Release updates, practical tips from live projects, licensing changes and write-ups of our EZBC videos. New articles most weeks; the monthly newsletter rounds them up.
Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales make a great match, but only if their records are properly coupled. The introductions, the matchmaking, who wears the trousers, the arguments, the prenup and, when it comes to it, the divorce.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026A ten-part, hands-on series that takes you from an empty folder to a working Business Central extension: tables, fields and data types, pages, actions, extensions, codeunits, events, reports, APIs, permissions, tests and shipping, with every property explained.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026Everything you need before writing a line of AL: VS Code, the AL Language extension, a sandbox, app.json, launch.json, symbols, ID ranges, naming, code analysers and source control, finishing with the first two objects of a real extension.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026How to build a Business Central table in AL: the anatomy of a table object, every table property worth knowing, every field data type and when to use it, every common field property, and the full Pallet Type table.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026Finishing the table: primary and secondary keys, fieldgroups, FlowFields and FlowFilters with every CalcFormula type, table relations including conditional ones, table and field triggers, and procedures on tables, with the completed Pallet Type table.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026How to add your own fields to Microsoft's tables with a table extension, what you can and cannot change, and how to build enums and extend them from another app, with the full Pallet Manager code.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026Pages are what NAV called forms. How to build a list page and a card page in AL, which page type to use when, every layout control, and the page and field properties you will actually set.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026Adding actions and promoting them, building a FactBox, saving views on a list, and extending Microsoft's Item Card and Item List with page extensions, with the full Pallet Manager code and every property explained.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026Where the logic lives. How to build a codeunit, the AL you need every day (procedures, variables, loops), every Record method worth knowing and when to use it, errors and messages done properly, and publishing and subscribing to events.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026Getting data out (and in). How to build a report with a dataset, request page and Excel layout, extend someone else's report, write a query that joins and totals, and import a CSV file with an XMLport.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026How to let other systems read and write your Business Central data safely: when to use the standard v2.0 APIs, how to build an API page and an API query, every property that matters, authentication, real requests, paging and versioning.
Read more →NewDevelopment · 6 Nov 2026The last mile: permission sets so people can use the app, install and upgrade codeunits so data is right on day one and every version after, automated tests, and how to publish a per-tenant extension to production safely.
Read more →NewAI and agents · 6 Nov 2026"AI will run your finance department." "AI will replace your ERP." "AI makes implementation consultants obsolete." None of these are true, and believing them costs money. Seven common AI claims in ERP, what is actually true behind each, and how to tell the difference when a vendor is selling.
Read more →NewAI and agents · 6 Nov 2026Microsoft ships agents for sales orders, payables and expenses. The obvious next ones are credit control, replenishment and parts of the month-end close. A wish list, why each one fits an agent, and what you can do in the meantime with standard features and a custom agent.
Read more →NewAI and agents · 6 Nov 2026Before paying for agents, it is worth knowing what Copilot already does in Business Central as part of the licence. Ten built-in assistive features, what each does, and where to switch them on. Most businesses use two or three of them.
Read more →AI and agents · 5 Nov 2026Coding agents now understand AL symbols, allocate object IDs, debug recorded failures and profile slow sessions. What that actually speeds up day to day, where it gets things wrong, and the review habits that keep AI-written code up to your standards.
Read more →AI and agents · 5 Nov 2026Business Central extensions can add their own Copilot features using the System Application's Azure OpenAI module and the PromptDialog page type. How a Copilot capability is registered, how the call is made, how the user reviews the result, and the responsible AI requirements Microsoft expects.
Read more →AI and agents · 5 Nov 2026With the MCP server, an assistant such as Claude, Copilot or others can work against live Business Central data with your permissions. It is very good at some things and should not be trusted with others. Practical uses, where to draw the line, and how to set it up so it helps without becoming a risk.
Read more →AI and agents · 4 Nov 2026The Business Central MCP server lets AI agents built outside BC read and act on your data. That is powerful, and it is a door into your ERP. Which API pages to expose, which permissions to give, how to register clients in Entra, what to log, and the checklist to run before you switch anything on.
Read more →AI and agents · 4 Nov 2026Microsoft's agents cover the common cases. For your own, Copilot Studio and the Business Central MCP server let you build one. A walkthrough of a simple, useful first agent: one that finds overdue customers, drafts a polite chaser, and leaves it for credit control to send.
Read more →AI and agents · 4 Nov 2026If you cannot say how well an agent is doing, you do not know whether it is paying for itself or slowly getting worse. The five numbers to track monthly for any Business Central agent, where to get them, what good looks like, and what to do when they move.
Read more →AI and agents · 3 Nov 2026An AI agent reads documents and follows instructions. So what happens when a document contains instructions? Prompt injection is the attack where a supplier invoice or an email tries to steer the agent. What it looks like, why it matters for anyone running an agent on an inbox, and the controls that stop it.
Read more →AI and agents · 3 Nov 2026Putting personal data into AI tools, agents that remember people, and automated decisions about individuals are all data protection questions. What UK GDPR expects, what the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 changed about automated decision-making, and the practical steps for a Business Central user.
