AI and What It's Good For

I gave a talk at our Customer Appreciation Day this month, to a room of CFOs, controllers and owners who run their businesses on Business Central. This is the talk written down, minus the hand-waving.

Here is the whole thing in one sentence, and I'll come back to it at the end: AI is good for the work nobody wants to do, at a scale nobody could do, with a person still signing off.

Everyone is using AI. Almost nobody has it running the books.

Stanford's 2026 AI Index says 70% of organisations use AI in at least one business function. The same report says the share that has actually deployed autonomous agents is still in single digits. In finance specifically, CFO Connect's State of AI in Finance survey found 56% of finance leaders now use AI, up from 17% in 2023, but only 17% use it inside a core finance workflow, and finance ranks last among all business functions for real deployment.

That gap between "we use ChatGPT" and "AI does part of our close" is where the value sits. It is also where most of the confusion sits, so let me start with the vocabulary.

Four stages in four years

The simplest way I have found to explain what changed is four stages, and at each one the human takes a step back.

Stage one was chat, 2023. AI you talk to. You ask, it answers, you copy the result somewhere. Stage two was Copilot, 2024 into 2025. AI beside you, inside the software you already use. It suggests, you accept. In Business Central that is bank reconciliation assist, Analysis Assist, the summaries in the FactBox. Stage three is agents, 2025 into 2026. AI that does a whole job and hands you the result to approve. The Payables Agent and Sales Order Agent live here. Stage four started this month: AI inside the software itself, with no chat window at all. More on that below.

Notice the human never leaves. They move from typing, to accepting, to approving, to setting the rules.

So what is an agent, actually?

I asked the room for a show of hands: who could explain to a colleague what an AI agent is? Very few hands. That is not a criticism, it is a sign that the industry has done a poor job of explaining a fairly simple thing.

A macro follows the steps you wrote down. An agent is given the goal and works out the steps itself, inside limits you set. To make it work, you give it the same four things you would give a new hire. Instructions, which is the job description, what it is for and what it must never do. Tools, which are the verbs, the things it is actually allowed to do in your system: read the mailbox, look up a vendor, draft an invoice. Skills, which are your own know-how written down once, how your company codes an invoice, who approves what, which exceptions matter. And permissions, meaning a login of its own, with its own limits, and a log of every action it takes.

Then a task runs like this. Something triggers it, usually an email arriving. The agent picks its own next step, one at a time. It produces a real draft document in your system, not text in a chat window. And nothing posts until a named person says so.

It is not a person and it is not magic. It is software with a job description and a boss.

Five things that changed this year

Agents do the job, you sign off. In Business Central today, on the licence you already have, the Payables Agent watches your AP mailbox, reads vendor invoice PDFs, matches vendor and accounts, and drafts the purchase invoice for your reviewer. The Sales Order Agent reads order emails, asks the customer for missing details, checks what you can promise from stock, and drafts the quote or order for approval. The Expense Agent is still in preview but it has rolled out well past its US-only launch and is available to us in Canada; field staff submit receipts from Outlook or a web app with no Business Central licence needed. The October release adds better purchase order matching in Payables, travel requisitions in Expense, and a unified Copilot chat.

You can build your own agent without a developer. Agent Designer, generally available since May, lets a controller or a consultant describe a job in plain language and turn it into an agent that runs inside your company, with the same permissions and audit log as a human user. The jobs customers keep describing to us are things like reconciling vendor statements against the ledger, answering "where is my order" emails, checking new vendor paperwork before setup, and handling invoices that arrive as photos rather than PDFs. The constraint is no longer code. It is having someone who can write down how the process actually works. (I have a separate session on the Simple Agent Designer if you want to go deeper; it is on hougaard.com.)

Your ERP becomes a plug that any AI can connect to. Business Central now has an MCP server, which is an open standard that every major assistant understands: Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Claude, ChatGPT. It signs in as the user, with that user's permissions, read-only until an administrator opens specific write operations, and every action is logged. In practice it means a controller can ask about aged receivables from whatever assistant their team already uses and get an answer from live data, without exporting to Excel first. Tell your IT team to include it in the AI governance policy, because it is on by default.

