Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Business Central is Microsoft's cloud business management system for small and mid-sized organizations. It brings finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, projects and operations into one application on a single set of data.
What it does
- Financial management: general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, bank reconciliation, budgets, fixed assets and reporting.
- Sales and customers: quotes, orders, invoices, customer records and pricing.
- Purchasing and inventory: vendors, purchase orders, stock levels, warehouses and item tracking.
- Projects and services: job costing, resource planning and service orders.
- Manufacturing: bills of materials, production orders and capacity planning.
Why organizations choose it
- Works with Microsoft 365: use data from Business Central in Excel, Outlook and Teams, and share it with Power BI and Power Automate.
- Extensible: add-ons and custom features are built as extensions written in AL, so updates do not overwrite customizations. A standard web API (OData and REST) connects it to other systems.
- Flexible deployment: run it as a managed cloud service from Microsoft, or host it yourself on your own servers.
- Regular updates: Microsoft publishes two major releases each year, with monthly updates in between.
- Grows with you: it is the modern successor to Dynamics NAV, and organizations that outgrow it can move up to larger Dynamics 365 products.
Where it fits
Business Central suits companies that have outgrown entry-level accounting software but do not need a large enterprise system. Typical users are distributors, manufacturers, professional services firms, nonprofits and retailers.
Product details, editions and pricing change over time. Check Microsoft's own documentation for current information.