Maximize Your Business Central Experience with Free Apps

Welcome and Agenda

Hey, good afternoon or morning everyone. This is Mark, and today I’m going to take you through some of the free applications available from InsightWorks for Business Central.

We’re recording this, so you’ll get a copy afterward. If you have any questions as we go, feel free to enter them in the question panel in the GoToWebinar session, and I’ll try to answer them as we go through.

Quick agenda: I’ll briefly cover who we are and what we do, then we’ll talk about the broader list of applications we offer, and then we’ll dive into the free apps. Most of this will be a software demo rather than PowerPoint, and we’ll aim for about 45 minutes depending on how many questions come in.

About InsightWorks and How We Work

All right, let’s jump in. A little bit about InsightWorks: we work through our reseller partners primarily. If you have questions, want to try the apps out, or need help, give your partner a shout. If you’re not working with a partner, get in touch with us directly.

As far as the free apps go, most of them are pretty straightforward. You can usually get them installed and running on your own, or you can contact us and we can help. I’ll give you links at the end to our knowledge base and forum to help you get up and running.

We’re talking about free apps today, but overall we have well over 30 applications. We’ll focus on the “top 10” today, but there are a lot of other apps out there.

We work primarily in manufacturing and warehousing, with retail capability as well. If you have counter sales requirements, we have those capabilities too.

Application Overview: Distribution, Warehousing, and Manufacturing

At a high level, we support distribution, warehousing, and manufacturing. The free apps cover both manufacturing and warehousing, so let’s look at the broader capabilities first.

Distribution and warehousing flow

In warehousing or distribution, we typically start with planning—procurement and/or production planning, forecasting, and then fulfillment planning, like what we can ship today. The Enhanced Planning Pack includes a lot of tools, but two key tools in it—Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet and Enhanced Planning Worksheet—are free.

Once we’ve planned it and bought it, we need to receive it, pick it, and manage warehouse operations. We have a full warehouse management solution called Warehouse Insight, which is a full-blown WMS and highly customizable. The free version is WMS Express, which handles the core capabilities you need: shipping, repicking, receiving, inventory counts, bin movements, and more. You plug it in and away you go.

Once the warehouse work is done, we need to get it out the door. For shipping, Dynamic Ship is the subscription-based version with multi-carrier rate shopping and advanced shipping features. Ordership Express is the free version we’ll look at today. Its main limitation is domestic parcel only—it doesn’t do international shipments or LTL. But you can generate labels, rates, and tracking numbers directly in Business Central without external software, and it’s completely free.

Ordership Express also provides discounted rates if you don’t have your own carrier accounts, or if your current discounts aren’t great, since you can use built-in accounts and ship with carriers like USPS, UPS, Canada Post, and FedEx.

Manufacturing flow

Manufacturing follows a similar pattern. We start with Enhanced Planning Pack to plan production and purchasing activities, plus analysis tools. Again, the Enhanced Planning Worksheet and Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet are free.

Then we schedule. We offer a full APS solution (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) that can generate an executable schedule based on constraints like materials, labor, and capacity. If you don’t need that level of power, we also offer a free Graphical Scheduler, which lets you drag and drop production orders, process operations, or other work onto the schedule. It’s configurable and extensible.

For execution, we have subscription-based tools like Shop Floor Insight and Quality Inspector. Quality Inspector is also “almost free” in the sense that Microsoft has licensed part of our Quality Inspector to be used as a quality management module within Business Central, so you’ll get a light version in Business Central. The subscription version includes more features, but the native option may cover some needs.

After that, it’s the same pattern again: warehouse processing with Warehouse Insight or WMS Express, and shipping with Dynamic Ship or Ordership Express.

Free Apps We’ll Focus On

Out of the broader set of applications, there are several free ones. I mentioned Enhanced Planning Worksheet and Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet already. Some of the free apps are more technical (often used by developers or consultants), but these are among the most popular because everybody needs them.