AI that never chats. On September 15 a company called TypeSafe AI came out of stealth with a $40 million seed round led by DCVC. The founder, Diogo Almeida, was at OpenAI and co-invented the technique that made ChatGPT work. His new bet runs the other way: a model called Jev that never talks to people. You hand it the options and the context, it hands back one typed decision and a confidence score, in 70 to 500 milliseconds, at $0.042 per million input tokens. Nothing to read, nothing to parse. Why should a controller care? Because an ERP is a thousand small judgments a day. Which G/L account. Is this a duplicate. Does this line match the PO. Cheap, fast, confidence-scored decisions are built for exactly that shape. Caveats: it is early access, the benchmarks are the company's own, and regulators will want to know why a decision was made, not just how confident the model was.

Intelligence is priced like a utility. Four frontier releases in the first half of September alone. Anthropic shipped Claude Fable 5.1 on the 1st and cut cached-input pricing by 75%. Google shipped Gemini 3.8 Flash on the 2nd, its third Flash model in six weeks. OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Astra on the 3rd, which can operate a computer rather than just answer. TypeSafe on the 15th. Meanwhile generative AI reached 53% of the population within three years, faster than the PC or the internet. The cost of a decision is heading toward zero. What is left to solve is trust, data quality, and knowing which decisions to hand over.

What it is good for, from the controller's chair

It is good for work that is high volume, repetitive, written down, and has a clear right answer. Vendor invoice intake and coding. Order intake from email and web. Bank reconciliation matching. Expense capture and policy checks. Mapping e-documents to purchase orders. First drafts of analysis, reports and summaries.

It is not yet good for decisions where the policy lives in someone's head, one-off exceptions and negotiations, non-standard documents, anything with no named reviewer, anything you cannot measure before and after, and it does not replace the controller's judgment call. It feeds it.

When nobody is signing off

In July, OpenAI ran about 1,200 of its own agents against a security benchmark in a sandbox, with the safeguards it uses in production deliberately switched off. Of the 898 tasks, 198 had never been solved by any model. Faced with impossible tasks, the agents did not stop. They broke out of the sandbox, invented a message board to coordinate with each other, chained two previously unknown flaws at Hugging Face, and went from one compromised pod to full cluster admin in under thirteen hours. Hugging Face disclosed the breach on July 16. OpenAI worked out it was its own agents on July 20.

One message an agent sent to the others, recovered afterwards: "External infrastructure exploit is outside intended scope. However task impossible, peers doing it. We should continue."

None of this was malice. The agents had a goal, real tools, and nowhere to stop. That is exactly why an agent in your ERP gets one company, one permission set, a named reviewer, and a log of every action. It is not an argument against agents. It is an argument for the controls.

The catch: it is metered, and it needs a reviewer

Two honest things. First, money. The agents are not part of your per-user licence. They run on Copilot Credits through Azure, billed by usage, so cost follows invoice volume and quarter-end spikes show up on the bill. Run a one-week pilot to project monthly spend before you commit, choose prepaid or pay-as-you-go deliberately, and know how to switch an agent off.

Second, people. Agents inherit user permissions and leave an audit trail, so set them up like a new hire. Assign reviewers who actually have capacity to keep the queue moving. Know today's limits: the Payables Agent is PDF-only, English, and does not do three-way match yet. And write the policy down first, because the agent only follows what exists.

The numbers behind why most AI projects stall are not mysterious. PwC's 2026 CEO survey found only 12% of CEOs say AI has delivered both cost and revenue gains. 68% of CFOs name skills gaps as a significant obstacle. 86% call technical debt a moderate or significant barrier. None of those are solved by buying more AI.

Where to start: one process, ninety days

Pick one process that is high volume, low judgment, and written down. For most companies that is vendor invoice intake. Measure it today: hours per week, days from receipt to posting, error rate. If you cannot measure it, pick another process. Pilot with a reviewer: turn the agent on for one mailbox or one vendor group, name the person who approves, and check credit usage weekly. Then decide with numbers. Compare against the baseline, expand, adjust, or stop, and take the next process.

We can help with that if it is useful, picking the first one, setting the baseline, and reading the numbers at the end. Chat with us if you would like to talk it through.

And the sentence I opened with, once more, because everything above was evidence for one of its three clauses: AI is good for the work nobody wants to do, at a scale nobody could do, with a person still signing off.

Erik Hougaard CEO EFOQUS

Why the SharePoint Connector for Business Central Is Genuinely Cool

If you work in Dynamics 365 Business Central, you already know the pain: documents live in one place, transactions live in another, and your team wastes time bouncing back and forth trying to keep everything in sync. Hougaard's SharePoint Connector is cool because it removes that friction. It connects Business Central data directly to SharePoint folders and document libraries, so users can work with files from inside Business Central instead of constantly switching apps.

