Finance teams running Dynamics 365—whether Business Central or Finance & Operations—face a persistent challenge in managing A/R and payments. While the ERP may be operating smoothly, separate A/R software and payment processor integrations leave finance teams to perform multiple reconciliations on transactions. This bottleneck increases manual work, data entry errors, late payments, and customer inquiries. Indirectly, it also effectively ruins many of the efficiency gains expected from the ERP and reduces the organization’s ability to address strategic priorities.
This fragmentation also leads to real pain in customer transactions. According to PYMNTS data, 11% of cross-border payments fail globally, with US companies experiencing 72% higher failure rates on international transactions than domestic ones. In 2023 alone, failed payments cost US merchants $3.8 billion in lost revenue.
For Dynamics customers managing global cash flow, these issues translate directly to cash leakage and compliance risk. Post-pandemic digital transformation has forced finance teams to reassess legacy tools and plan for new regulatory and compliance requirements. Achieving a unified approach has become an urgent matter they are looking to their Microsoft partners to help solve.
Key insight: Embedded payments aren’t a feature—they’re a strategic architecture choice that determines whether your A/R operations scale or stall when you expand to new markets.
To succeed, organizations need a solution that delivers a single platform to handle A/R and payments end-to-end, integrated with the rest of their Dynamics investment and aligned with their process automation goals. When A/R software, the payment processor, and customer portal are designed to work together with the core ERP, organizations can benefit from straight-through processing with no manual handoffs. In this approach, companies gain a consolidated, unified reconciliation with one payment relationship and a modern customer experience enabled by a customer portal.
For partners and finance teams alike, supporting this approach creates repeatable and successful projects that streamline execution, deliver on expectations, and boost client satisfaction.
The patchwork approach to payments is costing your customers
Dynamics 365 users aren’t the only ones troubled by a patchwork approach. Microsoft implementation partners regularly confront the problems inherent to a bolted-on approach, helping clients solve challenges like hidden costs, slow payments, poor user experience, and inconsistent experience for end customers.
For their part, partners often struggle to support multiple vendor relationships that emerge from a bolted-on approach. An astonishing 83% of finance teams cite the impact of poor integration between A/R, ERP, and payments on their clients.
Embedded Payments: The architecture that changes everything for Dynamics ERP users
When clients opt to bolt payments on to Dynamics 365, they are also committing to a future of ongoing complexity. By contrast, an embedded approach to payments working with Dynamics represents an architectural decision that changes how the entire system works.
Think for a moment about the differences between the two approaches. With the bolted-on experience:
- An invoice is generated in the A/R system.
- The customer then gets a link to a separate payment portal, paying via a processor.
- Data lands in the processor first.
- A team member needs to reconcile it back to A/R.
- Then, someone needs to reconcile the A/R to ERP.
For finance teams, this means there are three separate views of the same transaction.
In the embedded experience, the first step is the same, but then the process diverges to ensure a single view and an automated process.
- The invoice is also generated in A/R.
- The customer portal is native and therefore seamless.
- The customer pays in the portal.
- When a payment lands in the processor, it is instantly reflected in A/R and in D365.
These distinctions may seem architectural, but they matter enormously for teams of Dynamics users. With an embedded approach, companies switch to straight-through processing with Dynamics, the A/R system, and the processor unified into one flow with no manual bridge. A single vendor relationship replaces multiple support contracts; integration is pre-built rather than custom; and reconciliation becomes automated. Invoiced clients implementing this architecture report 70% reductions in reconciliation time and 6-week implementations instead of 12+ weeks of custom integration work.
Companies can easily miss the substantial hidden costs associated with settling for a bolted-on approach. In addition to paying for A/R software licensing, they pay payment processor transaction fees. Integration professional services are costly over projects lasting six to twelve (or more) weeks. For most companies, ongoing integration maintenance adds to costs together with multiple vendor support contracts and the costs of data duplication and cleanup.
| Bolted-On Model | Embedded Model |
| ERP + separate A/R + separate processor | F&O + unified A/R + integrated processor |
| Payment data lives in processor, invoice in A/R, transactions in ERP | Payment data flows seamlessly across all systems |
| Manual reconciliation required between systems | Automated, real-time reconciliation |
| Customer portal is afterthought or missing | Portal is native to the platform |
| Three vendors = three support relationships | One vendor, one relationship, one contact |
| Integration costs = ongoing custom work | Integration is built-in via ERP connectors |
The differences are architectural, but so much more than that. Invoiced clients experience faster implementation times, cleaner reconciliation flows in Dynamics, optimized cost models, and superior client experience. The processor relationship works in your favor, and the partner support burden is dramatically reduced.
Ready to see how embedded A/R automation can transform your Dynamics 365 operations?
Schedule a demo with our team to learn how organizations like yours have cut reconciliation time by 70% and accelerated cash flow.
Why every Dynamics 365 customer needs automated reconciliation
It’s one thing to describe the benefits of an embedded approach. It’s another to see its impact across your finance team.
Business Central users know that out-of-the-box their ERP provides sophisticated transaction handling. However, it lacks modern A/R automation and global payments capabilities. D365 Finance & Operations users face similar limitations: lack of payment flexibility and support for self-service customer portals.
