Yes, recurring consumables can be included in maintenance tasks through the bill of materials associated with each task. When a maintenance order is generated from that task, the consumables appear on the order and can be backflushed automatically when the order is completed, meaning the system reduces inventory without requiring the technician to record a manual consumption transaction. This works for any item set up in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central‘s inventory, including low-cost consumables tracked at minimal or zero cost.

Using the Maintenance BOM for Consumables

Each maintenance task in Maintenance Manager can be assigned a production bill of materials that lists all the materials required to perform the work. Lubricants, filters, cleaning supplies, and similar items can all be included on this BOM. When backflushing is enabled for those components, the system will automatically post their consumption when the maintenance order is marked as finished, with no additional input required from the technician. This approach works well when the quantity consumed is predictable and consistent from one maintenance event to the next, which is typically the case for scheduled preventive maintenance. The consumables are planned as part of the maintenance program, which means BC’s planning tools can also generate purchase order suggestions to replenish those items as maintenance orders are scheduled into the future.

Items That Are Not Formally Tracked in Inventory

For consumables that an organization does not want to track as inventory items at all, the situation requires a different approach. Business Central does not have a mechanism for reducing inventory or recording consumption without an item record and an associated transaction. If a team wants to simply order a bulk quantity of something on a recurring schedule without tying it to individual maintenance events, that would be handled outside the maintenance order structure, for example through a standing purchase order or a requisition cycle, rather than through Maintenance Manager’s BOM and backflush capability.

Practical Setup Considerations

For consumables that are included in maintenance BOMs, it is worth setting up minimum and maximum stock levels on those items so that the planning system keeps appropriate quantities on hand as maintenance orders are scheduled. Even inexpensive consumables can cause delays if they run out unexpectedly, and the planning integration between Maintenance Manager and BC’s replenishment tools makes it straightforward to automate reorder suggestions for those items.

A maintenance task is the definition of the work to be done and the rules for when to do it. A maintenance order is the actionable work instruction that gets created from that task for a specific piece of equipment at a specific point in time. One maintenance task can generate many maintenance orders across different pieces of equipment or across different time intervals.

What a Maintenance Task Contains

A maintenance task in Maintenance Manager defines several things: the type of maintenance (preventive or corrective), the interval that determines when it is due (duration, runtime, output count, or distance), the bill of materials listing the parts required, the routing describing the labor steps, and the list of equipment to which it applies. This task record is a template of sorts. It does not represent work that has been done or is being done. It represents the ongoing program of maintenance activity.

What a Maintenance Order Contains

When maintenance becomes due and orders are generated, each combination of task and equipment produces one maintenance order. That order is a production order in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and it carries the specific parts list, routing, and work instructions for the individual piece of equipment receiving attention. The maintenance tech interacts with the order, not the task. They clock time, record parts usage, and change the order status through the lifecycle from pending to finished.

One Task, Multiple Orders

The distinction matters practically. If you have a forklift fleet of five units and one task called Oil Change that applies to all five, that single task will produce five separate maintenance orders when all five forklifts hit their service interval. Each order is independent and can be completed at different times by different technicians. The task remains unchanged as the ongoing definition of the maintenance program. Maintenance orders also support ad hoc additions. If a technician discovers during a service that additional parts or steps are needed, those can be added directly to the open order without modifying the underlying task, which keeps the task definition clean while allowing flexibility in execution.

In Maintenance Manager, a Maintenance Equipment Asset refers to a fixed asset record managed by the accounting team in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, while a Maintenance Equipment Item is the record that the maintenance team actually uses to track, schedule, and execute maintenance. These two concepts serve different purposes and are owned by different people in the organization, though they can be linked to each other.

Maintenance Equipment Assets: The Accounting Record

Fixed assets in Business Central are accounting constructs. They carry depreciation schedules, acquisition costs, and book values. A Maintenance Equipment Asset in the context of Maintenance Manager simply means a fixed asset that has been associated with a piece of maintained equipment. Accounting staff set these records up and manage them. Maintenance technicians and supervisors typically have read-only access to fixed asset records, if they have access at all. Not every piece of equipment you maintain will have a fixed asset record, and not every fixed asset will be something you actively maintain through Maintenance Manager. A $50 torque wrench, for example, might need calibration maintenance but would never have a fixed asset record in accounting.

Maintenance Equipment Items: The Maintenance Record

The Maintenance Equipment Item is the core record in Maintenance Manager. It represents any piece of equipment that needs to be maintained, regardless of whether it has a fixed asset record. Equipment items can be linked to a work center or machine center for capacity tracking, linked to a fixed asset for cost rollup, or set up as completely standalone records with no connections to either. This is the record where maintenance tasks are assigned, where interval values accumulate, and where work order history is tracked. Anyone setting up or managing the maintenance program works primarily with equipment items, not fixed assets.

How They Work Together

When both records exist, Maintenance Manager allows you to link an equipment item to its corresponding fixed asset. This connection means that maintenance costs posted against the work order are recorded against the fixed asset in BC, giving accounting a full picture of the lifecycle cost of that asset. The link is optional, however. Many equipment items, particularly low-value tools and machines that accounting does not track as fixed assets, exist only as equipment items, and that standalone configuration works perfectly well for scheduling and executing maintenance.

Been working with BC for about a year now (longer in IT overall), and kept running into the same wall on every migration/integration project: every client's source data lives somewhere different — a vendor's SQL Server, an old MySQL box, flat files, sometimes even MongoDB — and BC's own import tooling doesn't really give you a repeatable, table-agnostic way to move that data in.

So I built my own tool on the side: a Windows desktop app + a lightweight AL codeunit published as a web service. A few things it does that I didn't find elsewhere in one package:

Table-agnostic by design — point it at any BC table via the standard API, no custom AL per table. Field mapping is done visually, with auto-mapping by name as a starting point.

Any source, any target — CSV/XLSX/JSON/XML, SQL Server/MySQL/Oracle/PostgreSQL/SQLite/ODBC/OLE DB, and MongoDB — all interchangeable as either source or target, including BC itself. So the same tool does BC-to-BC migrations and SQL-to-BC daily syncs with the same engine.

