MB-920 common mistakes
MB-920 · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Treating Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management as a single product that covers warehouse execution, transportation, and planning under one licence, and answering that a capability such as transportation load building is included in the base Supply Chain Management licence rather than in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Commerce or in separate add-ins.
Microsoft markets Supply Chain Management as an umbrella name, and candidates skim the product page and assume every module listed belongs to one SKU. The exam deliberately tests which apps are separate licences (for example, the planning add-in for master planning, or the separate apps for inventory, procurement, sales, and warehouse management).
What to do instead
Build a one-page map of the Supply Chain Management family before studying: core SCM app (procurement and sourcing, sales and marketing, inventory, master planning, warehouse management, transportation management, production control, asset management), plus the distinct apps and add-ins (Planning Optimization add-in, Supply Chain Management only vs. Finance only capabilities). For each capability, write the module and the licence it sits under, then self-test by naming the module for ten capabilities at random.
Confusing warehouse management processes with inventory management processes, for example saying that a quality order is created automatically at receipt because the item is set up in inventory management, or that work creation is controlled by the item model group rather than by warehouse work policies and location directives.
Both modules deal with stock, so the vocabulary overlaps. Candidates learn the item model group settings (stocked, negative inventory, physical and financial updates) and then over-apply them to warehouse execution, where the controlling setup is the warehouse, location, work template, and location directive.
What to do instead
Learn the split explicitly: inventory management owns item model groups, inventory dimensions, reservation, and on-hand transactions; warehouse management owns warehouses, locations, work templates, location directives, wave and load planning, and mobile device menus. Practise by taking five statements and labelling each as inventory setup or warehouse setup, and state which record you would change to alter the behaviour.
Assuming master planning always runs as a batch job inside the finance and operations database, and failing to recognise that Planning Optimization is a separate service with its own setup, scheduling, and limitations compared with the deprecated built-in master planning engine.
Older study material and older environments describe the built-in engine, and the transition to Planning Optimization happened incrementally. Candidates memorise the concept of master planning without noting which engine executes it and which features are still unsupported in the add-in.
What to do instead
Write a short comparison: Planning Optimization runs as a separate service, is enabled from feature management, uses its own job scheduling, and does not support every legacy scenario (for example, some production and kanban scenarios have been added over time). Check the current Microsoft Learn documentation for the supported feature list rather than relying on memory, and be ready to answer which engine a given scenario requires.
Describing Dynamics 365 Finance as a full accounting suite that replaces the general ledger with subledger postings, or claiming that subledger journals post directly to the general ledger without going through the ledger posting process.
Candidates with an accounting background map Finance onto a familiar ERP and assume subledger-to-ledger posting is immediate and direct. In Finance, subledger journals post to the general ledger through posting, and the ledger and subledger must reconcile, which the exam tests as a core concept.
What to do instead
Learn the posting chain: subledger journal entries are created, posted, and then transferred to the general ledger, where you can view voucher transactions and run the subledger-to-ledger reconciliation. Be able to state that the general ledger is the system of record and that financial dimensions flow from subledger entries. Test yourself by tracing one vendor invoice from entry to ledger voucher.
Mixing up the roles of the chart of accounts, financial dimensions, and account structures, for example stating that financial dimensions are created on the main account or that an account structure controls the posting layer.
These three concepts are introduced together and all appear on configuration screens. Candidates memorise definitions without learning how they interact: main accounts and their main account categories, dimensions and dimension values, and account structures that combine main account and dimension segments into a valid account combination for a ledger.
What to do instead
Draw the relationship: chart of accounts holds main accounts; financial dimensions are defined once and shared; account structures attach a ledger to a set of allowed main account and dimension combinations and define the order of segments. Then answer practice questions by asking which object you would edit to change a behaviour, for example adding a new department to a posting account.
Assuming that a fiscal calendar, a ledger, and a legal entity are interchangeable, and answering that creating a new legal entity automatically creates a new chart of accounts and calendar.
In Finance, legal entities share ledgers and calendars by design, and candidates who come from systems where each company has an isolated chart of accounts misread the shared-setup model. The exam tests that multiple legal entities can share a chart of accounts and fiscal calendar while keeping separate ledger balances.
What to do instead
Memorise the sharing model: legal entities are the boundary for transactions and reporting, ledgers are attached to legal entities but can share a chart of accounts and accounting calendar, and fiscal calendars are defined independently and then attached to ledgers. Practise by describing a two-company structure where both companies post to the same main accounts but report separately, and name each setup record involved.
Treating the finance and operations apps as separate products with separate user directories and separate security models, and answering that a user account must be created in each app individually.
The apps share a common platform, and candidates who study each app in isolation miss that Lifecycle Services, the common data model, and Microsoft Entra ID identity are shared. The exam asks about the shared platform capabilities, and the answer requires knowing that security roles are assigned in the app but identities come from the shared directory.
What to do instead
Study the platform layer as its own topic: Microsoft Entra ID for identity, Lifecycle Services for environment and deployment management, the shared security model of roles, duties, and privileges, and the common integration and data management capabilities. For each capability, note whether it is app-specific or platform-wide, and be able to say where a user is created and where a role is assigned.
Confusing the security hierarchy of role, duty, and privilege, for example saying that a duty is assigned directly to a user or that a privilege is a collection of roles.
The three levels are described in one paragraph in most documentation, and the naming is not intuitive. Candidates memorise the words without the containment order, so questions that ask which object to modify to grant a specific permission trip them up.
What to do instead
Memorise the containment order: privileges contain entry points and permissions, duties group privileges into a business task, roles group duties into a job function, and users are assigned roles. Then practise with a scenario such as allowing a clerk to post a specific journal, and identify whether you would create or modify a privilege, a duty, or a role, and why the highest appropriate level is preferred.
Assuming that reporting and analytics in finance and operations apps come only from the transactional database, and failing to recognise the role of the entity store, Power BI integration, and the data lake or bring-your-own-database options for analytics.
Candidates focus on forms and transactional reports and skip the analytics architecture. The exam tests core platform capabilities, which include the entity store for aggregate measurements, Power BI embedded workspaces, and the export options for large-scale analytics.
What to do instead
Learn the analytics stack: transactional data lives in the app database, the entity store holds aggregated data for embedded Power BI, and options exist to bring your own data lake or database for broader analytics. Be able to state which component serves an operational report compared with a historical trend dashboard, and where the data is refreshed from.
Memorising feature names without learning what each feature does in a business process, so that a question describing a scenario such as consolidating intercompany transactions or handling a vendor prepayment cannot be matched to the correct module and feature.
The exam is scenario-driven and the distractors are real feature names from other modules. Candidates who study by reading feature lists recognise the words but cannot map a described business need to the right capability, so they pick a plausible-sounding feature from the wrong module.
What to do instead
Study by process, not by feature list: for each core process (procure to pay, order to cash, record to report, plan to produce, warehouse to ship), write the steps and the module and feature that supports each step. Then practise converting each feature name into a one-sentence business scenario, and reverse the exercise by reading a scenario and naming the module, the feature, and the setup record that enables it.