Global expansion requires a global payments layer, not one that is bolted on. Compliance and security are simplified with a unified platform rather than scattered across vendors.
Key insight: Multi-entity scenarios—especially common in F&O—demand unified reconciliation. One finance system. One reconciliation logic. One source of truth.
Multi-entity scenarios (especially common in F&O) demand unified reconciliation across your operations:
- Global beverage company (F&O): FX + international complexity + Dynamics integration
- Multi-entity organization (F&O): Legacy consolidation + global expansion + Dynamics multi-entity operations
- Processor consolidation (BC + F&O): Cost reduction and consistency from a unified payment approach
The differences with an embedded approach are tangible. In the older bolted-together paradigm, payments land in the processor. The A/R system must match payments to invoices, either through manual inputs or rule-based logic. Finance teams must sync to A/R in their ERP for posting. Exceptions require manual investigation across three systems. The result: an average reconciliation time of more than 70 hours a month for a mid-market company.
Convenience isn’t the only consideration. Regulatory and compliance pressure favors consolidated architectures, especially for D365 Finance & Operations. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley requires strict segregation-of-duties to prevent individual users from initiating or approving transactions. Parallel accounting structures in GAAP and IFRS, together with automated financial consolidation, regulatory requirements for auditability through unalterable logs, and modern data privacy regulations impose similar requirements. Organizations must also manage product and supply chain safety auditing, batch tracking, indirect tax, and VAT or GST considerations.
One emerging pattern within the embedded payments approach is AI-powered reconciliation. Rather than rule-based matching of payments to invoices, platforms that embed machine learning into the A/R workflow can auto-match payments—including partial and multi-invoice payments—and surface only true exceptions for human review. With Invoiced’s CashMatch AI, reconciliation times drop from 70+ hours per month to 20–30 hours, and finance teams focus on strategy instead of exception handling.
How Dynamics 365 partners win in the embedded payments era
Embedded payments have become an expected capability for CFOs and Controllers running Dynamics 365, both for Business Central and D365 Finance & Operations.
Offering embedded payments represents a substantial competitive advantage for Dynamics partners. It is a complete solution spanning Dynamics, A/R, and payments, without the fragmentation that remains typical in the market today.
A partner with embedded capabilities owns the client relationship, from unified integration to simplified ongoing management. A faster implementation—totaling six weeks instead of 16+ weeks—accelerates client success and builds trust that leads to strategic business conversations.
In a typical bolted-on timeline, A/R software procurement plus implementation spans 8 to 12 weeks. Subsequently, processor integration usually takes 4 to 8 weeks, followed by 2 to 4 weeks of data migration and cleanup, and finally another 2 to 4 weeks of portal launch. Total timeline: 16 to 28 weeks to reach full value.
With a bolted-on scenario, organizations struggle with multiple processors for international payments. FX management is fragmented: the processor calculates rates, A/R records them, finance reconciles them. There is no centralized visibility into which payment methods are available, resulting in customer confusion on the best way to pay. The cumulative friction—extra work, inefficiency, and unpredictability—reflects poorly on the Microsoft partner’s credibility and the perceived value of the solution.
By contrast, with an embedded global solution, organizations can tap into 1,200+ payment methods available globally through a single processor. They can transact in 140+ currencies with FX conversion built in and rates locked before payment. A single processor relationship means better rates and streamlined support. Finance teams gain visibility into all available payment options in one interface, reducing customer friction and improving collections velocity.
Dynamics 365 partners need to consider how to empower themselves to meet this demand. The fundamental question is: How do I own the full stack and strengthen my role as a trusted advisor?
Part of the answer comes down to technical capabilities. But for most partners, understanding customer demands is even more critical. Consider these discovery questions to frame conversations with your Dynamics customers:
- How many payment processors do you currently use?
- How much time does your team spend on manual reconciliation between Dynamics and your A/R system?
- Is your current solution giving you visibility into all available payment methods?
These initial questions help inform follow-on strategic discussions:
- How is your global payment experience in Dynamics?
- Are you planning multi-entity expansion, especially D365 Finance & Operations?
- Is your Dynamics investment being held back by weak A/R and payments capabilities?
Embedded is the future of financial management with Dynamics 365
The market is steadily moving toward a unified rather than a fragmented approach. Dynamics 365 customers, whether running Finance or Business Central, expect to work with vendors that can help them handle complex workflows with elegant solutions.
Dynamics partners that understand—and can deliver on—embedded, integrated systems will own the A/R and payments market segment. The market momentum is clear. Dynamics users are tired of bolt-on A/R and payments capabilities. Partners must adapt by re-positioning their solutions and deploying new capabilities.
Embedded payments are becoming table stakes in the Dynamics ecosystem. Partners that can deliver integrated A/R and payment solutions—where reconciliation is automated, implementations are measured in weeks not months, and compliance is built in—will own the competitive high ground and retain clients for the long term.
Ready to transform your Dynamics 365 A/R operations?
- Learn more about Invoiced’s A/R automation platform
- Explore our ERP integration capabilities
- Schedule a demo to see how we help Dynamics users eliminate manual reconciliation