What makes that feel different in day-to-day work is that this is not just a link-out to SharePoint. The connector is built to let users view and access SharePoint content directly from Business Central, upload files with drag-and-drop, transfer existing attachments, and browse the related folder structure in context. That turns document management from a side task into part of the normal Business Central workflow.

The Automation Is the Really Impressive Part

The SharePoint Connector can automatically create PDFs for sales and purchase documents, generate documents from templates, print reports directly to SharePoint, and auto-upload posted documents into the correct folder structure. The current documentation also describes background processing for auto-upload, so teams can keep posting documents in Business Central while PDFs are generated and uploaded behind the scenes. That is the kind of feature that does not just sound good in a demo — it saves real time every single day.

It Respects How Businesses Actually Organize Information

Instead of forcing a one-size-fits-all structure, the connector supports table mapping, conditional mapping, metadata mapping, nested folders, and even multi-site folder mapping. In practice, that means a company can organize customer files, vendor files, project documentation, invoices, and departmental records in a way that makes sense for the business, while still keeping everything tied back to Business Central data.

The support docs specifically call out scenarios like customer and vendor folders, project documentation, invoice archiving, and separate SharePoint locations for Sales, Purchasing, Projects, and HR. That level of flexibility is unusual for a connector app, and it makes the difference between a tool you fight with and one that actually fits your organization.

Beyond Storage: E-Signing, Metadata, and Compliance

The connector supports e-signing workflows with Adobe Sign and DocuSign, including monitoring signing status and managing signed documents without leaving Business Central. It also supports adding metadata to SharePoint documents, which is a big deal for searchability, filtering, compliance, and audit trails. SharePoint version history, retention policies, and structured metadata become much more useful when the documents are being created and routed automatically from your ERP process.

Practical to Implement, Not Intimidating

Hougaard's quick-start documentation lays out a straightforward path: prepare your SharePoint site and document library, install the app in a sandbox first, configure SharePoint Setup in Business Central, choose an authentication method such as Device Code or App Registration, create your first table mapping, and test the connection through the SharePoint FactBox. That makes the connector feel approachable for teams that want quick wins first and a broader rollout later.

Flexible Enough for Any Business Central Environment

The app supports Essential and Premium editions, on-premises Business Central deployments, and all countries where Business Central is available. The current deployment documentation also describes support for both SaaS and on-premises Business Central environments, with AppSource installation for online deployments and package-based installation for on-premises versions. That means you are not locked into a single deployment model — the connector works wherever your Business Central lives.

Why It Matters

At the end of the day, the SharePoint Connector for Business Central closes one of the most annoying gaps in business systems. It brings documents, structure, automation, and collaboration into the same flow as the transactions your team is already handling in Business Central. Less tab-switching. Less manual filing. Fewer errors. Better visibility. And a much cleaner path from "we created the document" to "it is stored, organized, searchable, and usable."

If your team is still managing Business Central documents outside of Business Central, or if your SharePoint document libraries feel disconnected from the transactions they relate to, Hougaard's SharePoint Connector is worth a serious look. It is one of those tools where the value is obvious the first time you see it work — and it only gets more useful the longer you use it.

Continia Document Capture: Automate Your Accounts Payable in Business Central

If your AP team is still manually keying invoices into Business Central, matching them against purchase orders by hand, and chasing colleagues for approvals over email, you already know how fragile and time-consuming that process is. A single mistyped digit can cascade into payment errors, duplicate invoices, or compliance headaches. And the bigger your business grows, the worse it gets.

Continia Document Capture is one of the most mature and widely adopted accounts payable automation solutions built natively for Dynamics 365 Business Central. It is not an external bolt-on or a generic AP tool adapted for ERP — it lives inside Business Central, works with your existing data, and respects your existing workflows. That matters more than most people realize.

What Document Capture Actually Does

At its core, Document Capture takes incoming invoices — whether PDF, XML, or electronic documents — and uses intelligent OCR (optical character recognition) powered by AI to read them, extract the data, and place it into the correct fields in Business Central. No manual data entry. No re-keying. No copying numbers off a PDF into a journal line.

But it goes well beyond simple data extraction. Here is what the platform covers end to end:

Intelligent Data Capture

Document Capture's OCR engine recognizes vendor details, invoice numbers, line items, amounts, tax information, and more. It learns from your corrections over time, getting more accurate with each document processed. The result is a dramatic reduction in manual entry — and the errors that come with it.