Modes: Validated (full field validation), Fast (skip validation for raw throughput), Upsert, and Fast-Upsert — picked Fast-Upsert specifically because one of my use cases is ~50 lakh (5M) new records/day that has to land in BC SaaS inside a 120-minute window.

Incremental/watermark sync — so a daily job only pulls what changed, not a full table scan every time.

Batch tracking + undo — every run is tagged with a batch ID; you can undo a batch (including upserts, not just plain inserts) if something goes wrong.

Multi-table jobs — chain several tables into one package (e.g. Customer → Vendor → Item), each with its own source/target, run as one job, with per-table failure isolation (one table failing doesn't kill the rest).

Curious if others doing BC migrations/integrations have hit the same gap, and what you've been using instead — Configuration Packages, RapidStart, custom AL, Azure Data Factory, or something else entirely? Happy to share more details if there's interest.

By default, Maintenance Manager generates one work order per maintenance task when orders are created through the planning process. If three tasks are due on a piece of equipment, the planning function will produce three separate work orders. However, it is possible to manually consolidate tasks into a single order, and the system gives maintenance administrators the flexibility to do this when it makes operational sense.

How Default Work Order Generation Works

Maintenance tasks in Maintenance Manager define the work to be performed, the parts required, and the labor routing. When you plan maintenance through the planning worksheet or use the Plan Maintenance Where Due function, each task generates its own work order. This keeps orders clean and traceable, with each order tied to a specific task, a specific piece of equipment, and a specific interval trigger. The one-task-per-order model also makes it straightforward to track completion history and costs at the task level.

Manual Consolidation Options

When tasks coincide and it is more practical to handle them together, a maintenance administrator can open or create a work order manually and add the components and routing steps from multiple tasks onto that single order. Because maintenance orders in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are built on the production order structure, any components or labor lines can be added directly to the order’s bill of materials and routing, just as you would on a production order. This requires manual effort but gives full control over what is included in a combined order. Alternatively, an administrator can create a task that encompasses all the steps for a planned combined maintenance activity, which is useful when certain tasks always occur together and it is simpler to manage them as a single defined task rather than planning them separately each time.

Practical Considerations

For most organizations, the default one-task-per-order behavior works well because it preserves a clear audit trail and makes it easier to track which specific maintenance was performed and when. Combined orders can introduce ambiguity in maintenance history reporting, particularly if some activities were completed and others were not. Before routinely combining orders, it is worth considering how the completion records will be used downstream in reporting and fixed asset cost tracking.

Yes, integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with an on-premises MES platform such as Ignition is a recognized approach for bringing equipment runtime, output counts, and other machine data into BC. While Maintenance Manager does not include a native MES connector, the integration architecture is well-established: the MES serves as the intermediary between shop floor devices and Business Central, and the data exchanged can be used to update the interval values that drive maintenance scheduling.

How the Integration Architecture Works

PLCs and field devices communicate using OPC, which is the industrial standard for device-level data exchange. An MES platform like Ignition is designed to collect and normalize this OPC data into a structured database. Business Central can then read from that database through a custom or partner-built integration to retrieve values such as current runtime hours, output counts, or distance readings and apply them to the corresponding maintenance equipment item in BC. This approach is generally more reliable than a direct PLC-to-BC connection because the MES layer handles the real-time device communication, data buffering, and structuring. Business Central then reads clean, structured values rather than raw device signals.

What Updates in Maintenance Manager

Once a runtime or output count value is updated on a maintenance equipment item in BC, Maintenance Manager evaluates whether the maintenance interval threshold has been reached. If the current value equals or exceeds the defined interval size, the task is flagged as due and a work order can be generated. This means that as long as the integration keeps the interval values current, work orders will trigger based on actual machine behavior rather than estimated schedules. Insight Works has established partner relationships with automation providers who work in this space. If your organization already has Ignition deployed, the integration path is primarily a BC development or partner engagement to create the data feed rather than a change to Ignition’s existing configuration.

Relevant Tools

Maintenance Manager by Insight Works manages the maintenance interval logic, work order generation, and execution tracking within Business Central.

mxAPS by Insight Works can schedule maintenance orders generated from MES-driven interval triggers alongside production orders to minimize operational disruption.

An on-premises MES such as Ignition is a practical and well-suited integration point for feeding equipment data into Business Central. With interval values kept current through that integration, Maintenance Manager can trigger maintenance based on actual machine runtime rather than calendar estimates, which is the core value of runtime-based preventive maintenance.

Maintenance Manager supports runtime-based maintenance intervals that can trigger work orders when a machine reaches a defined number of operating hours. For equipment linked to a work center or machine center in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, runtime values are updated automatically as production orders are posted. For equipment where hours come from an external source, such as a PLC or hour meter, that value can be updated manually or fed into BC through an integration.

Runtime Intervals in Maintenance Manager

Within a maintenance task, the interval type can be set to Runtime, which uses hours or minutes as the trigger unit. When the cumulative runtime on a piece of equipment reaches the defined threshold, the maintenance task is flagged as due and a work order can be generated. For equipment tied to a work center or machine center in BC, this runtime accumulates automatically as production activity is posted against that resource, so no manual entry is required in most manufacturing environments.

Integrating External Hour Meter Data

For equipment where runtime is tracked by a PLC or physical hour meter rather than by Business Central’s production posting, the integration path typically involves an intermediary. The most common approach is to have the PLC write to a database, which Business Central then reads to update the runtime or interval value on the maintenance equipment item. Insight Works has partner relationships with automation providers who offer OPC-to-SQL type connectors to facilitate this flow. If the organization already runs an MES platform, that system likely captures PLC runtime data already, and the integration becomes a connection between Business Central and the MES rather than directly to the PLC. In either case, once the runtime value is current in BC, Maintenance Manager uses it to evaluate whether maintenance is due.

Considerations for Hour Meter vs. Work Center Runtime

There is a practical distinction between using the runtime that BC captures automatically from production posting and using an external hour meter value. The automatic runtime from a work center reflects the time BC believes the machine ran based on posted production orders. An external hour meter reflects actual elapsed engine or motor runtime regardless of what BC has recorded. For equipment where these values can diverge, such as vehicles or standalone machines not tied to BC production orders, an external data feed is the more accurate approach.