Read more →AI and agents · 3 Nov 2026If an agent is processing supplier invoices, your auditors will want to know how you know it is right. The evidence they will look for: who owns it, what it can do, who approved its output, how accuracy is measured and what the logs show. How to have it ready before they ask.
Read more →AI and agents · 2 Nov 2026Your staff are already using AI, whether you have a policy or not. A one-page policy that says what is allowed, what is not, what needs approval and who to ask, written for people who will actually read it. A template to copy.
Read more →AI and agents · 2 Nov 2026Will AI replace the accounts payable team? Probably not, but the job will change. Which tasks shrink, which grow, what new roles appear, and how to talk to your team about it honestly before the rumour mill does it for you.
Read more →AI and agents · 2 Nov 2026The Expense Agent processes employee expense claims, including receipts, mileage, VAT and duplicate checks, and BC29 added AI-assisted approvals. It is still in public preview. What it does well, what to wait for, who should pilot it now and who should not.
Read more →AI and agents · 1 Nov 2026A customer emails asking for 40 cases of something by Friday. Here is what the Sales Order Agent does with that email, in order: where it reads, what it checks, what it drafts, where it stops and asks, and how to decide whether it suits your order desk.
Read more →AI and agents · 1 Nov 2026"AI will save us loads of time" will not get past a decent finance director. A business case for a Business Central agent needs volume, current cost, expected accuracy, credit cost, risk, and an answer to "what if the price doubles?". The structure, the numbers, and a worked example.
Read more →AI and agents · 1 Nov 2026IT thinks finance owns the Payables Agent. Finance thinks IT does. The supplier thinks the customer does. Nobody owns the Copilot Credit bill. The ownership question for AI in a mid-sized business, the roles that need filling, and a one-table RACI you can adopt this week.
Read more →AI and agents · 31 Oct 2026Most AI still forgets everything the moment the conversation ends. Persistent AI does not: it remembers your rules, keeps working in the background, and learns from the corrections you make. What persistent AI is, how it already shows up in Business Central, why it is useful, the new risks it brings, and how to govern an AI that never goes home.
Read more →AI and agents · 31 Oct 2026Agentic AI is now part of Business Central. Microsoft ships agents that draft sales orders, process supplier invoices and handle expenses, and since April 2026 any compliant AI agent can connect to BC through Microsoft's MCP server. What agentic AI is in plain terms, what BC can do with it today, what it means for developers, how to get your system ready, and where it is heading.
Read more →Opinion · 31 Oct 2026When his boys raid the wrong farm and post it online, Coach does not hide. He walks in, owns it, and offers to put it right. Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen is full of people managing a business that cannot afford mistakes, and Coach is the best example in it of how a partner, a consultant or a team leader should behave when something goes wrong.
Read more →Opinion · 30 Oct 2026An 86-carat diamond passes through the hands of thieves, gangsters, a bookie, a boxer and a dog, and nobody is ever quite in control of it. Guy Ritchie's Snatch is a film about chaos, and an uncomfortably accurate picture of what happens to data, decisions and deals on an ERP project when nobody owns them.
Read more →Opinion · 30 Oct 2026Charlie Croker's gold heist in Turin goes perfectly: the traffic computer, the jam, the Minis through the arcades and down the steps. Then the coach ends up hanging over a cliff with the gold at the wrong end. The Italian Job is the best warning in cinema about a go-live plan that works right up to the last scene.
Read more →Opinion · 30 Oct 2026A tiny Indiana high school, a coach the town wants gone, and a team that wins the state final by doing the basics better than anyone else. Hoosiers is a basketball film, and the best argument there is for getting the fundamentals of a Business Central implementation right before anyone asks for flashy features.
Read more →Opinion · 29 Oct 2026An engineer who cannot find an engineering job takes a class nobody else can teach, throws away the textbooks and treats them as adults. By the end of term they run themselves. To Sir, With Love is a film about a school, and one of the best guides there is to training users and handing over a new system.
Read more →Opinion · 29 Oct 2026An unwritten order nobody will admit to, a log that is missing an entry, a lawyer who settles everything until he decides to fight, and a colonel who cannot stand to be questioned. A Few Good Men is a courtroom drama, and a very good guide to honesty, audit trails and accountability on a Business Central project.
Read more →Opinion · 29 Oct 2026Three casinos. One night. Eleven specialists. Not a single shot fired. Danny Ocean's heist works for the same reasons a Business Central go-live does: the right crew, one job each, a rehearsal vault and a plan for when it goes wrong.
Read more →Opinion · 28 Oct 2026Andy Dufresne escaped Shawshank with a rock hammer, a poster and nineteen years of patience. Escaping a legacy ERP takes less time but the same qualities. Seven moments from The Shawshank Redemption, and what each one says about leaving an old system behind and moving to Business Central.