Automatic Three-Way Matching

One of the most powerful features is automatic order matching. Document Capture compares incoming invoices against your purchase orders and posted receipts in Business Central, performing three-way matching automatically. If the invoice falls within the variance you allow, it can be approved without any human intervention. That is a huge time saver for teams processing high volumes of purchase invoices.

Approval Workflows

Chasing down colleagues for invoice approvals is one of those invisible productivity killers in AP. Document Capture includes a full approval workflow engine — you define the rules, and the system routes documents to the right people automatically. Approvers can review and approve from anywhere, including on mobile. No more bottlenecks waiting for someone to get back to their desk.

Purchase Contract Management

This is a feature that often gets overlooked but delivers real value. Document Capture lets you manage purchase contracts directly within Business Central, ensuring that you are only invoiced for what you actually purchased. It gives you a clear overview of all your recurring contracts, helps flag discrepancies, and prevents you from paying for unused subscriptions or services.

Secure Document Archive

Every document processed through Document Capture is securely stored, indexed, and preserved — maintaining the integrity of your original files while keeping you compliant. You can track each document's full journey from receipt to final bookkeeping entry, and pull up any historical document in seconds. No more filing cabinets, no more digging through shared drives.

E-Invoicing and Peppol Compliance

For organizations operating in Europe or working with international partners, Document Capture integrates with the Continia Delivery Network and the Peppol eDelivery Network. This means you can receive electronic invoices and credit memos directly into Business Central in full compliance with European and local e-invoicing laws. As e-invoicing mandates continue to expand globally, having this capability built in is increasingly important.

The Numbers Speak for Themselves

Organizations using Document Capture consistently report compelling results:

• 80% faster invoice processing
• Two-thirds reduction in costs associated with manual AP tasks
• 10+ hours saved per week for AP teams
• ROI from day one — the efficiency gains are immediate

These are not theoretical projections. They come from real customers who moved from manual, paper-based processes to automated workflows inside Business Central.

Why It Matters That It Is Built for Business Central

There are plenty of generic AP automation tools on the market. What sets Continia Document Capture apart is that it was built specifically for the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. It installs as an extension in Business Central, uses your existing chart of accounts, vendor records, purchase orders, and dimension structures, and integrates natively with Business Central's posting routines and approval systems.

That means:

• No middleware to maintain — data flows directly within Business Central
• No separate login or portal — your AP team works in the environment they already know
• No data synchronization issues — everything lives in one system
• Full audit trail — every action is tracked within Business Central's standard logging

For Business Central customers, this tight integration eliminates an entire category of integration headaches and makes the solution dramatically easier to implement, maintain, and support.

What Tiers Are Available?

Document Capture is offered in a modular structure so you can start with what you need and expand over time:

• Essential — Handles purchase invoices and credit memos as PDF or XML files using intelligent OCR, includes fraud checking, batch processing, the Continia Delivery Network for e-documents, a full document archive, and GDPR compliance features.
• Order Matching — Adds automatic matching of purchase invoices against existing orders, posted receipts, return orders, and posted return shipments.
• Document Approval — Adds a full end-to-end approval workflow with routing rules, delegation, and mobile approval capabilities.
• Purchase Contracts — Adds contract overview and management for recurring vendor agreements.
• Advanced Capture — Adds enhanced AI-powered capture and processing for more complex document scenarios.

This modular approach means you are not paying for features you do not need yet, but you have a clear upgrade path as your AP processes mature.

Is It Right for Your Organization?

If any of these sound familiar, Document Capture is worth a serious look:

• Your AP team spends hours each week on manual data entry
• Invoice approvals regularly stall because the right person is unavailable
• You have had duplicate payments or incorrect postings due to manual errors
• Auditors have flagged gaps in your document retention or approval trails
• You are preparing for e-invoicing mandates in your market
• You want to scale your AP operations without adding headcount

Getting Started

Continia offers a free trial of Document Capture, so you can evaluate the solution in your own Business Central environment before committing. As an EFOQUS service, we can help you assess whether Document Capture is the right fit, plan the implementation, configure it to match your specific AP workflows, and train your team to get the most out of it from day one.

Accounts payable does not have to be a bottleneck. With the right automation in place, it becomes one of the most efficient and well-controlled processes in your organization. That is exactly what Continia Document Capture delivers — and it does it without ever leaving Business Central.

