Why Chemical Manufacturers Trust Dynamics Square
60+
Implementations in Manufacturing
35+
Manufacturing and Supply Chain Consultants
14+
Years Serving Canadian Manufacturers
Business Central or Supply Chain Management: Choosing the Right Dynamics 365 for Chemical Manufacturing
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for chemical manufacturing comes down to a comparison between Business Central and Supply Chain Management. Looking at how your recipes are written, how many plants you run and what paperwork leaves with each shipment will show which one to start with.
Dynamics 365 Business Central
A formulator, blender or toll packager running set recipes from one plant, where batches repeat at the same size. It covers production orders, lot numbers with expiry dates, and quality inspections when material arrives and when finished product is posted.
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Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
A producer with percentage-driven formulas, reactions that yield secondary outputs, or plants and legal entities in several provinces or countries. It brings formula versions, batch attributes and hazmat setup into the ERP itself, where Business Central depends on add-on software.
Explore Supply Chain ManagementSafety data sheets, hazard classifications and shipping papers still originate with your own team. What the ERP adds is the batch history behind them, meaning the ingredient lots, the formula version, the test results and the list of customers who received each shipment.
Talk to Us About Your Production RequirementsWhat Compliances Dynamics 365 ERP for Chemical Manufacturing Fulfils
Chemical makers in Canada deal with federal rules, provincial rules and, for many, cross-border shipping rules as well. Which of them apply depends on what you make and where it goes, and each leans on records that an ERP for chemical manufacturing should already hold.
WHMIS 2015
Under the Hazardous Products Act and its Regulations, suppliers give buyers a safety data sheet (SDS) before sale and label every container. Amendments from December 15, 2022 follow the seventh revised GHS edition, with the transition ended December 14, 2025. Significant new hazard data requires SDS updates within 90 days and label updates within 180. Records last six years.
Bilingual hazard information
Label and SDS content must appear in both English and French. Product names, ingredient descriptions and hazard phrases therefore need to exist in both languages in your item data, so every printed label and data sheet draws on records already holding the English and French wording.
New substances
Under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the New Substances Notification Regulations (Chemicals and Polymers) require notice to Environment and Climate Change Canada before a new substance is imported or manufactured. Development teams rely on clean formula and item records to show what is being made and in what quantity.
The National Pollutant Release Inventory
A facility whose employees work 20,000 hours or more a year, and which meets a substance threshold, reports releases, on-site disposals and off-site transfers. The Part 1A threshold is 10 tonnes at 1 per cent concentration or more. Data for 2025 was due June 1, 2026, PFAS join for 2025 to 2027, and records last three years.
Transportation of dangerous goods
The consignor completes the shipping document before a carrier takes possession of the goods. It lists the UN number, shipping name, primary class, packing group, quantity, a 24-hour emergency number and the consignor’s certification, and copies are kept for at least two years, so shipping records stay easy to retrieve.
Sales tax
GST, HST and provincial sales tax change with the customer’s location, which adds a layer for any manufacturer selling across provinces. Tax codes follow each order’s destination, so every invoice carries the correct rate without manual lookups, whichever province the goods ship to.
What Dynamics 365 ERP for Chemical Manufacturing Can Do
A chemical ERP proves itself when someone asks what went into a batch and who received it. The capabilities below exist so those questions are answered in minutes.
Formulas and recipes
In Business Central, a recipe is a production bill of materials listing ingredients per unit of output, with versions carrying start dates and approval status. Supply Chain Management makes it a formula with its own approval before activation, quantities that follow batch size or ingredient percentage, staged consumption, and co-products and by-products posted to inventory. That is formula management software for chemical manufacturing at the scale larger producers need.
Batches and lots
Lot numbers and expiry dates are recorded at receipt and production, then follow the material through every transaction. Both products trace forward from a supplier lot to customers and backward from a return to its lots. Supply Chain Management adds batch attributes with target ranges, batch merging and reservation by attribute. This is the batch and lot tracking for chemical manufacturing that audits and recalls depend on.
