Spring Cleaning in Business Central How to keep
your ERP System
Clean and Efficient

Spring Cleaning in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Regularly and thoroughly clearing out and getting rid of old ballast is not only worthwhile at home. Spring cleaning is also a good idea for an ERP system like Business Central.

Because before you know it, a whole lot of data is accumulating in the ERP system. This in turn can lead to all kinds of problems: precious storage space is taken up, the general clarity decreases - and the administrative effort increases. In addition, efficiency and performance suffer, for example, due to longer loading times and delayed response times in the system. Use the springtime to polish your Business Central back to a high gloss. 🧹

Digital Dust Catchers: you should clean up here

What specific measures can you take in Business Central to avoid these problems and instead benefit from increased efficiency and system performance?

1. Check Table Information

First, check which tables can be cleaned up using batch jobs. There is a list of all tables in Business Central. To call up the list, enter “Table Information” in the search field and open the corresponding list. It also contains information on the size of the tables and the number of data records.

If you navigate to the Data Administration page from there, you will already find some standard actions via the “Actions” tab, which can be used to clean up different data (customized tables are excluded). For example, from there you can also delete blanket orders and service orders.

Clean up Change Log Entries

For example, it is a good idea to tidy up the “Change Log” table. Changes are documented there in a traceable manner, which helps to localize errors, investigate the causes of subsequent errors and promote learning. However, an overloaded change log in Business Central can affect the performance of the system.

Since BC 17, you can (automatically) delete entries in the change log using the retention policies. Interesting: you can not only clean up change log entries, but also other tables. Microsoft provides a list of tables for this purpose, which can also be expanded using customization.

To call up the list, enter “Retention Policies” in the search bar and open the corresponding page. There you will see the change log entries at the top:

If you click on Table Id 405, you will be taken to the corresponding data record. There, under “Record Retention Policy”, you will find predefined filters with predefined retention periods. You have the option of setting additional filters there.

Once completed, you can apply the retention policy manually or automatically.

• Manual: click on “Home” and then on “Apply Manually”. This will delete all expired records in the table.
• Automatic: if you activate the retention policy, an entry is automatically created in the job queue, which ensures that the data is deleted after the retention period you have specified. Note: the user under which the job queue is executed requires authorizations for the corresponding tables.

Don’t forget Customizations

If you have customized tables, it is also worth checking whether they can be compressed, emptied or deleted. Please contact your Business Central partner so that appropriate batch jobs can be created for you.

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2. Clean up Log Entries from Job Queues

You should also take a closer look at your job queues. Particularly if these are executed frequently, new log entries are created again and again, which take up memory space. It may therefore be useful to clean up the log entries of the job queue entries.

3. Delete or compress Historic Documents

In Business Central, you should also regularly deal with the historic documents that accumulate. You can delete or compress them.

Returns

For example, Returns can be deleted after they have been invoiced. When an invoice is posted, it is transferred to the Posted Purchase Credit Memo page. If you have activated the “Return Shipment on Credit Memo” check box on the Purchases & Payable Setup page, the invoice will be transferred to the Posted Return Shipment page. You can delete the documents using the Delete Invoiced Purchase Return Orders batch job function.

Blanket Orders

Blanket orders are not automatically deleted in Business Central if you have processed and invoiced all associated orders. You can do this using the batch job “Delete Invoiced Blanket Purchase Orders”.

Service Orders

It is advisable to delete service orders in Business Central automatically after they have been fully invoiced. If an invoice is posted, a corresponding entry is created. You can view this on the Posted Service Invoices page.

However, service orders are not automatically deleted if the total quantity of the order was posted from the Service Invoice page and not from the service order itself. You may have to delete these invoiced orders manually by carrying out the batch job “Delete Invoiced Service Orders”.

4. Using Date Compression

You have the option of compressing data in Business Central to save space in the database. With the compression, several old entries are combined into one new entry.

The entries must meet the following conditions in order for you to be able to compress them:

• They are from closed financial years.
• The “Open” field is set to “No”.
• The entries are at least five years old (if you want to compress data less than five years old, please contact your Microsoft partner).