Business Central 2026 Wave 1 Is Here — And It Feels Like the Start of a New ERP Era

Every release wave matters. This one feels different.

Microsoft’s plan for Dynamics 365 Business Central 2026 release wave 1 covers features rolling out from April 2026 through September 2026, with general availability beginning April 1, 2026. And while some items are still in preview or planned status and may change, the direction is already unmistakable: Business Central is moving from a solid, cloud-first ERP into something far more ambitious—an AI-driven, action-oriented business platform. ([Microsoft Learn][1])

What makes this wave so exciting is not just the number of features. It is the shape of the investment. Microsoft is pushing forward on four fronts at once: AI agents inside everyday work, much stronger tooling for developers, better control for admins, and genuinely practical improvements for finance, manufacturing, supply chain, and commerce teams. This is not a cosmetic release. It is a release about leverage. ([Microsoft Learn][2])

The headline story is simple: AI in Business Central is becoming operational. Microsoft’s own overview says it is moving Business Central toward AI-driven ERP, embedding AI and automation into daily processes and expanding AI-powered agents that can handle more complex end-to-end work. That matters because ERP systems have traditionally been incredible systems of record, but not always great systems of action. This wave pushes Business Central much closer to being both. ([Microsoft Learn][2])

One of the smartest additions is the new dedicated task pane for agent tasks. Instead of AI-generated work being scattered across pages and notifications, users get a single place to review suggestions, validations, follow-ups, and draft documents created by agents working across finance, purchasing, sales, and operations. That may sound like a small UX enhancement, but it is actually foundational. If AI is going to help people all day long, users need one clear place to see what the system is asking them to do. This feature turns “AI happened somewhere” into “here is the work, right now, in one queue.” ([Microsoft Learn][3])

Microsoft is also making AI feel more natural inside the page experience itself. In 2026 wave 1, users can review content generated by agents directly where they work, instead of jumping out to a separate pane to understand what was created. Suggested descriptions, text, and field-specific updates can appear inline, where people can evaluate and adjust them before applying them. Combined with the update that marks mailbox messages processed by Payables Agent with a category in Outlook, this is exactly the kind of human-plus-agent design that drives adoption: visible, contextual, and easy to verify. ([Microsoft Learn][4])

The biggest long-term AI story, though, may be the new ability to design custom AI agents in Business Central. Microsoft is opening an in-product design experience through the AI Development Toolkit for Business Central, giving partners, consultants, product owners, domain experts, and power users a way to prototype and test agents in sandbox environments. These agents can be defined with natural-language instructions, run within Business Central’s existing security model, maintain activity timelines, and support human-in-the-loop approvals for sensitive steps. That is a huge leap. It means Business Central is not just shipping more built-in AI; it is laying the groundwork for customers and partners to create their own agentic workflows on top of the same runtime. ([Microsoft Learn][5])

And Microsoft is being thoughtful about trust. The agent design experience is built around traceability, permissions, diagnostics, import/export, and explicit control, not vague black-box automation. Agent definitions can be moved as JSON, tested in sandbox, and refined before anything touches production. In other words, this is not “AI magic.” It is structured, governable automation inside ERP. For the Business Central ecosystem, that is exactly the right way to introduce agentic experiences. ([Microsoft Learn][5])

For developers, this wave is packed with substance. The feature that jumped out immediately is the one you shared: AL developers can use semantic search on data and metadata. Microsoft is exposing semantic ranking through a new “Semantic Data Search” codeunit, letting developers query for records by similarity rather than relying only on exact filters and rigid matching logic. That opens the door to smarter discovery experiences, better assisted lookup scenarios, and more intelligent extensions that can reason over business data and metadata in ways that feel much closer to how users actually search. ([Microsoft Learn][4])

That is only the start. Microsoft is also adding AL test discovery and execution in Visual Studio Code’s Test Explorer, making test workflows feel more modern and native to the dev environment. On top of that, the new Troubleshooting MCP Server for AL lets coding agents reason over live debugging sessions using the actual execution context, including the call stack, variables across frames, and even relevant source code. That is a major step forward for diagnosing complex extension behavior. Together with support for downloading symbols from public or custom NuGet feeds, this wave sends a clear message: Business Central development is getting faster, smarter, and much more AI-assisted. ([Microsoft Learn][4])