Read more →Opinion · 28 Oct 2026Dewey Finn turns a class of rule-following prep-school kids into a band that believes in what it is doing. It is a film about music, and one of the best guides to change management you will find. Six lines from School of Rock, and what each one says about moving a business onto Business Central.
Read more →Finance · 28 Oct 2026The Budget confirmed it: mandatory e-invoicing over Peppol for VAT-registered businesses from 1 April 2029. Business Central already has most of what you will need through the E-Documents framework. What the legislation says, what it means for suppliers and buyers, what is in Business Central today, the gap that remains, and six things to do now.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 27 Oct 2026Microsoft will update your environment to the new major version in its window; you pick the day.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 27 Oct 2026Microsoft ships new behaviour switched off for a while. Feature Management is where you turn it on, in a sandbox first.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 27 Oct 2026Every tenant has sandbox environments. A copy of production for trying things is one click in the admin centre.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 26 Oct 2026Want to try a setup change or a batch job without risking the live company? Copy it.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 26 Oct 2026A customer on stop, a supplier under review, an item being discontinued: the Blocked field does it without deleting anything.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 26 Oct 2026Business Central runs on the phone app with the same data and a layout built for it. Approving a purchase order on the train is the usual reason to install it.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 25 Oct 2026Paste a Business Central link into a Teams chat and it becomes a card. Search customers and items from the Teams search bar.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 25 Oct 2026When a customer emails, Business Central can show who they are, what they owe and what they have ordered, inside Outlook, and create a quote from the email.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 25 Oct 2026Attach the supplier's PDF to the purchase invoice, the signed POD to the shipment, the contract to the customer. Drag it from your desktop.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 24 Oct 2026The blue bars at the top of pages are configurable per user.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 24 Oct 2026Every card and document has a Notes FactBox and a Links FactBox. They are the cheapest way to leave a message for the next person.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 24 Oct 2026Any page, list or report you open regularly can be pinned to your role centre navigation in one click.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 23 Oct 2026The tiles on the home page are cues. Set their thresholds and colours, and add the activity groups you actually use.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 23 Oct 2026If you set the same report filters every time, save them, and share the saved settings with colleagues.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 23 Oct 2026Any report with a request page can be scheduled: it runs on the job queue and the output lands in your Report Inbox or your email.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 22 Oct 2026Every report can have several layouts, and a user with the permission can pick, copy and edit them.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 22 Oct 2026"Post and Send" does what the customer's profile says. Set the profile and stop choosing every time.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 22 Oct 2026Monthly statements are a report, a sending profile and a job queue entry.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 21 Oct 2026Chasing overdue invoices by hand is a job the system does better: reminder levels, texts, charges, and a batch that creates and sends them.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 21 Oct 2026Business Central can forecast cash from open items, orders, budgets and the job queue, and most businesses never switch it on.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 21 Oct 2026Reconciling the bank is import, match, post. Most of the matching is automatic now.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 20 Oct 2026Financial Reports (account schedules) are the report writer for the general ledger. Rows you define, columns you define, run for any period and dimension.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 20 Oct 2026A sales department on a purchase cost centre, or a project on an account that is never project-related: dimension combinations stop them at entry.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 20 Oct 2026If every sales invoice to a customer should carry a department, put it on the customer. The system fills it in and refuses to post without it.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 19 Oct 2026"Do we have it?" has four answers depending on when, where and whether it is made from something else. The item card has all four.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 19 Oct 2026Attributes are properties you define (colour, voltage, finish, pack size) that make the item list searchable without a code in the number.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 19 Oct 2026Your customer orders by their code, your supplier invoices by theirs. Item References translate both so nobody retypes.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 18 Oct 2026When a posting setup, a price or a credit limit changes and nobody admits it, the change log knows.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 18 Oct 2026In a multi-company tenant, the company name at the top is a button.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 18 Oct 2026Five settings that change what you see every day, in one place.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 17 Oct 2026Lock last month for everyone, but let the finance manager still post adjustments. User Setup does both.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 17 Oct 2026Open items are what the aged reports show. Applying payments to invoices, and unapplying when it was wrong, is a daily finance task worth doing well.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 17 Oct 2026Posted a journal to the wrong account or date? Do not post a correcting journal by hand. Reverse it.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 16 Oct 2026A posted document number is the key to everything it created. Find Entries shows all of it on one page.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 16 Oct 2026Not sure what a journal or document will do to the ledgers? Preview it. Nothing is posted and you see every entry it would create.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 16 Oct 2026The single most useful key in a journal or document.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 15 Oct 2026Customers who order the same things each time, and suppliers you buy the same things from, can have a standard set of lines inserted in one click.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 15 Oct 2026Most new documents look like an old one. Copy Document builds the new one from any previous document, posted or not.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 15 Oct 2026On a document line you may only ever fill in three fields. Quick entry makes Enter jump between just those.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 14 Oct 2026Every list page has a pivot table hidden behind one button. Group, filter, total and chart without exporting.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 14 Oct 2026You rarely need to type a full date. Business Central understands shorthand in every date field.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 14 Oct 2026Business Central posts to the work date, not the calendar date. Knowing the difference stops a whole class of posting errors.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 13 Oct 2026Some filters change with the day or the user. Tokens let a saved view stay correct without editing it.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 13 Oct 2026The filter box accepts a small language. Learning five characters turns it into a query tool.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 13 Oct 2026Every user can rearrange their own pages. Nothing you do affects anyone else, and it can all be undone.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 12 Oct 2026If you filter the same list the same way every morning, save it as a view and it is one click, forever.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 12 Oct 2026When you need to know which table a field lives in, which page you are on, or what filters are applied, Page Inspector answers in one keystroke.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 12 Oct 2026Sales and purchase documents have a lot going on. Focus mode gives the lines the whole screen.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 11 Oct 2026Business Central has dozens of shortcuts. These ten save the most time for someone who lives in sales orders, journals and lists.