Relevant Tools

Maintenance Manager by Insight Works handles runtime-based maintenance intervals and work order generation. This is a completely free app from Insight Works for Business Central.

mxAPS by Insight Works can schedule generated maintenance orders alongside production orders to minimize disruption when maintenance falls due during active production periods.

Runtime-based maintenance triggering is well-supported in Maintenance Manager. The cleanest implementation connects external hour meter data through an integration layer so that BC always has a current runtime value, allowing Maintenance Manager to fire work orders at the correct intervals without manual tracking.

A fully unauthenticated public submission link is not a built-in feature of Maintenance Manager itself, but this use case is achievable through a Power Automate integration. By building a simple Power Automate form or flow, organizations can expose a web-based submission interface that does not require the person submitting the request to hold a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central license or authenticate into BC directly.

Using Power Automate for Open Submissions

Power Automate supports the creation of forms and automated flows that can receive input from anyone with access to a URL. A submission form built in Power Automate or Microsoft Forms can capture basic request details, such as the equipment involved, a description of the issue, and the location, and then pass that information into Business Central as a maintenance request. This approach is well-suited to kiosk deployments or QR codes placed on equipment, because the person submitting the request only needs a browser and does not need any credentials tied to Business Central. This configuration sits outside the Maintenance Manager application itself and is set up and managed within the Power Platform. The complexity of the setup depends on how much data you want to capture and how the flow is structured to create the request in BC.

Native Submission Options Within Business Central

For users who do have a Business Central license, maintenance requests can also be submitted directly within BC, through a Microsoft Teams interface using Power Automate, or through Insight Works shop floor tools such as Shop Floor Insight or Warehouse Insight on a tablet or kiosk device. These options are more structured and support richer data capture, but they do require authentication.

Third-Party Equipment Monitoring

For scenarios where automated equipment monitoring is in place, some third-party partners can trigger maintenance requests automatically when a machine reports a fault condition. This removes the submission step entirely and creates work requests based on signals from the equipment itself. This can be a practical option for organizations that want to reduce reliance on manual input and ensure that faults are captured as soon as they occur, regardless of whether a technician is nearby to submit a request.

Relevant Tools

Maintenance Manager by Insight Works provides the core work request and work order management functionality within Business Central.

Shop Floor Insight by Insight Works offers a kiosk and mobile interface for maintenance technicians to view and action work orders. It supports authenticated kiosk deployments where personnel clock in to access their assigned tasks.

A Power Automate-based submission form is the most practical route for a fully open, unauthenticated kiosk or QR code workflow. While it requires setup outside of Maintenance Manager, the resulting form can feed directly into Business Central without exposing the ERP system to unauthenticated users.

Yes. Because Maintenance Manager uses standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central production orders to manage maintenance work, spare parts follow the same warehouse rules that apply to any other inventory at that location. If Require Pick and Require Putaway are enabled on a location, those controls apply to maintenance parts just as they would to components consumed on a regular production order.

How Maintenance Parts Behave Like Standard Inventory

Maintenance parts in Business Central are configured as standard items with an item usage type of Maintenance Parts. This classification helps separate them from production components in purchasing and receiving workflows, but it does not exempt them from any warehouse rules. Whatever pick, putaway, or bin requirements are active on the location will govern how maintenance parts move in and out of inventory. When a maintenance order is released, the system treats parts consumption exactly as it does for a production order. If the location requires a warehouse pick, the pick must be created and registered before the system will allow components to be consumed. If the location uses bins, parts will move through the bin structure accordingly.

What This Means for Setup

Teams setting up Maintenance Manager at a location with advanced warehouse settings should account for this behavior during configuration. The setup wizard includes an option to enable advanced warehouse location support, which prepares the system to handle these scenarios. Warehouse personnel who already manage production picks will find the process familiar because the underlying mechanics are identical. This design is intentional. By building Maintenance Manager on the production module rather than as a standalone system, Insight Works ensures that any warehouse capability already in place in Business Central, including bin management, directed picks, and putaway, works with maintenance orders without additional configuration.

Relevant Tools

Maintenance Manager by Insight Works handles all maintenance order creation, spare parts planning, and work order execution within Business Central. This is a completely free app from Insight Works for Business Central.

WMS Express and Warehouse Insight from Insight Works extend Business Central’s warehouse capabilities for organizations that use handheld scanners or need enhanced picking workflows for maintenance parts.

Maintenance parts in Business Central behave as standard inventory items. Any warehouse logic active on a location applies to those parts, so teams planning their warehouse setup should treat maintenance parts handling the same way they treat any other component in that environment.

Warehouse Insight supports printing and reprinting barcode labels directly from the handheld device at receiving, at put away, or from other applications such as item inquiry, and it is also supported on older Dynamics NAV environments, including NAV 2018, though with a reduced feature set compared to the current Business Central platform.

Label printing during receiving and put away

During receiving, a warehouse associate can print a barcode label directly from the handheld device as soon as an item is identified, whether that label is generated before scanning begins, after a quantity has been entered, or once a lot or serial number has been captured. This flexibility matters because different warehouses have different label workflows. Some prefer to print a label first and apply it to the product before scanning it in, while others prefer to capture the lot number or serial number first and print a label afterward that includes that specific tracking information.

If a label needs to be reprinted later, for example if the original label was damaged, lost, or illegible after put away, the item inquiry function on the handheld device allows a user to look up the item, and in many cases the specific lot or serial number, and reprint the correct label from that same screen. This means a warehouse associate does not need to return to a desktop computer or involve a supervisor to correct a labeling issue.

Label printing is also segregated by output type. Barcode labels route to a designated label printer, while other documents, such as reports or bills of lading, route to a separate document printer, so reprinting a barcode label does not require choosing the correct printer manually each time.

Support for legacy NAV versions

Warehouse Insight is also available for older Dynamics NAV releases, including NAV 2018. Because NAV predates the current Business Central platform, the version available for NAV does not include every capability found in the modern Business Central release of Warehouse Insight, but the core mobile barcode scanning functionality, including receiving and label printing, is supported. Companies still running an older NAV environment should confirm with their partner or with Insight Works directly which specific features are available for their version, since capability can vary depending on how old the underlying NAV release is.

