Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is one of the most widely adopted ERP platforms for mid-market businesses, and for good reason. It brings together finance, operations, supply chain, and sales in a single, cloud-based environment that’s relatively accessible to implement and maintain.
But Business Central, like most ERP systems, was designed to process transactions, not manage the documents that drive them. When your team is still emailing PDFs, manually attaching scanned invoices to purchase records, or chasing approvals outside the system, you’re leaving significant efficiency on the table.
Here’s how integrating a document management solution like Paperwise Symphony with Business Central transforms the workflows that matter most.
What Business Central Does Well (and Where It Falls Short)
Business Central excels at financial processing, inventory management, order tracking, and reporting. It provides a solid foundation for running a business’s core operations.
Where it runs short for document-heavy workflows: native document attachment is manual, users must find, scan, and attach documents to records by hand. There’s no intelligent capture layer, BC can’t read an invoice and extract the vendor, amount, and PO number automatically. Approval workflows are limited, complex multi-step approvals with conditional routing require customization or add-ons. Document search and retrieval isn’t optimized, finding a specific invoice from 18 months ago takes more clicks than it should. And version control and audit trails for documents are minimal compared to a dedicated DMS.
These gaps don’t mean Business Central isn’t the right ERP. They mean it needs the right document management layer alongside it.
How Paperwise Symphony Integrates with Business Central
Paperwise Symphony connects directly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, creating a seamless bridge between document workflows and ERP transactions. The integration is designed to be non-disruptive, your team keeps working in Business Central while Symphony handles the document layer automatically in the background.
The connection enables automatic document association (captured invoices, POs, and forms are matched to the correct BC record and linked automatically), bi-directional data sync (data extracted from documents flows into BC fields; BC data populates document templates), workflow triggers (document events in Symphony can trigger actions in Business Central), and unified search (documents stored in Symphony are searchable and accessible from within the Business Central interface).
Key Workflows That Transform with Integration
Accounts payable: invoice processing
This is where the ROI of a BC + Symphony integration is most immediately visible. The typical manual AP workflow, receive invoice via email, print, scan, manually key vendor code and line items into BC, route for approval via email, file the signed-off copy, can take anywhere from 2 to 7 days per invoice and introduces frequent data entry errors.
With Paperwise Symphony integrated: invoices arrive via email, fax, or scan and are captured automatically. Intelligent capture extracts vendor, invoice number, line items, totals, and due date. Extracted data is validated against BC vendor master and PO records for 3-way matching. Matched invoices are automatically coded and routed for approval based on configured thresholds. Approved invoices post directly to Business Central, no re-keying required. The original document is stored in Symphony and linked to the BC transaction record.
The result: invoice cycle times drop from days to hours. Data entry errors approach zero. AP staff focus on exceptions and vendor relationships instead of keystroking.
Purchase order and receiving workflows
When a PO is created in Business Central, Symphony can automatically generate and route the accompanying documentation. When goods are received, packing slips captured via mobile or scanner are matched to the BC receipt record automatically, creating a complete 3-way match (PO, receipt, invoice) without manual cross-referencing.
Contract and vendor management
Vendor contracts, certificates of insurance, and compliance documents can be stored in Symphony and linked to the corresponding vendor record in Business Central. Expiration date reminders ensure certificates don’t lapse, and any team member can access the current vendor agreement directly from the BC vendor card without switching systems.
One Paperwise customer in the transportation industry reduced AP processing time by over 75% within three months of integrating Symphony with their Business Central environment.
HR and employee records
For businesses using Business Central’s HR modules, Symphony can manage the full lifecycle of employee documentation, offer letters, onboarding forms, certifications, performance reviews, linked to the BC employee record and accessible with appropriate role-based permissions.
Sales order documentation
Customer purchase orders, delivery confirmations, and proof-of-delivery documents captured in Symphony can be automatically associated with the corresponding BC sales order. This gives customer service teams instant access to the documentation they need to resolve disputes, verify delivery, and manage returns.
The Technical Side: What the Integration Requires
The Paperwise Symphony integration with Business Central is built on standard API and web service connections, it doesn’t require custom development or modifications to your BC environment. Implementation typically involves configuring the Symphony-BC connector with appropriate authentication credentials, mapping BC fields to Symphony metadata schemas for the document types you process most frequently, configuring capture profiles for each document type, setting up approval workflow rules aligned with your existing BC approval hierarchy, and testing with a representative sample of real documents before go-live.
Most integrations can be configured and operational within a few weeks, depending on the complexity of the workflows involved.
Why This Matters More Now
As Business Central adoption grows and more organizations migrate from legacy on-premise ERP systems, the document management gap becomes more visible. Businesses expect their digital tools to work together seamlessly, not require manual hand-offs between systems.
The organizations getting the most from Business Central are the ones that have paired it with a dedicated document management layer. They’re processing invoices faster, making fewer errors, maintaining better audit trails, and freeing their finance and operations teams to do higher-value work.
Getting Started with Paperwise + Business Central
If you’re running Business Central and dealing with manual document workflows, the path forward doesn’t require replacing your ERP or rebuilding your processes from scratch. It requires adding the right document layer to the system you already have.
Paperwise Symphony is built to connect directly with Business Central, capturing documents intelligently, routing them automatically, and keeping everything linked, searchable, and audit-ready, without disrupting what already works.
Ready to see Paperwise Symphony + Business Central in action? Schedule a personalized demo at paperwise.com.