Read more →Tips and tricks · 11 Oct 2026The fastest way to any page, report or action in Business Central is to type what you want. Alt+Q opens Tell Me from anywhere.
Read more →Development · 11 Oct 2026Finance lives in Excel and Business Central has four different ways of meeting it: Open in Excel, Edit in Excel, Excel report layouts and the Excel add-in on APIs. They are not the same, they behave differently with your extension's pages and fields, and two of them can write back. What each does, how to make your pages work well with them, and how to stop Edit in Excel doing something it should not.
Read more →Development · 10 Oct 2026Every object, field, action and label in an extension has a caption, and the platform can show them in any language the user chooses. The TranslationFile feature generates an XLIFF file; translators (or you) fill it; the app ships it. Why to do this even for a UK-only extension, the workflow, locked labels, and translating data as well as code.
Read more →Development · 10 Oct 2026Business Central lets a user with the right permission open Designer, drag fields onto a page, hide columns and add a field from the table, with no code. It is useful and it is the source of a surprising amount of production mess. What Designer actually does, the difference between personalisation and Designer, what it creates behind the scenes, and the rule that keeps it out of trouble.
Read more →Development · 10 Oct 2026Every table in Business Central has eight fields you did not declare: SystemId, SystemCreatedAt, SystemCreatedBy, SystemModifiedAt, SystemModifiedBy, SystemRowVersion and the timestamp. They are what APIs, webhooks, delta reads, audit and Power BI incremental refresh run on. What each is, how to use them, and the two things people try to do with them that do not work.
Read more →Development · 9 Oct 2026A tenant can have many companies, and an extension installs into all of them at once. Code that assumes one company breaks on the second. Install and upgrade per company versus per database, OnCompanyInitialize, reading another company's data with ChangeCompany, tables that are DataPerCompany = false, and the job queue trap.
Read more →Development · 9 Oct 2026Microsoft ships risky changes behind Feature Management switches so customers can turn them on when ready. Your extension can do the same, which is how you deploy a rewritten posting routine on a Tuesday without anyone noticing until finance says go. How feature keys work, registering your own, checking them in code, and the discipline that stops the switch living forever.
Read more →Development · 9 Oct 2026Every field in Business Central carries a DataClassification, and the platform uses it to answer data subject requests, to drive the data privacy tooling and, increasingly, to decide what Copilot may see. Extensions that leave it at the default make the customer non-compliant without knowing. What the values mean, how to choose, the tooling that reads them, and what else GDPR needs from an extension.
Read more →Development · 8 Oct 2026Every extension that logs something, stages something or archives something grows a table forever unless someone deletes from it. Business Central has a standard retention policy engine; your tables should register with it rather than ship a "delete old entries" job of their own. How to register a table, what the policy can do, and which tables in a typical extension need one.
Read more →Development · 8 Oct 2026Since version 22 an extension can publish an external business event, and Power Automate, Logic Apps and Dataverse can subscribe to it with no polling. What an external business event is, how it differs from an AL event, declaring one, what payload to send, and the patterns that keep a flow from doing something it should not.
Read more →Development · 8 Oct 2026The approval workflow engine handles sales, purchase and journal approvals out of the box. Extensions can plug their own documents into it: a custom event ("courier shipment released"), a custom response, and the approval entries, delegation and notifications that come free. How the engine fits together and the four subscribers it takes to add your document to it.
Read more →Development · 7 Oct 2026A notification is the non-blocking message at the top of the page with actions attached. It is the right tool for most of what developers use Message and Error for, and it is misused in both directions. When to use one, how to send it with data and actions, recall it, let users dismiss it permanently, and avoid the three ways it annoys people.
Read more →Development · 7 Oct 2026The pipeline post said to write tests. This is how to write ones that run reliably: the Given-When-Then shape, building data with the Library codeunits, handling dialogs and pages with handler functions, asserting errors, test isolation so one test does not pollute the next, and the two mistakes that make a test suite flaky.
Read more →Development · 7 Oct 2026A codeunit is a container for procedures and nothing stops you putting everything in one. The base application has a few conventions that keep its thousands of codeunits navigable, and they apply equally to a per-tenant extension. How to decide what goes in which codeunit, the facade pattern the System Application uses, local versus internal versus public, and the three codeunits every extension has.
