement, finance and inventory teams, this provides a more connected process. The cost of imported stock is not confined to the supplier invoice. Freight, duties and currency exposure can materially affect the final cost and the margin available on resale.
The value is not that every cost is known immediately. In import businesses, some costs are only confirmed after stock is received. The value is having the relevant purchase, currency and supplementary-cost information managed within the same Business Central environment, rather than spread across emails, bank confirmations and separate costing worksheets.
A practical review for finance leaders
If you are considering Trade Assistant, start with the work your teams already do every week.
- Review vendor reconciliation frequency. Identify how often active supplier accounts are reconciled, and whether the process is consistently completed and easy to evidence.
- Map common reconciliation differences. List the recurring causes: missing invoices, unprocessed payments, pricing disputes, damaged goods, oversupply, rebates or tax deductions.
- Test the payment trail. Pick a recent supplier payment and ask whether the team can show the reconciliation, disputes, deductions and payment advice without rebuilding the history from email.
- Review collection ownership. Establish whether all customer interactions, payment promises and next follow-up dates are visible to the appropriate finance and credit-control users.
- Look beyond ageing. An aged debt report shows the amount outstanding. It does not show whether a collection process is underway. Review both.
- Check the import-cost handover. Ask how finance, procurement and inventory teams share information about FECs, freight, duty and other supplementary costs.
- Identify spreadsheet dependency. Not every spreadsheet is a problem. The concern is a spreadsheet that acts as the only record of a supplier dispute, payment decision or customer collection commitment.
- Set process ownership. Decide who owns the reconciliation, payment, collection and import-cost processes, and who needs visibility when exceptions arise.
What Trade Assistant cannot solve on its own
Trade Assistant can structure the process, but it cannot resolve a supplier dispute, collect an overdue payment or validate incomplete source data without people taking action.
A vendor reconciliation is only useful if it is completed regularly. A collection note only improves cash flow if the follow-up happens. Landed costing only improves price accuracy if freight, duty and currency information is captured properly.
The technology gives teams a shared place to work and a clearer record of what happened. The operating discipline still belongs to the business.
How Braintree helps
Braintree starts with the practical workflow, not a generic product demonstration.
We work with finance, procurement and credit-control teams to map how supplier statements are reconciled, how payments are prepared, how collection activity is recorded and how import-related costs are brought into Business Central. We identify where the process relies on spreadsheets, individual inboxes or knowledge held by one person.
From there, we configure the relevant Trade Assistant modules, whether that is Vendor Reconciliation, Debtors Collection Management, Forward Exchange Contracts, Landed Cost or a combination of the four. The aim is to give users a process they can run daily, and leaders a view they can trust.
Talk to Braintree
Book a Trade Assistant Process Review with Braintree. We will assess how your team manages supplier reconciliations, debtor collections and imported inventory costs today, identify the points of friction and risk, and map a practical path to stronger trade control in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
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