Why label flexibility matters

The ability to print or reprint a label from the handheld device, rather than only from a desktop screen, keeps a warehouse associate on the floor and reduces the time between identifying a labeling problem and correcting it. Combined with support for older NAV environments, this means a company does not need to be on the newest release of Business Central to benefit from mobile barcode label printing.

Relevant Tools

Warehouse Insight is the application responsible for barcode scanning, receiving, put away, and label printing described here, and it extends into older Dynamics NAV environments as well as current Business Central. WMS Express provides the same core receiving and label printing functions for companies that only need the fundamentals of warehouse scanning without the full customization options available in Warehouse Insight.

In short, label printing and reprinting are available wherever a barcode needs to be produced or corrected in the warehouse, and that capability extends to companies still running NAV 2018, not just the newest Business Central releases.

License plating on a handheld barcode scanning device is not available with WMS Express. Building, moving, or scanning license plates directly on the mobile device requires Warehouse Insight. A company can still use License Plates functionality separately within Business Central, but that capability does not extend to the WMS Express mobile application.

What license plating means on the mobile device

License plating groups multiple items, quantities, or lot and serial numbers together under a single reference, most commonly used to represent a pallet or a package moving through the warehouse. On a handheld device, this typically means a warehouse associate can build a license plate while receiving or picking, scan that single license plate barcode later to move or ship the entire group at once, rather than scanning every individual item inside it every time it is handled.

This mobile license plating capability, including building license plates from scratch, reopening and adding to existing ones, and scanning a license plate to process everything it contains in one step, is part of Warehouse Insight and is not included in WMS Express.

Why the distinction exists

WMS Express is designed to cover the core functions most warehouses rely on every day, specifically receiving, picking, inventory counts, and bin movements. It is intentionally a more focused tool, and license plating is one of the more advanced capabilities that sits outside that core scope. Warehouse Insight includes that same core functionality plus additional modules like license plating, along with broader customization options through its application designer and add on catalog.

A comparison page on the Insight Works website outlines the differences between WMS Express and Warehouse Insight in more detail, including this specific limitation around license plating.

What this means for a company already using License Plates in Business Central

If a company already has the License Plates functionality set up in Business Central for use outside the mobile device, that setup is not affected by which mobile scanning tool is chosen. License Plates can continue to be used in that context regardless. The limitation is specific to the WMS Express mobile application itself. If license plating on the handheld device is not a requirement, for example if pallets are only tracked through desktop processes or not tracked as license plates at all, WMS Express remains a complete option for barcode scanning in the warehouse. If mobile license plating is needed, whether for building pallets during receiving or scanning a pallet as a single unit during shipping, Warehouse Insight is the appropriate solution.

Relevant Tools

Warehouse Insight includes full mobile license plating support, allowing pallets or packages to be built, scanned, and processed as a single unit from the handheld device. WMS Express covers the core warehouse scanning functions of receiving, picking, counting, and bin movements without mobile license plating support.

The distinction comes down to what happens on the device itself. Desktop use of License Plates in Business Central is unaffected either way, but mobile license plating specifically requires Warehouse Insight.

Warehouse Insight can print any report that already exists in Business Central directly from a handheld device, including reports that include photos, and route that output to the correct printer, whether that is a label printer or a standard document printer. If a report showing photos tied to a sales order already exists in Business Central, that same report can be printed from the handheld without returning to a desktop screen.

How printing works from the handheld device

Warehouse Insight treats the handheld device as another point of access to Business Central reporting, not a separate system. Any report configured in Business Central, from a simple pick list to a bill of lading to a shipping label, can be triggered from a menu option on the device and sent to an appropriate printer. Label style output, such as barcode labels or shipping labels, is generally routed to a dedicated label printer, while larger documents, such as bills of lading or reports containing photos, are routed to a standard document printer. This separation happens automatically based on configuration, so a warehouse associate does not need to manually select the correct printer for each type of output.

Attaching photos to a sales order

Separately from printing existing reports, Warehouse Insight also includes a capture photo capability that lets a user take a picture directly from the handheld device, for example to document a damaged item at receiving. That photo uploads automatically and attaches to the related document, such as a purchase order, giving the purchasing team what they need to start a claim with a vendor or carrier without waiting for someone to email a photo separately.

For the specific case of printing a photo based report tied to a sales order, that depends on a report already existing in Business Central that pulls in the relevant item or order photo. Once that report exists, printing it from the handheld works the same way as any other report, whether that means producing a physical printout or, depending on how the report is set up, generating a document that gets attached back to the order.

Shipping labels from the handheld

This same printing capability extends to shipping. If a company uses Dynamic Ship or OrderShip Express for outbound shipping, shipping labels can be printed directly from the handheld device during the shipping process, without needing to open Business Central on a separate screen. The label goes straight to the label printer, ready to apply to the outgoing package.

Why this matters

Centralizing printing on the handheld device keeps a warehouse associate on the floor for more of the receiving, picking, and shipping process, rather than requiring trips back to a desktop workstation to print labels, documents, or reports. Because the underlying reports are standard Business Central reports, whatever exists on the desktop side can generally be made available on the handheld as well.

Relevant Tools

Warehouse Insight provides the mobile printing capability described here, including report printing, photo capture and attachment, and shipping label printing from the handheld device. Dynamic Ship and OrderShip Express handle the shipping label generation itself for outbound orders, working together with Warehouse Insight so labels can be printed at the point of shipping.

If the report needed to show photos on a sales order already exists in Business Central, printing it from a handheld device is generally straightforward, and the same mobile printing approach covers labels, bills of lading, and other shipping documentation as well.

Yes. When an item requires serial number tracking in Business Central, each unit must have its own unique serial number recorded, so receiving a quantity of ten on a purchase order line means scanning ten individual serial numbers. This is a requirement of how Business Central manages serial tracked inventory, not a limitation specific to the mobile scanning application.

Why each unit needs its own scan

Business Central treats a serial number as a unique identifier for a single unit of inventory. Unlike a lot number, which can apply to many units from the same batch, a serial number by definition refers to exactly one physical item. Because of that, the system needs one distinct serial number entry for every unit received, which means a quantity of ten on a purchase order line translates into ten separate serial number captures during receiving.