Read more →Development · 6 Oct 2026Enums gave AL an extensible list type; interfaces gave it a way to vary behaviour by that list without a case statement. Together they are the pattern behind price calculation, document sending and most modern base-application design. A worked example from an enum value to a working implementation another app can extend.
Read more →Development · 6 Oct 2026A NAV upgrade is not an upgrade; it is a conversion of C/AL modifications into AL extensions, and then a data migration. How to inventory the customisations, what txt2al does and does not do, the "retire, replace, rebuild" sort, the version 14 stepping stone, and the sequence that gets a heavily modified NAV 2013 onto Business Central online.
Read more →Development · 6 Oct 2026Users attach PDFs to customers and orders every day. Extensions that store files have three choices: the standard Document Attachment table, a Media or MediaSet field, or a Blob. Which to use, how to add the standard attachment FactBox to your own table, copying attachments to posted documents, and keeping the database from filling with scans.
Read more →Development · 5 Oct 2026Since version 17 there is one supported way to send email from an extension. Email accounts, scenarios, building a message with HTML and attachments, sending now versus queuing, the sent-email log, and why you never hard-code an address or an SMTP server again.
Read more →Development · 5 Oct 2026Business Central's code has a lineage going back to a Danish accounting package in the 1980s. How C/AL and C/SIDE came to be, why Microsoft bought it, the long road from modifying the base objects to extending them, the version where C/AL was switched off, and what each step since has added to AL. For developers who want to know why things are the way they are, and for everyone else who has wondered what the consultant meant by "that was a NAV thing".
Read more →Development · 5 Oct 2026Text[250] for a field that will never hold more than 20 characters is not harmless. Every table has a record size budget as well as a column budget, and every mismatch between a source field and a target field is a future "the length of the string is X, but it must be less than or equal to Y" at posting time. How to choose types and lengths, how record size actually works, and the patterns that stop overflow errors before they reach a user.
Read more →Development · 4 Oct 2026Business Central reports have a dataset (what data, in what shape) and one or more layouts (how it looks). The layout choice is the one people argue about; the dataset design is the one that decides whether the report is fast, extensible and reusable. When to use RDLC, Word and Excel, how to design a dataset that survives, report extensions, and the five mistakes in most inherited reports.
Read more →Development · 4 Oct 2026The extension is in production, the data is in it, and the customer wants a field renamed, a table restructured and a feature retired. How Business Central decides whether your schema change is allowed, how to stage a breaking change over two releases, and how to write the upgrade codeunit that moves the data.
Read more →Development · 4 Oct 2026Microsoft replaces the base application twice a year. An extension that compiled in April and breaks in October was built wrong. The design rules we use for every per-tenant extension: events over code, interfaces over hard references, obsolete tags over deletions, and a dependency graph you can draw.
Read more →Development · 3 Oct 2026For twenty years we added fields straight into the Item table and paid for it at every upgrade. Then extensions put them in companion tables. Now version 29 puts them back in one table. What that history means for a business with three extensions on the Item card, why consolidating them is a data migration, and what to do about it.
Read more →Operations · 3 Oct 202679 terms you will hear on a Business Central project, from AL to Warehouse Shipment, explained in a sentence each without the jargon. For finance teams, super users and anyone who has just been handed a new system.
Read more →Release updates · 3 Oct 2026Microsoft updates Business Central twice a year, in April and October, and you cannot opt out. The checklist we run with every customer before each release wave, from reading the release plan to the Monday after the update.
Read more →Finance · 2 Oct 2026The year-end close in Business Central is mostly a month-end close with a few extra steps, done in the right order. The checklist we give every finance team in December, from the last month-end to the opening of the new fiscal year and the audit pack.
Read more →EZBC video · 2 Oct 2026Version 29 lets you run several financial reports together and get a single PDF. Here is how to set it up so your month-end pack produces itself.
Read more →Release updates · 2 Oct 2026Microsoft started rolling out 2026 release wave 2 in October. Here is the short version: the one-click finance pack, a smarter Payables Agent, branded document reports, subcontracting done properly, and the Feature Management switches that just became mandatory.
Read more →Development · 1 Oct 2026Every integration that leaves Business Central goes through HttpClient. The call itself is six lines; doing it safely is the rest. Headers and authentication, timeouts, reading the status before the body, retries with backoff, where secrets live, telemetry, and the TryFunction boundary that keeps a failed call from taking the transaction with it.
Read more →Development · 1 Oct 2026Every integration speaks JSON and AL has a decent set of types for it. Building a payload, parsing a response, handling missing and null properties without an error, nested objects and arrays, and the helper the base application now ships so you stop writing the same token-to-text code.
Read more →Development · 1 Oct 2026AL has no file system in the cloud, so everything that used to be a file is a stream. InStream and OutStream, the Temp Blob codeunit, uploading from and downloading to the browser, Base64, and storing files in Blob versus Media fields. The patterns, with code, and the three errors everyone hits once.