Quality testing
Quality Management arrived in Business Central with the 2026 release wave. It opens an inspection on each receipt and production posting, and keeps a failing lot out of sales and consumption. Supply Chain Management adds quality orders, non-conformance handling and statistical sampling. Chemical quality control software only helps when test limits mirror your specifications, so they are built with your lab during configuration.
Hazardous materials
Supply Chain Management holds hazmat data on the product, including regulation codes such as ADR or CFR 49, class and division, packing group and compatibility group. It warns when a load mixes incompatible groups, checks stored quantities against your limits and prints shipment documents including the shipper’s declaration. Business Central relies on Microsoft AppSource add-ons. Compliance rests with the company, so classifications and Canadian shipping documents still originate with your team.
Planning and costing
MRP and master scheduling weigh demand against capacity and stock in both products. In Supply Chain Management, production orders are built from formulas and cover batch and continuous processes. Costing carries ingredient prices, labour and machine time into product cost, and Supply Chain Management adds burden allocation for overheads, so each batch carries its full cost into margin reporting.
Reporting data
Annual filings such as the NPRI depend on dependable quantities by substance. Because production, purchases and shipments sit in one database, those quantities can be pulled straight from the system each spring, and the same records support the three-year retention the inventory requires, which keeps filing season routine for the compliance team.
Business Central vs. Supply Chain Management for Chemical Manufacturing
The table shows how the two products differ on the points that matter most in a chemical plant, in a form you can pass to your plant manager or IT team.
| Aspects | Business Central | Supply Chain Management |
|---|---|---|
| Best suited to | Blenders, formulators, toll manufacturers, packagers | Specialty chemical, polymer and intermediate producers, multi-plant operations |
| Production model | Production bills of materials with fixed quantities (Premium licence) | Formula-based production for batch and continuous processes, with co-products and by-products |
| Formula control | Production BOM versions with certification status | Formula versions with approval and activation, plus scalable, percentage-based and step consumption formulas |
| Batch and lot tracking | Native lot tracking with expiry dates | Native, plus batch attributes with ranges, batch merge and reservation by attribute |
| Quality control | Native Quality Management with lot blocking | Quality orders, non-conformance management, statistical sampling |
| Hazardous materials | Add-ons from Microsoft AppSource | Hazmat regulations, classes, compatibility groups, stock limit report, shipment documents |
| Organizational scale | One plant, one legal entity | Multiple entities, sites and currencies |
| Starting licence (Canada) | Premium at $149.20 CAD/user/month | Standard at $284.90 CAD/user/month |
Read down the left column first. If it describes your plant, Business Central Premium is the place to begin. If your recipes are written as percentages, if runs yield co-products, if plants sit in several provinces, or if the ERP must print hazmat paperwork, the right-hand column fits better.
Safety data sheets, in most plants, are authored in dedicated SDS or environmental, health and safety software that generates the English and French sheet and label wording. The ERP holds or links the current version against each product, so one of our first questions is which authoring tool you already run.
Get a Platform RecommendationHow Does Dynamics Square Help You Find the Right Fit
Chemical manufacturing ERP software chosen for a different kind of plant leaves gaps that people fill with spreadsheets, and those spreadsheets tend to stay.
The first step is a working session about your recipes, plants and shipments. Dynamics Square asks whether batch sizes stay fixed, whether any reaction gives off by-products, how many sites you run, what you keep in storage, and how your products are classified and shipped. Those answers point to a product before any proposal is written.
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How Dynamics Square Implements
Dynamics Square follows Microsoft's Success by Design framework to deploy chemical ERP implementation for Canadian manufacturers.
Discover
It is where Dynamics Square’s consultants spend spent in the lab, on the plant floor and in the warehouse, reading formulas, batch routes, hazard data and the reports you file each year.
