We promised you Round 14 would be the one everyone actually cares about. Here it is: paying vendors.
Everything we’ve covered in the purchasing block — purchase orders, receiving, invoicing, credit memos, and vendor setup — leads to this moment. The invoices are approved. The due dates are coming. Somebody has to run the payment.
In Dynamics GP, that somebody knows the ritual by heart. It’s called the check run, and it has more steps than most people realize until they write them down. In Business Central, the same job starts with one button that asks a simple question: who should we pay?
Let’s walk through both.
How You Pay Vendors in Dynamics GP
GP’s check run lives in the Purchasing series, and it flows through a chain of windows. Microsoft’s Payables Management documentation covers each one; here’s the short version.
Step 1: Select Checks. Go to Transactions > Purchasing > Select Checks. Enter a new batch ID, and GP asks you to add the batch — you pick the checkbook ID it will pay from. One batch, one checkbook. If you pay from two bank accounts, that’s two separate check runs.
Step 2: Build the batch. Back in the Select Payables Checks window, you set your criteria: a range of vendors, documents, or due dates, whether to take payment discounts, and whether to apply existing credits automatically. Then you choose Build Batch, and GP gathers every invoice that fits.
Step 3: Edit Check Batch. The build usually isn’t the final answer. Maybe cash is tight this week and one vendor can wait. Maybe you want to pay half of a big invoice. The Edit Payables Check Batch window is where you uncheck vendors, remove invoices, or add ones the build missed. One longtime GP community leader describes it as the window you use to clean up the batch you just built — and every AP clerk knows exactly what that means.
Step 4: Edit Checks. Need a comment on one specific check, or a change to how one payment applies? That’s a third window, Edit Payables Checks, for fine-tuning individual payments.
Step 5: Print Checks. GP assigns check numbers and prints the physical checks (or EFT numbers). This is the point of no return — and the most nerve-wracking part of the run. If the printer jams, if someone loses their connection, if GP crashes mid-print, you’re in recovery mode. Microsoft maintains an entire troubleshooting article on continuing an interrupted check run, and its first suggestion is restoring the company database from backup. That’s why seasoned GP admins back up before every check run — it’s not paranoia, it’s experience.
Step 6: Post Checks. After the checks print correctly, the Post Payables Checks window posts the batch, updates vendor balances, and moves everything to history. Until you post, the batch sits locked in “Check Printing” status and can’t be edited anywhere else.
Select, build, edit, edit again, print, post. It works — GP shops have run payables this way for decades. But it’s a procedure, and procedures need training, documentation, and a calm printer.
How You Pay Vendors in Business Central
Business Central replaces the window chain with one page: the Payment Journal. Microsoft’s guide to making payments calls it a general journal optimized for paying people, and the star feature is a batch job called Suggest Vendor Payments.
Step 1: Open the Payment Journal and choose the Suggest Vendor Payments action.
Step 2: Answer a few questions. The Last Payment Date is your cutoff — BC finds every invoice due on or before it. Turn on Find Payment Discounts and BC also grabs invoices where an early-payment discount is still on the table, so free money stops slipping away. Summarize per Vendor rolls multiple invoices into one payment per vendor. You can filter by vendor, prioritize your most important suppliers, and set the posting date. Vendors you’ve flagged as On Hold are skipped automatically.
Step 3: Review the suggested lines. Here’s the quiet superpower: every line BC creates is already applied to its invoice through the Applies-to Doc. No. field. There’s no separate apply step, no hunting for the right document later. Delete a line you don’t want, change an amount for a partial payment, done — it’s a journal, so editing is just editing. No second and third windows.
Step 4: Pay. If you print physical checks, set the Bank Payment Type to Computer Check and print before posting. If you pay electronically — and most BC customers do — you post the journal and export a bank file to upload to your bank. Either way, posting applies the payments, closes the invoices, and updates every ledger at once.
One page. One batch job. One post.
Or choose Vendor Ledger Entries, filter to the entries you need to pay and select Pay Vendor and the correct batches and boom the batch is built and ready to go.
Side by Side
| Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|
| Dynamics GP | Business Central | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it happens | Select Checks, Edit Check Batch, Edit Checks, Print Checks, Post Checks | The Payment Journal page |
| Finding what’s due | Build Batch with ranges and criteria | Suggest Vendor Payments batch job |
| Payment discounts | Option during build | Find Payment Discounts toggle |
| Applying to invoices | Handled per batch settings and edit windows | Every line pre-applied automatically |
| Editing the run | Separate Edit Check Batch and Edit Checks windows | Edit journal lines directly |
| Electronic payments | EFT setup per checkbook | Post, then export a bank file |
| Interrupted run | Recovery procedure; restore from backup | Journal is just a draft until posted |
| Skipping a vendor | Uncheck them in Edit Check Batch | On Hold vendors excluded automatically |
Why BC Comes Out Ahead
The GP check run is reliable, but it’s fragile at exactly the wrong moment. Between Print Checks and Post Checks, your batch lives in a locked in-between state, and a printer jam becomes a recovery project. Business Central has no equivalent danger zone — the payment journal is an editable draft until the second you post it, and electronic payments skip the printer entirely.
BC also does the tedious part for you. Pre-applied lines mean no apply-step mistakes. Discount hunting is a toggle, not a policy memo. And because it’s all one journal page, a new AP hire learns the whole process in an afternoon instead of shadowing three check runs.
Your vendors get paid either way. In BC, so does your Friday afternoon.
Thinking About the Switch?
Aisling Dynamics supports both systems every day — we help GP clients keep their check runs humming, and we move companies to Business Central when they’re ready for the smoother path. If your AP team is more than ready, learn about our team, visit our GP vs. BC hub, or contact us at (251) 293-0555.
That wraps the purchasing block — six rounds from purchase order to paid invoice. Come back tomorrow for Round 15, when we cross the aisle to the sales side: entering sales orders in GP vs. BC.