• PrintNode Connector: enables cloud printing from Business Central (you still pay PrintNode for their service, but the connector is free).
• Import Expert Power Tool: helps manage data imports, especially useful for migrations from legacy systems.
• Barcode Generator Power Tool: adds barcodes to reports and includes sample barcode reports.
• Graphical Scheduler: free drag-and-drop scheduling for production and other activities.
• Doc Extender: drag-and-drop document management, including storage on SharePoint and enabling workflows, revision tracking, and alerts.
• Ordership Express: free domestic parcel shipping labels, rates, and tracking from within Business Central.
• WMS Express: free handheld scanning for core warehouse operations (receiving, picking, counts, bin moves, etc.).
• Safety Logbook: tracks HSC events like spills, incidents, certifications, audits, and related safety records.

Now, with that, let’s jump into Business Central and walk through a flow: planning, warehouse operations, scheduling, and shipping.

Forecasting with Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet

To get started, we’ll generate some demand in the system using forecasting. The Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet uses the Microsoft Azure forecasting model. We take history out of Business Central, send it to the Azure AI forecasting model, it crunches the numbers, and then sends the results back so we can work with them.

It’s similar to the forecasting chart you might see on the item list or item card, but this worksheet is much more usable and efficient.

The way it works: I can filter to specific items, item filters, or item categories. In this case, I’m forecasting for all my chairs. I can also choose which locations to forecast for—one location, multiple locations, or all locations. I’m doing a monthly forecast, looking ahead three months, and using the last two years of history to determine what the next three months should look like.

There’s also a forecast algorithm setting. The default is ARIMA, but you can run it through all algorithms to pick the best fit, which takes longer. The documentation for the forecasting API is on Microsoft Learn, and the worksheet is basically leveraging that model.

When you click Calculate Forecast, it may suggest adjusting the history window to what’s meaningful based on the data. Then it sends data out, retrieves results, and displays predicted values (and a confidence score if you choose to show it).

One note: there’s a volume limit based on what the forecasting model can handle. You might not be able to run a huge number of items over a long horizon at once. If it complains about too much data, scale back the filter—reduce locations, items, or periods.

Using the forecast results

Once we have results, we can do two main things. First, we can update the demand forecast. That writes the predicted values into the standard Business Central forecast tables so the Planning Worksheet can use them to drive supply suggestions.

Second, instead of updating the demand forecast, we can update item planning parameters like reorder point, maximum inventory, reorder quantity, and safety stock. Those values can be calculated using formulas you define—based on variables like average daily forecast, lead time, and more. You can use rounding, if statements, and other logic to compute planning parameters and then update the item card or stock keeping unit directly.

So forecasting is pretty simple: choose what to forecast and for how long, calculate, review the results, and then either update the demand forecast or update item/SKU planning parameters.

Planning Supply with Enhanced Planning Worksheet

Next, we want to see what supply we need. We’ve got demand from sales orders, forecast, and other sources, and we want to figure out what to purchase or manufacture.

This is the Enhanced Planning Worksheet. If you’re using the Requisition Worksheet or Planning Worksheet in Business Central today, you should really grab this. It combines capabilities of both into one and offers better tools and a more efficient experience. You can handle special orders and drop shipments from here as well.

You can still run standard Business Central planning logic here with Calculate Regenerative Plan (standard MRP). But there’s also Calculate Purchase Plan, which is particularly useful in distribution/warehousing where you don’t want the noisy reschedule/cancel/quantity-change suggestions that can come from MRP. The purchase plan is streamlined and very fast—planning for many locations and thousands of items can run in minutes instead of potentially an hour with standard MRP.

Job queue planning and reviewing results

One advantage is that you can run the plan from the job queue without needing changes. That means you can schedule it to run daily at a set time, or even more frequently as new demand comes in (like e-commerce). You can build a running total and then review purchasing thresholds per vendor.

After running the plan, you’ll see suggestions similar to standard Business Central planning lines, but with improvements. For example, if you decide you don’t want to purchase something and instead want to transfer it from another location, you can do that. When you rerun the plan, it will respect your changes instead of trying to cancel and replace them with new suggestions.

It also removes a lot of noise—no excessive cancels or reschedules when you run the purchase plan.

Better visibility and easier decision-making

On each line, you get helpful views like a supply/demand summary, availability in other companies and locations, and vendor planning summaries that show whether you’ve hit purchasing thresholds (like $5,000). That makes it easy to decide when to generate a purchase order.