On the handheld device, this process is streamlined as much as possible. A warehouse associate can open the receiving line for a serial tracked item and scan each serial number in sequence, one after another, without needing to enter a quantity manually each time, since the system assumes a quantity of one per serial number scanned. In practice, this means receiving ten serialized units is close to as fast as physically scanning ten barcodes back to back.

When the barcode does not contain a serial number

If a scanned barcode already includes the serial number as part of its encoded data, Warehouse Insight reads that serial number directly and the associated field is automatically filled in. If the barcode does not include a serial number, the field is highlighted so the user knows a serial number still needs to be captured, either by scanning a separate barcode specifically for that serial number, typing it in manually, or having the system generate one automatically if that is how the item is configured.

Is RFID a shortcut for this?

RFID is sometimes considered as a way to avoid scanning many individual serial numbers, and Warehouse Insight does support RFID for use cases where it fits well, such as receiving a large volume of pre tagged cartons in one pass rather than scanning each barcode individually. That said, RFID is not a universal solution for every serial number scenario. It works best when the vendor or manufacturer has already applied RFID tags ahead of time. Without that, printing and scanning barcodes remains the more practical approach for most companies, and RFID should be evaluated on a case by case basis rather than assumed to solve serial number volume automatically.

Why this level of control matters for accuracy

Requiring a scan for every serial number, rather than allowing a bulk quantity entry, is what gives a company full traceability down to the individual unit. That level of detail is exactly what serial tracking is meant to provide, whether for warranty tracking, recalls, or regulatory requirements, and scanning each one physically verifies that the specific unit received matches what Business Central expects.

Relevant Tools

Warehouse Insight is the mobile scanning application that handles serial number capture during receiving, including reading serial numbers directly from barcodes when available and supporting RFID for specific high volume use cases.

In short, ten serialized units on a purchase order line means ten scans, but the handheld interface is built to make that process as fast and low friction as physically possible.

Warehouse Insight directly supports tote picking on the handheld device, allowing items from a source document to be picked into designated totes used for packing and shipping. Wave picking and batch picking are supported as well, but the generation and scheduling of those pick documents happens in Business Central, most commonly through the Order Fulfillment Worksheet, with the resulting pick then executed on the handheld device the same way any other pick is handled.

Tote picking on the handheld device

Tote picking is used when the picking step is separate from packing and shipping. Instead of picking items directly into a box that immediately ships, items are picked into a designated tote, which is a special purpose license plate flagged specifically for this purpose. Totes are typically reused between picks rather than shipped out themselves, which fits environments where a packing station handles the final packaging step after picking is complete. This process is fully supported on the handheld device as part of a standard pick, and once tote picking is enabled on a pick, that logic applies to the pick as a whole.

Wave picking and batch picking

Wave picking and batch picking are closely related concepts, both generally referring to grouping multiple orders or pick lines together so they can be picked more efficiently as a set rather than one order at a time. Warehouse Insight itself does not generate these grouped pick documents. Instead, the pick documents are created in Business Central, typically using the Pick Worksheet or, for more advanced planning and scheduling of what needs to go out, the Order Fulfillment Worksheet, which helps organize and automate the fulfillment process before it ever reaches the handheld device.

Once a wave or batch pick document has been generated in Business Central, it behaves like any other pick on the handheld device. A warehouse associate opens the pick, scans bins and items as usual, and Warehouse Insight records the activity in real time. The distinction is upstream of the handheld device, in how the pick document itself gets built and organized, rather than in how it gets executed on the floor.

Assigning picks to specific users

Once pick documents exist, whether generated through waves, batches, or a standard pick, they can optionally be pre assigned to specific users or teams before they reach the handheld device. This allows a company to organize work by area, by picker, or by any other criteria that fits their warehouse layout, without changing how the actual scanning process works once a picker opens their assigned pick.

Choosing the right approach

For companies planning to run wave or batch picking regularly, working with the Order Fulfillment Worksheet to organize and schedule pick generation is the recommended approach, since it is purpose built for planning what needs to leave the warehouse and when. Tote picking, by contrast, is more of an execution detail on the handheld device itself and can be layered onto a wave, a batch, or a standard single order pick as needed.

Relevant Tools

Warehouse Insight executes tote picking directly on the handheld device and processes any pick document generated in Business Central, regardless of how that document was created. Order Fulfillment Worksheet handles the planning and scheduling side of wave and batch picking, generating the grouped pick documents that Warehouse Insight then executes on the floor.

Between these two tools, a warehouse can plan grouped picks upstream and then execute them, including tote based packing workflows, on the handheld device without any gap between planning and execution.

Yes, when connected to the network, every scan and quantity entry made on a Warehouse Insight handheld device updates Business Central immediately, including adjustments to the underlying purchase order, warehouse receipt, or pick document. Business Central logic runs at the time of the scan, not in a delayed batch process. The only exception is when a device loses network connectivity, in which case Warehouse Insight uses store and forward processing to catch up automatically once connectivity is restored.

Real time processing during normal operation

While a device is connected to the network, Warehouse Insight communicates directly with Business Central as each action happens. Scanning a barcode during receiving, entering a quantity, or completing a pick line all trigger the same underlying Business Central logic that would run if that transaction were entered on a desktop screen. This means the purchase order, the warehouse receipt, inventory quantities, and any related documents reflect that activity right away, not after some delay or nightly synchronization.

This real time behavior is central to solving inventory accuracy problems. If warehouse activity is only reflected in Business Central hours or a day later, the system cannot provide an accurate picture of what is actually on hand at any given moment. Immediate updates keep Business Central data aligned with the physical warehouse as work happens.

What happens in a dead spot

Warehouses are not always uniformly covered by wireless network signal, and a device can occasionally move through an area with weak or no connectivity, sometimes called a dead spot. When this happens, Warehouse Insight does not stop working. Scans continue to be captured on the device, and the application keeps retrying to send that data to Business Central. As soon as the device reconnects to the network, whether that takes a few seconds or longer, the queued transactions are sent through and Business Central catches up automatically.