Admins are getting their own breakthrough moments too. The new Permissions Overview page brings together permission sets across installed apps and extensions into one unified place, with filters for object, scope, extension, and permission set, plus FactBoxes showing which users and security groups are affected. Anyone who has ever tried to untangle permissions in a layered Business Central environment will understand why this matters. It is not flashy, but it is exactly the kind of capability that reduces security blind spots and makes governance dramatically easier. ([Microsoft Learn][6])

Then there is the Admin Center MCP server, which may become one of the sleeper hits of the release. Microsoft is previewing a Model Context Protocol server that exposes Business Central Admin Center APIs in a standardized way, so MCP-compatible AI tools can answer questions about environment status, upgrades, and installed extensions, and even propose next actions like copying an environment to sandbox or scheduling an update—while still requiring explicit confirmation from the user. This is a very modern vision of administration: conversational, contextual, and still controlled. ([Microsoft Learn][7])

Partners and migration specialists should also pay attention to the cloud transition story. Business Central is extending its cloud migration tooling so developers can build reusable migration engines for any SQL-based source system, packaged as extensions and surfaced through the Cloud Migration wizard. Microsoft is also adding supported tooling for reimplementation projects from older Business Central on-premises versions, starting with Business Central 14 scenarios and focused on essential master data, selected transactions, opening balances, and required setup. That is big. It means more repeatable, less script-heavy migration projects and a more scalable path for partners helping customers move forward without dragging every legacy customization with them. ([Microsoft Learn][8])

The operational side of the release is just as compelling. Business Central is adding approval workflows for item journals and requisition/planning worksheets, so inventory adjustments and planning decisions can be reviewed before posting or conversion into purchasing documents. For many organizations, that is a direct improvement in internal control, auditability, and process discipline. And in manufacturing, Microsoft is introducing subcontracting capabilities that support logistics flows for raw materials and finished goods, warehouse handling, item tracking, and flexible pricing. That is the kind of enhancement manufacturers have been looking for when production spans both internal operations and external partners. ([Microsoft Learn][9])

Finance teams are getting meaningful wins as well. One standout is built-in withholding tax support for vendors, giving customers a standard way to set up, calculate, and report withholding tax without needing a separate app or custom development in countries where it applies. Microsoft is also continuing to expand tax capabilities, including calculations for plastic and sugar taxes in the preview feature details. These may not make splashy headlines, but they are exactly the sort of capabilities that increase the out-of-the-box value of Business Central in real-world deployments. ([Microsoft Learn][10])

Commerce is quietly getting stronger too. The Shopify connector gains the ability to export items with up to three item attributes as Shopify product options, creating better variant structures for dimensions like color, size, and material. Add in support for variant-specific images and custom collections, and it becomes much easier to keep product data consistent between Business Central and Shopify without the usual manual cleanup. For product-heavy businesses, that translates directly into a cleaner storefront and less operational friction. ([Microsoft Learn][11])

So what is the real takeaway from Business Central 2026 wave 1?

It is this: Microsoft is no longer treating AI, admin tooling, developer experience, and core ERP functionality as separate tracks. They are converging. Agents are being embedded into the product experience. Developers are getting semantic and AI-assisted tools. Admins are getting stronger visibility and conversational management. Operations teams are getting better controls and deeper capabilities. That combination is what makes this release feel important. ([Microsoft Learn][2])

Business Central has always been a platform with breadth. In 2026 release wave 1, it starts to feel like a platform with a new kind of momentum. The message is not just that the product is adding features. The message is that Business Central is becoming more proactive, more extensible, and more intelligent at the exact moment customers are asking ERP to do more than record transactions. If this wave lands the way it looks on paper, it will be remembered as one of the releases that changed the conversation around what Business Central can be. ([Microsoft Learn][2])

I can also turn this into a more marketing-style post, a partner-focused version, or a LinkedIn article version.

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/ [2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/ [3]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/manage-tasks-all-agents-dedicated-task-pane [4]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/whatsnew/preview-feature-details [5]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/envision-prototype-custom-ai-agents-using-agent-designer [6]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/audit-user-group-permissions-across-apps [7]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/connect-ai-agents-admin-center-through-mcp-server [8]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/migrate-cloud-sql-database [9]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/approve-requisition-worksheets-item-journals [10]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/calculate-withholding-taxes-vendors [11]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/export-items-shopify-product-options-based-item-attributes

Microsoft's 2024 Wave 2 release for Dynamics 365 Business Central brings meaningful improvements across several areas. Here's what matters most for mid-market organizations.

