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Connect your Business Central instance to import actuals into Francis. You can connect multiple instances if you operate across several companies. Once connected, your chart of accounts is available in the Mappings view, where you map Business Central accounts to line items in your model.

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Connect Business Central

Business Central supports two connection methods.

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Method 1: Standard connection

Go to Settings > Integrations > Business Central > Connect. A prompt will appear asking you to authorize Francis as an application in your Business Central account. This requires Admin rights. The connection is tied to the user who authorizes it and inherits their permissions. If that user is later deactivated (for example, when they leave the company), the connection breaks and must be reestablished via Reconnect in Francis. Use this method when possible. It’s the simplest to set up. If your user permissions don’t allow it, or you need a connection that isn’t tied to an individual user, use Method 2.

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Method 2: App installation

Register the Francis app directly in Business Central via Microsoft Entra. This requires Azure Admin rights. Unlike Method 1, the connection isn’t tied to an individual user, so it won’t break if someone leaves the company. The app gets access to all companies in the environment where it’s added.
  1. Log in to Business Central at businesscentral.dynamics.com and select your company.
  2. Click the Search icon and type “Entra”.
  3. Select Microsoft Entra Applications.
  4. Click + New.
  5. Set Client ID to 7a116fc0-e506-453f-b354-5c5b48af13a3.
  6. Set Description to “Francis App”.
  7. Change State to “Enabled”.
  8. Accept the automatic creation of a new user.
  9. Set the permission set to D365 READ.
  10. Click Grant Consent and then Accept when prompted.
  11. Go to the BC Admin Center, select your environment, and copy the URL property.
  12. Send that URL to support@francis.app to complete the setup.

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What Francis sources

Francis pulls the following data from Business Central:
  • Journal entries: amount, date, and description
  • GL accounts
  • Dimension tags, available for breakdowns within Francis

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Adjustments

Francis automatically adjusts imported data in three ways. All adjustments are based on account categories, so it’s important that these are set correctly to ensure correct numbers.
Francis flips the sign for income, expenses, liabilities, and equity accounts to follow the Francis sign convention:
  • Positive (+): Income (I), Asset (A), Liability (L), and Equity (EQ)
  • Negative (-): Expense (EX)

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Settings to enable adjustments

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Account categories

Francis applies its adjustments based on account categories (Income, Cost of Goods Sold, Expense, Asset, Liability, or Equity), so every posting account in Business Central needs one assigned. This is usually a non-controversial, one-time update, and it takes around 10 minutes since Business Central lets you copy and paste the category down the column. To set account categories:
  1. Navigate to Chart of Accounts.
  2. Choose Edit List.
  3. Update Account Category for all Posting accounts. Account Subcategory and Total accounts can be left blank.
Setting account categories in the Business Central Chart of Accounts