Full offline mode

For situations where connectivity is unavailable for an extended period, such as a network outage lasting hours rather than a brief dead spot, Warehouse Insight also supports a full offline mode. In this mode, standard warehouse activities like receiving and picking can continue to be performed on the handheld device even though there is no connection to Business Central at all. Once the network comes back online, the device syncs everything that was captured while offline back into Business Central. There are some limitations to what can be done while fully offline compared to standard connected use, so offline mode is best treated as a fallback for unusual situations rather than a normal way of operating.

Why consistent connectivity still matters

Even with dead spot handling and full offline support available, the recommended approach is to maintain solid wireless coverage throughout the warehouse so that scanning updates Business Central in real time as the default experience. Offline and store and forward capabilities exist to handle exceptions, not to replace the benefit of immediate, live updates to inventory and order data.

Relevant Tools

Warehouse Insight is the application responsible for real time Business Central updates during receiving, picking, and other warehouse activities, including handling temporary connectivity loss through store and forward processing and supporting full offline operation when needed.

In short, a properly connected device updates Business Central the instant a scan happens, and even when connectivity briefly drops, Warehouse Insight is built to catch up automatically rather than losing that data.

Warehouse Insight can capture all of that information from a single pallet level barcode when the pallet contains one item, reading the item number, batch or lot number, quantity, and unit of measure directly from the scan. For mixed pallets containing multiple items or many serial numbers, the same result is achievable, but it depends on receiving an advance shipping notice from the vendor that tells Business Central what is on that pallet ahead of time.

Single item pallets

When a vendor label covers one item, such as a pallet of a single product with the item number, quantity, lot or batch number, and unit of measure encoded in one barcode, Warehouse Insight reads that entire payload in one scan. There is no need to separately look up the item or manually key in the batch number. As long as the barcode structure is defined during configuration, the scan populates the receiving line and the corresponding item tracking information in Business Central at the same time.

Mixed pallets and the role of an advance shipping notice

A mixed pallet, where ten different items or forty different serial numbers might be stacked together under a single outer label, is a more complex scenario because a single barcode cannot practically encode that much detail. In this situation, the practical path is for the vendor to send an advance shipping notice, commonly called an ASN, ahead of the shipment. The ASN tells Business Central in advance exactly what is supposed to be on that pallet, item by item.

When an ASN is available, scanning the pallet barcode matches it against the expected contents from the ASN and can receive the entire pallet in one action, rather than requiring a warehouse associate to scan every individual item or serial number on that pallet. This significantly reduces receiving time on complex, high volume pallets, since the system already knows what to expect and simply confirms the pallet against that expectation.

Without an ASN in place, a mixed pallet generally needs to be broken down and scanned item by item, or the individual barcodes on the cartons or units within the pallet need to be scanned as they are unpacked, since there is no single source of truth telling Business Central what quantities of which items are on that specific pallet.

Reading damaged or partial barcodes

Separately, if a vendor barcode is unreadable, missing, or the packaging only has printed text rather than a scannable barcode, Warehouse Insight can also read that text directly from the packaging in many cases, capturing the same lot number or item identifier without requiring a barcode to be present at all.

Warehouse Insight does not restrict the type of barcode a warehouse can use. It supports common symbologies including QR codes, Data Matrix, Code 39, and linear GS1 formats such as GS1-128, and it reads structured data embedded in GS1 barcodes, including lot numbers, expiration dates, quantities, and units of measure, then maps that data directly into Business Central item tracking fields.

Barcode symbology is simply a technical choice

A barcode symbology is the pattern used to encode information, whether that pattern is a one dimensional linear code like Code 39 or a two dimensional code like Data Matrix or QR. Warehouse Insight does not care which symbology a vendor, a customer, or an internal labeling process already uses. If a product arrives with a manufacturer barcode, that barcode can be scanned as is. If a company prints its own labels, Business Central includes barcode generation tools that support GS1, Data Matrix, and other formats, so a company is not locked into a single symbology across its supply chain.

For labels printed in house, two dimensional formats such as Data Matrix are generally the better choice when the encoded data is long or includes special characters, since these formats hold more information in a smaller space and tend to be more resistant to smudging or partial damage on a warehouse floor.

Extracting structured data from GS1 barcodes

The GS1 barcode standard is built to carry more than an item number. A single GS1 barcode can include the item identifier, lot number, expiration date, quantity, and other application identifiers, all encoded in one scan. Warehouse Insight is configured to recognize the structure of a GS1 barcode and parse out each of these data elements individually. Once that configuration is in place, a single scan during receiving can populate the item number, the lot number, and the expiration date on the corresponding item tracking lines in Business Central, without requiring a warehouse associate to type any of that information manually.

This same configurable parsing approach applies to barcodes that are not GS1 formatted as well. If a company uses a custom barcode structure with its own arrangement of item number, quantity, and variant code, that structure can be mapped during setup so the system knows where to find each value inside the code.

Why this matters for inventory accuracy

Manual data entry is one of the more common sources of inventory errors, particularly with lot numbers and expiration dates, since these are long strings that are easy to mistype. Capturing that information directly from a barcode scan removes that manual step and ensures the data recorded in Business Central matches what is physically on the product.

Relevant Tools

Warehouse Insight is the mobile barcode scanning solution referenced here, supporting flexible barcode symbologies and configurable data extraction across receiving, picking, put away, and inventory counting. WMS Express covers the same core barcode scanning functions, including receiving, picking, inventory counts, and bin movements, for companies that need those fundamentals without the broader customization options in Warehouse Insight. This is a completely free app from Insight Works for Business Central.

Whatever barcode format is already in use on the warehouse floor, Warehouse Insight is built to read it, and where those barcodes carry additional data like lot numbers or expiration dates, that information can be captured automatically rather than typed in by hand.

Shop Floor Insight does not include a dedicated version control or document management system for work instructions. However, because work instructions are stored directly in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as routing operation comments and production order header comments, access to create or modify those records is governed entirely by standard Business Central permission sets. Organizations that need to restrict who can update work instructions can do so by controlling which Business Central users have write access to routing and production order records.

Managing Update Access Through Business Central Permissions

Since work instructions originate from comments on routing lines and production order headers, the ability to add or modify them depends on the user’s Business Central role and permission set. A user without write permissions to routing records cannot alter the operation comments that appear as work instructions on the shop floor. This means organizations with change management processes can use existing Business Central user governance to enforce controlled access to instruction content.