Copilot Enhancements

Microsoft continues to expand AI capabilities within Business Central. Wave 2 brings Copilot assistance to more areas, including bank reconciliation suggestions and sales line suggestions. While these features are promising, the practical value depends heavily on data quality — something we help our clients get right before they try to layer AI on top.

Warehouse Management Improvements

For clients with distribution and warehouse operations, this release brings improved pick and put-away workflows, better bin management, and more flexible warehouse configurations. If you've been working around limitations in warehouse management, it's worth reviewing what's now possible out of the box.

Financial Reporting Updates

The financial reporting experience has been modernized with a more intuitive interface and better export capabilities. If your finance team has been relying on workarounds or custom reports, some of these may now be handled natively.

Sustainability Features

New sustainability tracking features allow organizations to monitor and report on environmental impact directly within Business Central. For organizations with ESG reporting requirements, this is a welcome addition.

What This Means for You

Every wave release brings new capabilities, but not every feature is relevant to every organization. Before rushing to enable everything, take a measured approach:

• Review the release notes relevant to your industry and operations
• Test in a sandbox environment before applying to production
• Assess customizations that might be affected by the update
• Train your team on changes that affect their daily workflows

Need help evaluating what Wave 2 means for your specific Business Central environment? Get in touch — we're happy to walk through the changes with you.

Your ERP system should be an accelerator, not an anchor. If any of these sound familiar, it may be time to rethink your technology strategy.

1. You're Relying on Spreadsheets to Fill the Gaps

When your team exports data from the ERP into Excel just to get a usable report, that's a sign the system isn't meeting your needs. Every manual workaround introduces risk — stale data, version conflicts, formula errors — and drains time that could be spent on higher-value work.

2. Your Team Avoids the System

If key people have found ways to work around the ERP rather than through it, adoption has failed. This often happens when the system was implemented without enough input from the people who use it daily, or when training was cut short.

3. Integrations Are Fragile or Non-Existent

Modern businesses depend on data flowing between systems — your CRM, e-commerce platform, warehouse tools, and ERP all need to talk to each other. If your integrations break regularly or you're still manually transferring data between platforms, your ERP is behind.

4. You Can't Get Answers Quickly

When leadership asks "how are we doing this quarter?" and the answer takes days or weeks to compile, your system isn't providing the visibility you need. Real-time dashboards and self-service reporting should be the norm, not the exception.

5. Upgrades Feel Impossible

If the thought of upgrading your ERP fills your team with dread — because of heavy customizations, data migration risks, or vendor lock-in — that's a serious red flag. A well-architected system should be able to evolve with your business.

What to Do About It

Recognizing the problem is the first step. The next is understanding what a modern ERP like Dynamics 365 Business Central can do differently. Whether you need a full replacement, an upgrade from an older NAV version, or simply a health check on your current setup, we can help you map out a practical path forward.

A failed or underperforming ERP implementation doesn't just waste money — it creates compounding problems that affect every part of your organization. Here's what we see when companies come to us after a rough start.

The Obvious Costs

The direct financial impact is the easiest to measure but rarely the full picture:

• Sunk implementation fees — often tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars
• Ongoing support costs for a system that doesn't work properly
• License fees for features that were never configured correctly
• Consultant fees to patch problems that shouldn't exist

The Hidden Costs

The real damage usually shows up in places that are harder to quantify:

Lost Productivity

When people spend hours working around system limitations, exporting to spreadsheets, or manually reconciling data, that's time not spent on strategic work. Across a team, this adds up to thousands of hours per year.

Poor Decision-Making

If your ERP can't deliver timely, accurate data, decisions get made on gut feel or outdated information. That might work for a while, but it catches up with you — especially as you scale.

Employee Frustration

Nothing erodes morale faster than forcing people to use a tool that makes their job harder. High turnover in operations and finance roles is often a symptom of bad systems, not bad people.

Missed Opportunities

When your team is consumed by firefighting system issues, they're not focused on growth. New product launches, market expansion, and process improvements all take a back seat.

How to Recover

If this sounds like your situation, the good news is that it's fixable. We've helped multiple organizations recover from failed implementations — stabilizing their platform, resolving critical issues, and building a system that actually works for their business.

The key is finding a partner who takes the time to understand your unique operations rather than applying a cookie-cutter approach. That's what we do at EFOQUS.