Syvantis Technologies, Inc.

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Testing Business Central after Release Waves: A Checklist

Every April and October, Microsoft updates its applications via Release Waves, which include new features, updates to the current functionalities, and sometimes navigation updates. Release Wave plans are announced a few months in advance, so you can start to get ready for the changes.

Here’s an overview of the latest release wave plans for Business Central.


Testing Business Central to prepare for your update: Why?

It’s important to test your system to ensure the update will not interfere with your processes and, most importantly, system customizations and extensions. It is crucial to test the transactions that use any of your customizations or extensions early in a sandbox environment, lest they break in production and halt your business processes.

The best way to validate your version update is to run through critical business processes in your sandbox environment, including extensions, customizations, printing reports, posting journal entries, creating orders, and so forth.  After you validate the update in the sandbox, your production environment can be safely updated, as well.

It’s also best to do this earlier, rather than later, because if you do run into any hiccups that need to be fixed, you need time to correct the issues before Microsoft automatically updates environments, which could occur within 60 days or less after the release wave has become generally available.

So, we’ve put together a checklist of recommended tests to perform after Business Central is updated to the latest version, with those release wave changes. Please note that, because we don’t know your specific extensions/customizations, we can’t compile a checklist for you for these. However, you can catalogue them in the Extension Management page, and then list the transactions to test that interact with each of them. Add this to the checklist we provide below, and keep it up to date!


Important Considerations for Testing

While you test, please keep these things in mind:

  1. Skip what you don’t use, add what we missed. This is a general checklist, so some of these tests may not be required for your regular business practices. Likewise, you may have some company specific functionality or customizations you will want to include in your update testing. So take this list and customize it to meet your own needs.

  2. Test your add-ins! Like we mentioned before, it’s crucial to test your customizations and extensions. It’s the most important reason to test. A general checklist will not account each company’s customizations and extensions, so it’s best to check the Extension Manager to make sure you don’t miss any. You can add them to the checklist, and we’ll add a placeholder to make sure you have a reminder.

  3. Be thorough. The more testing you take the time to complete, the easier your transition to the new version will be and the fewer issues you will have.

  4. Have two people check. We suggest having two people test for updates. Having two sets of eyes on everything can help spot anything that falls through the cracks.

  5. Communicate with your Partner as soon as you can if you are encountering issues that are being triggered by the update. This way, they can work to resolve the issue well before the update is pushed to all environments. Here’s another good moment to note that if Syvantis is your partner and you want help with testing, we’re happy to schedule a support session to walk through testing with you.

  6. Take snips/screenshots of the errors. Use the Snipping Tool to take pictures of each error and save them so they can be tested and resolved by developers and/or your partner later.

 

The Testing Checklist

So, without further delay, here’s our checklist, organized by module.


Financial

  • Create an Edit GL Accounts

  • Enter & Post GL Journal Entry

  • Enter & Post Recurring Journal Entry

  • Enter a Correcting or Reversing GL transaction

  • Enter GL Transactions using Edit in Excel

  • Run a GL Trial Balance

  • Run a GL Account Transaction History

  • Import GL Transactions using Configuration Packages

 

Banking

  • Enter and post Banking Transactions

  • Create Bank Deposits based on Payments Received/Receipts

  • Reconcile bank accounts

  • Test bank statement import

  • Check for Outstanding and Cleared Checks

  • Test Checkbook Register & Balance Inquiry

  • Confirm check/ACH formatting when printed

  • Generate EFT File

  • Print checks

  • Void checks

 

Purchasing

  • Create Vendor, test Vendor Classes/Distributions

  • Create PO: Std, Drop Ship, and Blanket, if used

    • Enter comments/notes

    • Attach Items

    • Link Purchase Orders to Sales Orders.

  • Enter/receive Invoices w/o PO's (if used)

  • Enter/receive Invoices w/ PO's

  • Enter Payables transactions

  • Enter & apply Credit Memo

  • Create and post a standard Purchase Credit Memo

  • Create and post a standard Purchase Invoice

  • Apply Transactions

  • Void Transactions

  • Review Vendor Account status and activity

  • Put Vendor Invoice on Hold status

  • Create a Single Vendor Check

  • Create a Multiple Vendor Check Run

  • Run AP Aging Report

  • Run Vendor Transaction History

  • Test "Remove Completed PO's"

  • Test Navigation pane links

  • Test all Month-end procedures

 

Sales

  • Create a Customer, Test Customer Classes/Distributions

  • Create and Print a Quote

  • Create a Sales Order

  • Test Order process, including:

    • Back-order items

    • Fulfill items

    • Enter taxes

    • Enter freight

    • Enter comments/notes

    • Attach items

    • Enter prepayments

    • Link sales orders to purchase orders

  • Generate and print Pick Tickets and Packing Slips

  • Email applicable transactions

  • Transfer an Order to Invoice

  • Print an Invoice

  • Create and post a standard Sales Credit Memo

  • Create and post a standard Sales Invoice

  • Return a Sales Invoice using the Create Return function

  • Enter and post Receivables transactions

  • Create and apply a Credit Memo

  • Enter and apply Customer Payments to Customer Account/Invoices

  • Run Customer Transaction History

  • Issue Finance Charges

  • Generate Customer Statements

  • Review Customer Account status and activity

  • Test Navigation pane links

  • Run AR Aging Report

  • Run Paid Transaction Removal

  • Test all Month-end procedures

 

Inventory

  • Create a new Item

  • Create Item using Item Copy

  • Create Inventory Bill of Materials

  • Create and process an Assembly transaction

  • Create and assign Lots and Bins

  • Create and edit Landed Costs

  • Enter an Increase Inventory Adjustment

  • Enter a Decrease Inventory Adjustment less than the quantity available

  • Enter a Decrease Inventory Adjustment more than the quantity available

  • Enter an Inventory Transfer to multiple sites

  • Create Stock Counts

  • Run Inventory reports

  • Test Navigation pane links

  • Test other reports: Generate and print all applicable reports

  • Test all Month-end procedures

 

Fixed Assets

  • Enter/create Fixed Assets

  • Run Depreciation

  • Post Depreciation to the GL

  • Retire an Asset

 

Other

  • Test print any financial reports

  • Test exporting financial reports to Excel (or other file types, if used)

  • Test Navigation pane links and often-used searches

  • Run Month-end reports

  • Test all Month-end procedures

  • Create/import Budgets


Extensions/Customizations

  • Check Extension Management and record your extensions and customizations, then document the specific tests to perform for each!