Welcome to Dynamics 365 Business Central
Business Central is a business management solution for small and mid-sized organizations that automates and streamlines business processes and helps you manage your business. Highly adaptable and rich with features, Business Central enables companies to manage their business, including finance, manufacturing, sales, shipping, project management, services, and more. Companies can easily add functionality that is relevant to the region of operation, and that is customized to support even highly specialized industries. Business Central is fast to implement, easy to configure, and simplicity guides innovations in product design, development, implementation, and usability.
If you already have Business Central, sign in at https://businesscentral.dynamics.com. Otherwise, get the overview, take the guided tour, and then learn how to start a free trial. Check out the quickstart articles to help you get to know Business Central. To learn more about onboarding to Business Central, go to Get Ready for Doing Business.
Core business functionality
Business Central provides features for typical business processes, mainly within wholesale and professional services. However, it also supports more complex processes, such as assembly, manufacturing, service, and directed warehouse management. Standard configurations for most business processes are built in, but you can customize them to suit your business needs.
Maybe start with a short tour of some of the key capabilities for managing finances.
| To... | Learn more here... |
|---|---|
| Make and collect payments, manage your cash flow, defer income and revenue, prepare year-end closing, and manage fixed assets. | Finance |
| Manage sales processes and information, such as quotes, orders, returns, and customer accounts, and make drop shipments. | Sales |
| Manage purchasing processes and information, such as invoices, orders, returns, and vendor accounts, and purchase items from sales documents. | Purchasing |
| Register new inventory or service-type items, categorize items so they're easy to search for, adjust inventory levels, and track inventory costs. | Inventory |
| Create projects and schedule resources for them, manage project budgets, monitor progress, and track machine and employee hours. | Project Management |
| Organize your fixed assets, ensure correct periodic depreciation, and track maintenance costs. | Fixed Assets |
| Plan the production operations required to turn components into finished goods. | Planning |
| Assemble components into finished items, or combine them in kits. | Assembly Management |
| Define shop floor resources and their capacity, schedule operations, pull production components, and manage production operations. | Manufacturing |
| Ensure that you receive, store, transfer, and ship goods effectively. | Warehouse Management Overview |
| Schedule service calls, manage service orders, and track repair parts and supplies. | Service Management |
To learn more, go to Business functionality supported by Business Central.
Copilot and AI
With Copilot in Business Central, small and medium-sized organizations empower their employees through intuitive AI tools that boost creativity and save time.
| To... | Learn more here... |
|---|---|
| Calculate, summarize, and analyze data by expressing what you want in natural language. For example, "sort on quantity from smallest to largest" or "show average cost per category." | Analyze data in lists with Analysis Assist Copilot |
| Help you reconcile bank accounts | Reconcile bank accounts with Copilot |
| Get answers about your company data and to get assistance with tasks and subject matters related to Business Central. | Chat with Copilot |
| Automate how you receive and process vendor invoices. | Map e-documents to purchase order lines with Copilot |
| Get assistance with authoring marketing text (product descriptions) for the items you sell in your online shops. | Marketing text suggestions with Copilot |
| Create sales documents faster by letting Copilot suggest items to add to lines on sales documents. | Suggest lines on sales documents with Copilot |
| Automate the process of creating sales orders. | Sales Order Agent |
| Find and assign substitute items faster. | Suggest substitute items with Copilot |
To learn more, go to About Copilot in Business Central.
Analytics
Empower any role in your organization with the insights they need to make decisions based on data. Use financial reporting and KPIs in your leadership team, create overview reports for middle management, and operational reports for staff. Group and pivot data from any list to do ad-hoc analyses. Export and analyze your data in Excel, if that app is your tool of choice. Each area in the application comes with standard, easy to use tools for data analysis.
| To... | Learn more here... |
|---|---|
| Set up financial reports to analyze figures in general ledger (G/L) accounts, and compare general ledger entries with budget entries. | Using Financial reporting to produce financial statements and KPIs |
| Analyze your business KPIs with built-in Power BI reports | Power BI apps/reports by functional area |
| Analyze (group, filter, and pivot) data directly in Business Central | Perform ad-hoc data analysis |
| Get an overview of built-in reports in Business Central | Report overview |
To learn more, go to Analytics overview.
Connect to other Microsoft apps
Empower people to be more collaborative, productive, and impactful with the power of collaborative applications. When Business Central and other Microsoft apps work together, small and medium-sized businesses can boost productivity and redefine how they get work done. With data delivered directly to familiar Microsoft Office apps such as Outlook, Excel, and collaborative tools such as Microsoft Teams, you get the information you need without switching between applications.
| To... | Learn more here... |
|---|---|
| Connect Teams to Business Central and efficiently share and interact with real-time data, transforming Teams into a centralized hub for all your daily operations. | Sharing Business Central records and page links in Microsoft Teams |
| Connect real-time data from Business Central to Outlook. Save time with visibility into customer and vendor information such as sales, purchase details, and more without leaving your inbox. | Use Business Central as your Business Inbox in Outlook |
| Export any Business Central data to Excel. Save time by bulk updating records in Excel and uploading the revised records to Business Central. Get timely operational insights from Business Central as Excel reports. | View and edit in Excel from Business Central |
Connect to Power Platform
Integrating Business Central with the Microsoft Power Platform offers a solution that enhances business productivity and efficiency. It provides a set of tools that enable you to analyze data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents.
| To... | Learn more here... |
|---|---|
| Set up and use Power Automate workflows to connect the business tasks that different users do. | Use Power Automate flows in Business Central |
| Get insights into your Business Central data with Power BI and create custom visualizations and reports. | Work with Power BI reports in Business Central |
| Build Power App solutions for your business domain with Business Central data and processes | Connecting to Your Business Central Data to Build a Business App Using Power Apps |
Get help inside Business Central
Did you get to this article from inside Business Central? If you aren't sure where to find what you're looking for, you can Filter by title in the table of contents to the left, or you can use the Search field at the top of the browser window.
You can also use the search capabilities in Business Central to find relevant documentation. To learn more, go to Finding Pages and Information with Tell Me.
Business Central includes tooltips for fields and actions that can help guide you through the various business processes. Some pages also have teaching tips and tours to help you. On each tooltip and teaching tip, choose the Show help link to open the Help pane where you find information about the current page and related tasks. If the chat with Copilot feature is turned on, instead of the Show help link on tooltips, you have an Ask Copilot link. When you select this link, the chat pane opens and a prompt asking for an explanation of the field is automatically entered, like "Explain field name "Invoice Discount %". On all pages, use Ctrl+F1 on your keyboard to open the Help pane. On any device, use the question mark in the upper right corner to get to the Help.
Microsoft Learn
In the table of contents to the left, you can find information about using Business Central in your company. Also, check out the Learn more using the product documentation section.
You can dive into online guided training paths at your own pace at Microsoft Learn. The learning paths and modules can help you build the skills you need to help you earn credentials. To learn more, go to Get started with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
If you prefer watching content rather than read it, then visit our video library.
Note
Unless otherwise specified, articles on Microsoft Learn reflect the latest version of Business Central online. If your organization uses a different version of Business Central online, some capabilities might not yet be available. Also, if your organization uses Business Central on-premises, you might be using an earlier version. To learn more, go to Frequently Asked Questions.
Related information
Explore Dynamics 365 Business Central capabilities
Business Central quickstarts
Getting Started with Business Central
Dynamics 365 Business Central training
Resources for Help and Support
Learn more using the product documentation
What's new and changed
Major Updates and Minor Updates of Business Central Online
Dynamics 365 Business Central on microsoft.com
Business Central Compliance
Business Central Online Service Terms