Throughout the system, Finance and Operations has many documents available out of the box; for example, Purchase order confirmation, Sales order confirmation, Sales order packing slip, Sales invoice, Intrastat and vendor checks, and many more. These business documents are developed as precision design SSRS reports and optimized for printing on paper as well as in files to ensure high-quality standards.

The following screenshot shows the sales order invoice document that was generated for a sales order in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations:

As shown in the preceding screenshot, the sales order invoice report has a nice layout with a configurable company logo and shows all the information for an invoice document, such as paying attention to address and contact, invoice number, invoice date, payment terms, due date, and line items.

In Finance and Operations, these business documents are tightly integrated with the business processes and print management feature. Utilizing the print management features, you can configure the automatic delivery of these documents to a local printer or send it directly to the business contact via email. As an example, when the sales order invoicing process is executed for a sales order in Finance and Operations, the sales order invoice document can be printed automatically to a local printer or emailed to the customer contact directly.

Similar to any other SSRS reports in Finance and Operations, customers and partners can extend these business document reports to fit their unique requirements by adding additional information or changes in the layout.

Even though business documents delivered out of the box contain comprehensive information and functionality, most of the customers implementing Finance and Operations go through the development process to change the layout of these reports so that they match their corporate standard. To reduce the need for these expensive customizations, in October 2019, Microsoft introduced a new feature called business document management. The business document management feature changes the customization of business documents configuration rather than a code change. Now let's learn more about business document management.