To run the date compression:

1. Enter “Data Administration” in the search field and select the related link.

2. Carry out one of the following steps:

   • For an assisted guide to set up date compression for one or more types of data, click “Data Administration Guide”.
   • To set compression for a single data type, select “Actions” -> “Date Compression” -> “Compress Entries” and then select the data to be compressed.

You can compress the following data types using batch jobs:

• Finance Entries - General Ledger (G/L) Entries, Value Added Tax (VAT) Entries, Bank Account Ledger Entries, G/L Budget Entries, Customer Ledger Entries and Vendor Ledger Entries
• Warehouse Entries
• Resource Ledger Entries
• Item Budget Entries
• Fixed Asset (FA) Ledger Entries, Maintenance Ledger Entries and Insurance Ledger Entries

Under “Retain Field Contents” you have the option of specifying that the content of certain fields is retained after compression. Which fields are available depends on the data you are compressing.

These are always retained after compression (LCY stands for local currency):

• Posting Date
• Vendor No.
• Document Type
• Currency Code
• Posting Group
• Amount
• Remaining Amount
• Original Amt. (LCY)
• Remaining Amt. (LCY)
• Amount (LCY)
• Purchase (LCY)
• Inv. Discount (LCY)
• Pmt. Disc. Given (LCY)
• Pmt. Disc. Possible

Example: Vendor Ledger Entries

For example, you can compress vendor ledger entries from previous fiscal years so that there is only one debit and one credit entry per account and month. The amount of the new entry results from all compressed entries and the assigned date is the starting date for the compressed period - if you compress by month, it corresponds approximately to the first day of the month. Even after compression, you can still view the net change in an account in the previous fiscal year.

The number of new entries after compression depends on the filters set, the combined fields and the selected period length. There is always at least one entry. You can see the result on the Date Compr. Registers page.

5. Remove Data Records from the Media Table

The next function has only existed since BC version 23.5. Embedded images are stored centrally in the so-called media table. You can find it in the “Table Information” list under the name “Tenant Media.” As images often have large file sizes, this table can take up a lot of memory.

If, for example, you delete a customer that had an image included, this image is still retained in the media table even though it is no longer used, i.e. it no longer has a relation. This is also referred to as “detached media”.

In terms of storage space, it is worth deleting images that are no longer required from the media table. You can find the function for this on the Data Administration page under “Actions” -> “Data Cleanup” -> “Miscellaneous” -> “Delete Detached media.

6. Merge Duplicate Records

Duplicate records can cause confusion - both in terms of internal processes and for your customers.

You can use the “Merge” function to resolve erroneous duplicates. Merging two data records is always based on a customer, vendor or contact card.

7. Remove Outdated Customizations

You always have the option of getting rid of old customizations that you no longer use. This can benefit performance.

It makes sense to “dispose of” these old customizations beforehand, not only as part of spring cleaning, but also in the course of a cloud migration.

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When it comes to selecting customizations to remove, you can use the following criteria:

• Relevance: is there still a business need for these customizations?
• Redundancies: can the functions of the customizations be covered just as well by the standard?
• Old habits: are the employees who wanted these customizations back then still working in your company today?

This clean-up operation must be carried out by your Microsoft partner. Please contact them if you see a need for this.

8. Remove and clean up User Roles

Sort out Unused Users and Roles

Over time, user roles can accumulate in Business Central that are either no longer active or no longer needed. As each user role saves settings and data, this takes up unnecessary storage space. It is a good idea to check which users are no longer actively used and to remove or deactivate the corresponding accounts.

Clean up Superfluous Roles and Authorizations

It is quite possible that there are also user-defined roles in your ERP system that are no longer needed. If there are too many roles with overlapping authorizations, this can bloat the system. You should therefore standardize roles, delete duplicate or obsolete roles and remove unnecessary authorizations.

Spring Cleaning in Business Central: more Storage Space, better Performance and Efficiency

We recommend that you use the springtime to thoroughly clean up Dynamics 365 Business Central. 🧹 With the eight measures mentioned above, you have the opportunity to get your ERP system ready for an efficient financial year! And ideally, you should use the clean-up as an opportunity to tidy up the system at regular intervals. This will prevent so much data waste from accumulating in the first place. 😊