You can also quickly sanity-check recommendations. For example, if it suggests buying 50 units, you can look at history to see typical usage, drill into transactions, and immediately see the planning parameters driving the recommendation. If the reorder logic doesn’t make sense, you can change it right there and update the SKU/item card, and the next run will respect those settings.

Finally, you can generate purchase orders quickly—create, release, and email in one shot if you want, or leave them open for manual approval and email.

Vendor planning summary

The vendor summary view shows what you’re planning to buy from each vendor and whether thresholds are met. It’s especially useful if you have multiple buyers who handle different vendor sets, because each buyer can focus on their vendors and cut POs when appropriate.

If you install the Enhanced Planning Pack, once the trial runs out you still have access to the Enhanced Planning Worksheet, Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet, and the vendor summary.

Scheduling with Graphical Scheduler

Now that we’ve planned, we need to schedule production orders. The Graphical Scheduler gives you a visual schedule view. There’s a longer video online showing setup, colors, and more. The default view is pretty plain, but you can configure it and make it more usable.

You can click on orders to see details and related operations, zoom directly to a production order, and then drag and drop operations to reschedule them. When you move an operation, it will reschedule around it accordingly.

If you’re using Maintenance Manager (not free, but inexpensive), you can also include maintenance work orders in the same schedule view so you can see maintenance and production together.

Production orders are the default view, but you can create views for almost anything: quality assignments, picking assignments, service orders, and more. You can add custom tables, configure colors and text, and tailor the view to what you want inside Business Central.

Warehouse Execution with WMS Express

Next is warehouse execution—receiving parts for production, or picking and shipping orders. This is where we use the handheld device running WMS Express.

It doesn’t matter what device you run it on: tablet, phone, rugged handheld device, whatever you like. You can also customize the logo at the top with your company branding or anything you want.

There’s a setup video online. If you’ve done it before, it takes about 10 minutes: install it into Business Central, scan a few barcodes on the device, and you can start scanning in the warehouse.

Receiving on the handheld

In Receiving, you get a list of purchase orders you can receive against for the device’s configured location. You can choose a PO, open it, and work in what we call the grid view—a compact view showing a lot of information at once, with details displayed as you select lines. There are also other interface options like a card view.

From there, you typically scan barcodes. If you don’t have barcodes, some devices can scan text as well, so you can scan an item number or code even if it’s not printed as a barcode. You can also print labels directly from the handheld device (depending on your setup), then apply them and scan them in.

When you scan an item barcode, it finds the item, optionally shows a picture, and you enter quantity. You can read unit of measure, quantity, lot number, serial number, and more from the barcode if you want. WMS Express supports lots and serial numbers; it’s just that the full Warehouse Insight solution includes more applications.

Once you confirm, it updates Business Central in real time. The same approach applies to picking, shipping, bin movements, and inventory counts or cycle counts—quick and easy scanning directly against Business Central.

Shipping with Ordership Express and Cloud Printing

After warehouse work, we want to ship. You can use a full order fulfillment worksheet (subscription-based) to automate and prioritize what you can ship today, and it can automate generation of pick and shipment documents. But even if you don’t have that, you can still ship directly from a sales order.

In Business Central, there’s also Sales Order Shipping, which is designed for warehouse users. If you’re not using warehouse shipments or inventory picks, this view lets warehouse staff see only shipping-relevant details (like shipping address, tracking numbers, and quantities) without pricing or other sensitive fields, and without allowing changes. It’s a great tool for shipping when you’re using basic sales order processes.

Creating a label

From the sales order, Ordership Express provides access to a simple Create Shipping Labels action. If the order already has a shipping method (like UPS Ground), it pre-fills that. You enter package dimensions and weight, or choose a predefined package type if you use carrier packaging options.

Before generating the label, you can rate the shipment to see your cost, then set what you want to charge the customer. You can switch carriers (for example, compare UPS Ground vs USPS Express), change options like signature requirements, or bill the customer’s account where supported.

When you click Get Label, it prints directly to the configured printer and inserts the shipping charge, cost, and tracking number back onto the sales order. With defaults set up, it’s very fast—shipping labels with tracking and costs are generated in seconds. Ordership Express is also quick to set up, with an online video that walks through it.