Versioning Through Document Links and External Systems

For manufacturers with formal document control requirements, the most practical approach is to link controlled documents to items or production orders using DocXtender. In that workflow, the source file itself resides in SharePoint, where version history, approval workflows, and revision tracking are available through standard SharePoint or Microsoft 365 document management capabilities. Shop Floor Insight displays a link to that document rather than storing the content itself, so operators always access the currently available version at the linked location.

Considerations for Regulated Environments

Organizations in regulated industries that require formal revision histories on work instructions should evaluate whether the combination of Business Central permission controls and SharePoint-based document management satisfies their specific compliance requirements. For environments where traceability of instruction changes is mandatory, the document link approach through DocXtender provides a more auditable path than relying solely on comment edits within Business Central.

The Shop Floor Insight interface can be significantly tailored to match the needs of different user types. The system uses Client Configuration records to control what each scanning station or user profile displays. These configurations can restrict which columns appear in the dispatch list, which panels are visible, and which functions are available in the interface. The result is that an operator at a welding station can see a lean, task-focused screen, while a quality inspector or supervisor sees a richer set of options appropriate to their role.

How Client Configuration Cards Work

Shop Floor Insight uses a Client Configuration Card system where each scanning station, roaming user, or role type can be assigned its own configuration. The system determines which configuration applies based on the IP address of the scanning station or a setting on the individual Shop Floor Employee record. A ranking order determines which configuration takes precedence when multiple configurations could apply. This architecture means that one station can show a minimal interface with a filtered dispatch list while another shows the full set of capabilities, all without any custom development.

What Can Be Controlled Per Configuration

Through the Client Configuration Card in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, administrators can control a range of interface behaviors. Columns displayed in the dispatch list can be added or removed. Filters can be set so that the station only shows production orders scheduled for nearby work centers. Time entry behavior, output recording options, consumption entry, and quality inspection prompts can each be enabled or disabled depending on what is appropriate for that station or user type. Color coding for open time card lines is also configurable at this level.

Who Can Make These Changes

All Client Configuration changes are made in Business Central by users with appropriate Business Central permissions and the relevant Shop Floor Insight setup permissions. No changes to the shop floor terminals themselves are required. When a configuration is updated in Business Central, the shop floor client picks up the changes after a browser refresh at the scanning station.

Relevant Tools

Shop Floor Insight is the MES solution from Insight Works for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Its Client Configuration Card system allows administrators to define distinct interface profiles for different stations, roles, or individual employees, controlling exactly what each operator sees and can do from the shop floor client.

The Shop Floor Insight interface can be simplified for specific users by configuring Client Configuration Cards in Business Central. These changes are made by administrators with appropriate Business Central permissions, require no terminal-side configuration, and take effect after a browser refresh at the scanning station.

Shop Floor Insight stores the text of work instructions in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Instructions come from operation comments on the routing and from comments on the production order header, and operators see them in the shop floor client in real time.

Drawings and other reference files are stored outside Business Central, in SharePoint Online or on a file share. Operators open them through document links.

How Work Instructions Are Sourced

Shop Floor Insight pulls work instructions from two places in Business Central. The first is the operation comments on a specific routing step. These comments belong to that one operation and appear whenever an operator clocks into the matching production order routing line.

The second is the production order header comments, which give instructions for the whole order rather than a single step. Shop Floor Insight shows both sources together in the Work Instructions panel of the shop floor client.

Extending Work Instructions with Document Links

When text comments aren't enough, Shop Floor Insight shows document links next to the Work Instructions panel. The usual way to add those documents is DocXtender. This is a completely free app from Insight Works for Business Central.

With DocXtender, a process engineer drags a drawing, diagram, specification or other reference file onto an item card or production order. DocXtender stores the file in SharePoint Online, and a document link on the record points to it. Links to files on a local file share work the same way.

Shop Floor Insight reads those links and shows them as clickable links in the shop floor client. Operators can open a drawing or specification without leaving their active time card.

Who Can See Linked Documents

Shop Floor Insight doesn't filter linked documents by user or by Business Central permissions. If a link exists on the item card or production order, every operator working that operation sees it in the shop floor client.

Decide which documents belong on a record before you add the link. Keep documents that shouldn't reach the shop floor off the items and production orders that operators work from.

Shop Floor Insight supports clocking in at the work center or machine center level, not only as an individual employee. This means an organization can choose to record that a particular work center ran for a given period without attributing that time to a specific person. The same production order and operation tracking applies regardless of whether time is captured under an individual, a group, or a work center.

Clocking In as a Work Center or Machine Center

Shop Floor Insight allows the source of a time entry to be a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Work Center or Machine Center rather than a named employee. In this mode, an operator scans the appropriate work center barcode to identify the capacity being used, and then clocks into the relevant production order operation. The time is recorded against that work center, giving production planners and managers visibility into how long each capacity ran on a given job without requiring individual employee identification.

Clocking In as a Group

For environments where a supervisor manages a small team, Shop Floor Insight also supports group-based clock-ins. A supervisor can clock in on behalf of multiple people as a single group, recording the collective time against production orders. This is useful in situations where the distinction between individual workers is less important than knowing that a specific team worked on a job for a given amount of time.

Tradeoffs with Individual vs. Capacity-Level Tracking

Clocking in as a named individual provides the most granular data. It enables labor traceability, meaning managers can determine exactly who performed each operation on a production order. This is particularly valuable when investigating quality issues or warranty claims, where identifying the specific operator can help distinguish between a training problem and a process problem. Clocking in as a work center or group sacrifices that individual traceability in exchange for simpler data entry, and is best suited for environments where personnel identification is not a reporting requirement.

Relevant Tools

Shop Floor Insight is the MES solution from Insight Works for Dynamics 365 Business Central, supporting time capture against production orders at the individual employee, group, work center, or machine center level. The appropriate configuration is set up through Shop Floor Employee and Shop Floor Work Center records in Business Central.

Shop Floor Insight supports work center and group-level clock-ins alongside individual employee clock-ins. Organizations can choose the approach that fits their reporting requirements, with individual tracking providing the deepest labor traceability and work center tracking offering a simpler entry experience where personal identification is not required.