Read more →Development · 30 Sep 2026Lot and serial numbers are not fields on the document line. They live in Reservation Entry, keyed by a tracking specification, and anything that creates or ships tracked items from code has to write them there. How item tracking is stored, the codeunits that manage it, assigning tracking from code, and what goes wrong.
Read more →Development · 30 Sep 2026Codeunit 80 is the most-subscribed codeunit in Business Central and most developers have never read it. What happens between pressing Post and the G/L entries appearing, in order, with the events at each stage, so that your extension hooks the right one and never writes a ledger itself.
Read more →Development · 30 Sep 2026Every document and master record gets its number from a number series, and since version 24 the API for doing that from code changed. The new No. Series codeunit, peeking versus getting, the gap problem, date ordering, manual numbers, and how to set up and consume a series for your own table.
Read more →Development · 29 Sep 2026Dimensions are stored as a numbered set, not as fields, and everything that creates a document or journal line has to build the right set. How dimension sets work, how to read and write them in code, applying default dimensions, validating combinations, and the mistakes that leave entries with blank dimensions.
Read more →Development · 29 Sep 2026Every AL key becomes a SQL index, and every FlowField needs a SIFT key behind it. The decisions that make a table fast or slow for its life: the primary key, secondary keys for your filters, SumIndexFields, IncludedFields, and when to turn an index off.
Read more →Development · 29 Sep 2026A query object joins, filters, groups and totals across tables in a single SQL statement. Most AL code that loops over one table and does a Get on another should be a query. What a query is, the syntax, reading one from code, exposing one as an API or to Power BI, and the limits.
Read more →Projects · 28 Sep 2026An ERP system changes how people do their jobs, and people do not change because a system went live. Change management is the work of getting them there. What it actually is, why the research puts it at the top of the list for project success, what it looks like for a 15-user business and a 300-user group, the reasons it fails, and the practical things that stop it failing.
Read more →Projects · 28 Sep 2026An ERP replacement needs your best people, and your best people are the ones the business cannot spare. Second them or protect their time, but decide, because "do it alongside the day job" is how projects stall. Who belongs on the customer side of the team, how much time each role really takes and when, why contractors belong on your side of the table from partner selection onwards, and the gatekeeper role that stops you signing a solution design you have not understood.
Read more →Development · 28 Sep 2026A coding pattern is a known, named way of solving a problem that comes up again and again. Business Central has a set of them, Microsoft uses them throughout the base application, and most of the long, fragile code in per-tenant extensions is a pattern that was not recognised. What patterns are, the ones every AL developer should know, each with the fifty-line version and the three-line version, and how to build your own reusable ones.
Read more →Development · 27 Sep 2026Users judge an extension by its pages. A well-designed page has the fields in the order the job is done, the actions where the hand goes, a FactBox that answers the next question, and views that replace three saved filters. The conventions Microsoft uses, how the action bar works since version 20, and the ten things that make a page feel professional.
Read more →Development · 27 Sep 2026There are four ways to get data into Business Central and each is right for a different job. Configuration packages for master data and opening balances, APIs for anything repeatable or large, the cloud migration tool for NAV and on-premise databases, and the migration assistants for Xero, QuickBooks and Dynamics GP. Which to use when, how each actually behaves, and the traps in each.
Read more →Development · 27 Sep 2026An error in AL rolls back the transaction, stops the user, and shows a message. Done well it tells them exactly what to fix and offers to fix it. Done badly it is "an error occurred" or, worse, a TryFunction that swallowed a posting failure. The modern error model, when to use each tool, and the rules about Commit that every developer should be able to recite.
Read more →Development · 26 Sep 2026A Business Central tenant gives you one production environment and three sandboxes. How to use them, when to add a Docker container, how to refresh a sandbox from production without breaking integrations, and the environment plan that keeps development, UAT and release waves from tripping over each other.
Read more →Development · 26 Sep 2026Three pieces of configuration decide how every transaction in Business Central is numbered, where it posts and how it is reported. Get them right in the Design phase and the system runs itself; get them wrong and every month-end is a reconciliation. What each one does, how to design them, and the mistakes that cost the most to fix later.
Read more →Development · 26 Sep 2026Every Business Central tenant can stream operational telemetry to Azure Application Insights: slow queries, locks, errors, page load times, job queue runs, extension updates, sign-ins. Almost nobody switches it on. How to, what the signals mean, the five KQL queries to start with, and how to add your own events from AL.
Read more →Development · 25 Sep 2026Most of what Business Central does unattended runs through the job queue: scheduled reports, batch posting, integrations, the e-document framework, agent processing. When it stops, things silently do not happen. How the job queue actually runs, the settings that matter, the failure modes, and a monitoring routine that catches a stuck queue before the business does.
Read more →Development · 25 Sep 2026There are four layers between a user and a table: the licence, the entitlement, the permission sets and the object's own access level. Most permission problems come from not knowing which layer said no. How each works, how to ship permission sets with an extension, why SUPER for everyone is not a plan, and how agents changed the picture.