PrintNode Connector cloud printing

The automatic printing is handled by the PrintNode Connector, which enables cloud printing. If you’ve configured which printer a report should use, it sends the output directly without prompting for print preview in the browser.

Barcode Generator Overview

Barcode Generator adds barcode capabilities beyond what standard Business Central provides. Standard Business Central has some barcode fonts and options, but Barcode Generator provides more formats and includes a set of sample barcoded versions of standard Business Central reports.

It includes around 20–30 barcoded reports, plus source code and layouts you can tailor. It also includes useful items like sample item reports, bin label reports, and a Sample Barcode List.

The Sample Barcode List lets you define barcodes you want to print, run a report to print them (like the sheet used for scanning demos), or even scan them directly off the screen with modern scanners.

Additional Free Add-ons in the Warehouse Insight Add-on Catalog

One last thing before we wrap up: if you have the full Warehouse Insight solution (subscription-based), there’s an Add-on Catalog. It contains additional free applications that primarily work with Warehouse Insight, and the list is growing frequently.

Many of these are small tools that plug in and add useful capabilities. For example, Fixed Asset Count is a free add-on that allows you to count fixed assets, generate fixed asset labels, and perform fixed asset counts with scanners or paper. Another example is a Proof of Delivery module where you can record deliveries, capture photos, and more using a handheld device.

For these add-ons, documentation and source code are available, so you can install them, use them, and extend them as needed. So it’s not just the main free apps we walked through—there are many more available through the catalog when you’re running Warehouse Insight.

Import Expert Power Tool Mention

I didn’t demo Import Expert Power Tool today, but it’s an amazing tool and everybody should have it. It’s more technical, but there are several videos on our YouTube channel showing different ways to use it for importing and managing data.

Support Resources and Closing

If you have additional questions, go to our website—there’s a chat box there. You can also go to the support area for the knowledge base (documentation and guides) and the community forum where you can ask questions. Quite often our employees and support people will provide answers there as well.

Talk to your partner if you want to get some of these applications installed or want more information on other apps we didn’t cover today.

Q&A Highlights

Slow-moving inventory in forecasting

By default, no. The forecasting worksheet is using sales history from Business Central. It doesn’t pull component history for production or handle slow-moving inventory logic out of the box. That said, it’s fully extensible. There are events you can use to extend it and bring in additional data or modify behavior, including logic for slow-moving inventory, if you want to build that.

Which Azure forecasting model is used

It’s the same forecasting model that base Business Central uses. If you go into Sales and Forecasting Setup in Business Central, that’s the same underlying functionality. The difference is that we provide a worksheet that’s actually usable for driving your forecast, instead of relying on a small chart on the item list.

Enhanced Planning Worksheet in the job queue

Yes, you can control whether the batches/planning lines are cleared automatically when it runs. It can either start from scratch each run or be cumulative, depending on your settings. The cumulative option can be useful if you’re monitoring purchases over time and want to focus on new recommendations as they come in.

Splitting freight costs across multiple shipments

That’s more of a Dynamic Ship question than an Ordership Express one. It is possible to split freight cost across multiple shipments via a setup setting. The recommendation is to email support so they can provide instructions or jump on a call to help configure it.

Using Barcode Generator for production

Yes. You can generate any barcode you like with any data and format. There are some standard reports included, and you can also create custom reports in Business Central as needed. Barcode Generator isn’t a report builder, but it makes it easy to embed barcodes in Word layouts or RDLC reports, including GS1-128, QR codes, Data Matrix, Code 39, Code 128, and more.

UCC 128 labels

There are several ways to do UCC 128 labels depending on whether you’re using Dynamic Ship, Ordership Express, Warehouse Insight, or other combinations. We provide sample UCC 128 labels with code and layouts in an external repository and you can find them via the knowledge base. The best approach depends on your trading partners and when you want to print labels (with ASN, before ASN, during packaging, etc.).

Final Thanks

All right, looks like that’s all the questions. Thanks, everybody. I hope that was useful, and I hope you have a great rest of the week. We’ll talk to you again. Bye-bye.