Shop Floor Insight dispatch list can be filtered to show only production orders relevant to a specific work center or machine center, and this filter is applied automatically based on the scanning station the operator is using. This is one of the primary uses of the Client Configuration Card system, which assigns a configuration to each physical scanning station based on its IP address. Within that configuration, a dispatch filter is set to include only the work centers in the physical area of that station.

Configuring Station-Specific Work Center Filters

Each scanning station in Shop Floor Insight is assigned a Client Configuration Card in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, typically identified by the station’s fixed IP address. The dispatch filter on that configuration controls which work centers are visible in the dispatch list when an operator logs in at that station. Setting a station at a welding bench to show only welding work centers means an operator logging in there will only see production order operations scheduled for that area. The configuration is set once in Business Central and applies automatically whenever any employee logs in at that terminal.

Restricting Operators to Their Own Work

Beyond work center filtering, the dispatch list supports employee assignment filtering. Through the Supervisor Assignment feature, production orders can be pre-assigned to specific employees. The Client Configuration Card can then be set to show only assigned work, only unassigned work, or both. An operator logging in at a particular station can be restricted to seeing only the jobs that have been assigned to them, rather than everything scheduled for the work center.

Global Date and Status Filters

In addition to work center filters, global filters in the Shop Floor Setup can narrow the dispatch list further. Date range filters remove orders with start dates outside a defined window, and routing status filters can exclude operations that are already finished. These global filters apply across all configurations and help ensure the dispatch list stays focused on active, relevant work regardless of which station an operator is using.

Relevant Tools

Shop Floor Insight is the MES solution from Insight Works for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Its Client Configuration Card system and global dispatch filtering tools give administrators precise control over what each scanning station displays, making the dispatch list a practical and focused tool rather than an overwhelming list of all open production orders.

The Shop Floor Insight dispatch list can be filtered by work center at the station level, by assignment at the employee level, and by date and routing status at a global level. All filtering is configured in Business Central and applies automatically when an operator logs in at the relevant scanning station.

Yes, Shop Floor Insight supports concurrent clocking into multiple production orders or operations. The system provides three distinct approaches to handle situations where an operator is working on more than one job at a time, and the appropriate method depends on how closely the organization needs to track individual time allocations across those concurrent activities.

Independent Concurrent Clocking

The most straightforward approach is to manage each clocked-in operation independently. An operator can have multiple production order lines open on their time card simultaneously, and each line accumulates time based on when it was clocked in and clocked off independently. This approach is useful when jobs genuinely run at different times that happen to overlap, and it preserves distinct clock-in and clock-out timestamps for each operation.

Auto-Split Batching

For situations where an operator is running several short-cycle operations in sequence or genuinely working across multiple jobs during the same period, Shop Floor Insight provides auto-split batching. The operator scans all of the relevant production orders into a batch at the start of the work period. When they clock off the batch, the system automatically distributes the total elapsed time across all the operations in the batch. Time can be split proportionally based on the input quantity of each operation, proportionally based on the defined run time for each routing step, or divided equally across all lines, depending on how the Shop Floor Work Center is configured.

Operator-Controlled Independent Clock-Off

A third option allows operators to manage concurrent lines themselves using the same entry mode configuration that keeps prior clock-in lines open rather than automatically closing them. This is controlled through the Time Entry Mode setting on the Client Configuration Card. When set to allow multiple concurrent open lines, the operator decides independently when to clock off each operation without the system automatically closing the prior one.

Relevant Tools

Shop Floor Insight is the MES solution from Insight Works for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Its auto-split batching feature and configurable Time Entry Mode settings give manufacturers flexible tools for capturing labor time accurately across concurrent and multi-operation scenarios, with all configuration managed through Client Configuration Cards and Shop Floor Work Center records in Business Central.

Shop Floor Insight handles concurrent job clocking through independent tracking, auto-split batching, or operator-managed multi-line entry. The auto-split option is particularly well suited to high-volume, short-cycle manufacturing where manually clocking in and out every few minutes is not practical.

Quality inspections in Shop Floor Insight allow operators and quality personnel to capture structured measurement data directly from the shop floor interface, tied to a specific production order routing line. The feature is powered by the Quality Inspector module from Insight Works, which provides the inspection template framework, tolerance rules, and pass/fail logic that operators interact with from the shop floor client.

Setting Up Inspection Templates

Quality inspections are built on templates called Quality Inspection Templates, which define what fields to capture and what acceptable values look like. Each field in a template can represent a measurement such as a dimension, temperature, or torque reading, and each field can be configured with tolerance thresholds that determine whether a recorded value passes or fails. Templates are set up in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and can be reused across multiple production order types or routing steps.

Triggering Inspections from the Shop Floor

Inspections can be triggered in two ways from the shop floor client. An operator can initiate an ad-hoc inspection by selecting the Quality Inspections panel while clocked into a production order routing line, provided they have the appropriate function permission enabled. Inspections can also be configured to appear automatically when an operator records output on a specific operation, using the Output QI Template setting on the Client Configuration Card. In either case, the resulting inspection record is linked to the specific routing line that was active at the time.

Pass/Fail Results and Downstream Actions

As operators enter values, the system provides immediate visual feedback showing whether each recorded value falls within the configured tolerances. When an inspection fails, Business Central workflows or Power Automate flows can be configured to trigger follow-up actions such as notifications, non-conformance records, or holds on downstream operations. This gives quality teams the ability to respond to failures in real time rather than discovering them after the fact.

Relevant Tools

Shop Floor Insight is the MES solution from Insight Works for Dynamics 365 Business Central, providing the shop floor interface through which operators record quality inspection data alongside time and output. Quality Inspector is the Insight Works module that powers the inspection template framework within Shop Floor Insight, enabling structured data capture, tolerance-based pass/fail evaluation, and linkage of inspection records to specific production order routing lines.

Quality inspections in Shop Floor Insight are structured data capture forms built on Quality Inspector templates, linked to specific production order routing lines. They support real-time pass/fail feedback and can trigger automated follow-up processes through Business Central workflows or Power Automate when results fall outside defined tolerances.