1
2
Initiate
At this stage, we decide on the ERP platform, the scope and the people accountable for formula and item records.
Implement
It covers configuration, the loading and checking of formulas and item records, and links to your SDS tool and laboratory systems.
3
4
Prepare
It involves putting real batches through the system with the people who will use it, along with training and a go-live date outside your busiest weeks.
Operate
It keeps us on hand for early formula revisions, filing deadlines and process changes.
5
Dynamics 365 ERP Pricing for Chemical Manufacturing
Software is billed per user each month, and the figures below are Microsoft's 2026 list prices in Canadian dollars. Third-party add-ons such as SDS authoring or laboratory integrations are priced separately by their vendors.
Business Central
Essentials
From $108.50CAD/user/month
Core financials, sales, purchasing and inventory
Premium
From $149.20CAD/user/month
Essentials plus production orders, BOMs, routings, MRP, MPS and native Quality Management
Team Members
From $10.90CAD/user/month
Read, approve and light self-service access
Supply Chain Management
Standard
From $284.90CAD/user/month
Full process manufacturing, formula management and advanced quality management
Premium
From $407.00CAD/user/month
Standard plus advanced analytics and financial planning capability
Implementation is quoted separately, once we have seen your plants, recipes and data. A blender or formulator working from one site has a compact Business Central project. Supply Chain Management across several plants is a larger piece of work, because moving your formulas over and configuring hazardous materials are added to the project. A short scoping conversation ends with a written quote built around your own recipes.
Get a Custom QuoteWhy Canadian Chemical Manufacturers Choose Dynamics Square
60+ Implementations in manufacturing
Projects begin with a review of your formulas, item records and hazard data, since every report later depends on them
Recommendations come with reasons, showing how your recipes, plants and shipments point to Business Central or Supply Chain Management
35+ Manufacturing and supply chain consultants, certified in both products, so what we tell you about the differences comes from using each of them
Support continues after go-live through formula revisions, filing deadlines such as the annual NPRI report, and new product launches
More than ten years with Canadian manufacturers means bilingual labelling, cross-province sales tax and Canadian filing deadlines are familiar ground before kick-off
Frequently Asked Questions
Plants of many sizes run chemical production on Dynamics 365, from a small blending shop to a producer with facilities in several provinces. What matters is which product matches your process, and the comparison table on this page is built to answer that.
Start with how your recipes are written. Fixed quantities in a single plant lead to Business Central Premium, while percentage-based formulas, co-products or by-products, and several plants lead to Supply Chain Management. A manufacturer somewhere in between can settle it in a working session with our consultants.
Batch production works in both products. In Business Central, a production order pulls ingredients from a production bill of materials, records the lots consumed and creates a lot for what comes out. Supply Chain Management builds its production orders from formulas and covers continuous processes as well as batches, with co-products and by-products posted to inventory. Both keep each finished lot tied to the ingredient lots behind it, and that link is what turns a production schedule into chemical batch manufacturing software.
Business Central stores a recipe as a production bill of materials. Each version carries its own starting date and certification status, which lets an approved revision go live on a chosen day. Supply Chain Management goes further. A formula has versions that must be approved and activated, can scale by quantity or by ingredient percentage, can consume ingredients step by step, and can produce co-products and by-products. Plants shopping for formula management software for chemical manufacturing should check which of these descriptions matches their recipes.
Any ingredient, intermediate or finished product can be set to require a lot number and an expiry date, in both products. The record follows the material from receiving through production to shipping. Searching a supplier lot shows which of your batches used it and which customers received them. Searching a returned drum works the other way round and lists the ingredient lots inside. Supply Chain Management adds batch attributes, which record a measured value such as the percentage of an ingredient against a target and an allowed range.
Trace Every Batch from Ingredient Lot to Customer Delivery
Give your lab, plant and warehouse teams one record to work from, so a customer question, a filing deadline or a recall is answered from the system.
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