Read more →Development · 25 Sep 2026Events are how an extension changes what Business Central does without changing Business Central. The three kinds of event, how subscribers bind, the IsHandled pattern that lets you replace standard behaviour cleanly, what to do when the event you need does not exist, and the mistakes that make event code slow or fragile.
Read more →Projects · 24 Sep 2026The quiet killer of ERP projects is not a bad consultant. It is a good consultant replaced halfway through by another good consultant who has to be told everything again. Why partners swap people, what it costs you, how to write continuity into the contract, and who should be talking to whom on a project.
Read more →Operations · 24 Sep 2026When a problem genuinely needs the support desk, the speed of the fix depends almost entirely on what you send them. A ticket that says "posting is broken" starts a day of questions. One with the environment, company, user, time, exact message and steps starts a fix. The twelve things to include, a template to copy, and where in Business Central to find each one.
Read more →Operations · 24 Sep 2026Most tickets a Business Central support desk receives are not faults. They are the system saying, in its own words, exactly what is wrong and what to do about it. If you pay for support by the ticket or by the hour, every one of these is money. The ten most common, what the message means, and who in your own business can fix it in two minutes.
Read more →Development · 23 Sep 2026If app.json is what the extension is, launch.json is where you are publishing and debugging it from Visual Studio Code. It lives in the .vscode folder, it is yours rather than the app's, and it is the file most often found containing something it should not. Every property Microsoft documents, grouped by what you are doing: publishing, attaching, snapshot debugging.
Read more →Development · 23 Sep 2026Every AL extension has an app.json at its root. It names the app, identifies it, fixes its version, declares what it depends on and what platform it runs on. Here is every property Microsoft documents, what each one means, which ones you must get right first time, and the install errors that trace back to the file.
Read more →Development · 23 Sep 2026Open Extension Management and every app has a "Published As" value: Global, PTE or Dev. It is not a label; it decides what the platform will do to that extension at the next update. What each scope means, how you end up in each, why Dev must never be how your production code got there, and how to move between them.
Read more →Finance · 22 Sep 2026The debtors ledger says one number and the G/L control account says another, and nobody can explain the difference. Nine times out of ten someone posted a journal straight to the control account. Why it happens, why it is so hard to unpick, and the one setting that stops it.
Read more →Operations · 22 Sep 2026Business Central has two ways to make a finished item from components. Assembly is simple, fast and in the Essentials licence. Production is a full manufacturing module in Premium. Choosing wrong in either direction is expensive. What each one does, when to use it, when not to, and the pros and cons side by side.
Read more →Development · 22 Sep 2026Tables, pages, codeunits, queries, reports, enums, interfaces, extensions of all of them. If you are new to AL, or you are a finance or operations person who keeps hearing these words in project meetings, this is what each object is, what it is for, and a plain-English example of each.
Read more →Development · 21 Sep 2026Names are the first thing the next developer sees and the last thing anyone agrees on. The naming conventions we use for every AL project: objects, files, fields, procedures, variables, events and enums, with the reasons behind each one and the handful of rules that matter most.
Read more →Development · 21 Sep 2026Since runtime 11 (version 22) AL has had namespaces, and Microsoft has moved the whole base application into them. Most per-tenant extensions still do not use them. What a namespace is, what it fixes, how to structure yours, and how to adopt them in an existing app without breaking anything.
Read more →Leadership · 21 Sep 2026You paid for the extension. That does not mean you own it. Under UK law the developer keeps the copyright unless the contract says otherwise, and plenty of partner contracts say otherwise in their own favour. What that means when you want to leave, what to ask for before you sign, and why the IP should belong to the business that paid for it.
Read more →Development · 20 Sep 2026Business Central online is fast until someone writes a loop that reads the item ledger one record at a time. The ten performance mistakes we find most in per-tenant extensions, from missing SetLoadFields to locking the whole sales line table, each with the fix.
Read more →Development · 20 Sep 2026If an extension is built on a laptop and deployed from a zip, every release wave is a gamble. How we set up AL-Go for GitHub on every customer repository, what a useful test codeunit looks like, and the pipeline that compiles against the next version before Microsoft ships it.
Read more →Development · 20 Sep 2026Every integration with Business Central should go through the API. Most still do not, and the ones that do often do it badly. OAuth, the standard v2.0 APIs, custom API pages, webhooks, throttling, idempotency and the SOAP endpoints that are going away: what a system integrator needs to know in 2026.
Read more →Finance · 19 Sep 2026Business Central holds the numbers; Power BI is how the board sees them. The five reports that come up in every board pack, how each one is built from Business Central data, the standard Power BI apps Microsoft now ships, and the two mistakes that make dashboards nobody trusts.
Read more →AI and agents · 19 Sep 2026Microsoft's Payables Agent reads supplier invoices and turns them into purchase invoices in Business Central without a person keying them. Here is what happens to a real invoice, step by step, where it stops and asks, what it gets wrong, and how to decide whether it is worth 50p an invoice for your purchase ledger.
Read more →Licensing · 19 Sep 2026The single easiest way to overspend on Business Central is to give everyone a full licence. Who actually needs Essentials, when you need Premium (and why it is all or nothing), what a Team Member can and cannot do, and the device licence that most warehouses should be using.
Read more →Licensing · 18 Sep 2026Every partner will quote you. Few will tell you what the number is made of, or what it will be in year three. The five parts of the cost of a Business Central implementation, with realistic UK ranges for small, mid-sized and complex businesses, and the three places the number usually hides.
Read more →Migrations · 18 Sep 2026Most businesses moving to Business Central come from Xero, and most of them are told it is all upside. It is not. What gets better, what gets harder, what it costs, and how to tell whether you are actually ready to leave.
Read more →Operations · 17 Sep 2026Support is the part of the relationship you live with for ten years, and it is the part nobody reads before signing. What a good support contract covers, the response times that mean something, the things that should be included and usually are not, and the questions to ask before you renew.
Read more →Leadership · 17 Sep 2026If you are planning to sell in the next two or three years, the state of your ERP will show up in the price. What a buyer's technology diligence team actually checks, the findings that cost a turn of the multiple, and the eighteen-month plan to make sure they find nothing.
Read more →Leadership · 17 Sep 2026Financial and legal due diligence are standard. Technology due diligence usually is not, and the result is a deal priced on numbers from a system nobody checked, with integration costs nobody estimated. What to look at, what the red flags are, and what it should change about the price.
Read more →Leadership · 16 Sep 2026Most businesses do not have an IT roadmap. The ones that do usually have a forty-page document nobody reads. Here is the one-page version we use with every CIO and CTO as a service client: what goes on it, a template you can copy, and how to keep it alive.
Read more →Leadership · 16 Sep 2026A business with fifty people cannot justify a full-time CTO and usually does not need one. It still needs the decisions a CTO makes, and when nobody is making them, the business makes them by accident. What the role looks like at two days a month, and what it costs when it is empty.
Read more →AI and agents · 16 Sep 2026Skynet is not coming for your purchase ledger. But the agents in Business Central are not free either, and the bill is per invoice. What they cost, worked out for a small and a large business, what they do to the size of your team, and what happens when the tech fails and the team has already gone.
Read more →Opinion · 15 Sep 2026There are thousands of IT professionals who have been doing the CIO and CTO job for years without ever holding the title. When the role comes up, they get sidelined for not having had it. A personal piece on why that is a mistake, and what to look for instead.
Read more →Projects · 15 Sep 2026The super user is the role that makes UAT work, keeps the spreadsheets from coming back and turns hypercare into a fortnight instead of a quarter. Who to pick, what they actually do in each phase, what it costs the business, and why it should be recognised in their pay.
Read more →Projects · 15 Sep 2026Every business moving to Business Central has a list of things the old system did "just for us". Most of them should not survive the move. How to run the fit-gap honestly, the "we have always done it this way" trap, and the three questions that decide what gets rebuilt.
Read more →Projects · 14 Sep 2026Go live with everything on one weekend, or finance first and operations later? Both work. Both fail. The honest trade-offs, the question that usually decides it, and the one phasing that almost never works.
Read more →Projects · 14 Sep 2026Every Business Central project has a data migration and every project underestimates it. What to bring, what to leave behind, how to clean it, and why "reconciled to the penny, twice" is the only acceptable standard.
Read more →Projects · 14 Sep 2026Go-live is not the end of the project. The first month is where a new Business Central system is either bedded in or quietly abandoned for spreadsheets. What normal looks like, what counts as a defect, and when to hand over to support.
Read more →Projects · 13 Sep 2026A cut-over plan for a Business Central go-live: what happens on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, who does what, what gets reconciled, and the two points at which you decide whether to go or roll back.
Read more →Projects · 13 Sep 2026A partner with hundreds of staff and a thousand projects can still have nobody who has worked in your industry, a queue you will wait in, and a price to match. How to look at a Business Central partner as a business in its own right: industry experience, case studies, site visits, and whether they will still be here at go-live.
Read more →Projects · 13 Sep 2026Too small and it will not do what you need. Too big and you are paying for things you will never use. Just right has to scale with you. A plain-English guide to the three tiers of business software, where Xero, Sage, Business Central and the big suites sit, and how to tell which one is the right size for your business.
Read more →Projects · 12 Sep 2026The companion to our piece on why ERP projects fail. Seven things the projects that come in on time, on budget and actually used have in common, what the research adds, and the checklist I published in 2017 that still holds.
Read more →Projects · 12 Sep 2026Nine well-documented ERP failures, from a confectioner to a UK council. The headline failure rates are shakier than the vendors admit, but the post-mortems agree on the same handful of causes. Here they are, with what to do about each one on a Business Central project.
Read more →Projects · 12 Sep 2026UT, SIT and UAT are three different gates, and training should start in Analysis, not the week before go-live. Here is where each one sits in the six Sure Step phases, and why a manufacturing or warehousing project takes longer than the standard timeline.
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