Business Central 2026 Release Wave 2: What BC 29 Means for Business

Microsoft’s next major update to Dynamics 365 Business Central is on the horizon.

Business Central 2026 Release Wave 2 — also known as Business Central version 29 or BC 29 — is due to begin rolling out from October 2026, with further functionality arriving throughout the release wave into March 2027.

For existing Business Central customers, however, the important question isn’t simply “what’s new?”

It’s:

What will actually make a difference to the way your business works?

With BC 29, Microsoft is continuing a clear shift towards greater automation, more functionality built directly into Business Central and increased use of AI to take repetitive administrative work away from users.

Here are the areas we think Business Central customers should be paying attention to.

1. AI is moving from “interesting feature” to everyday business tool

Artificial intelligence has been appearing throughout Business Central for several releases, but Microsoft’s direction is becoming increasingly clear.

AI agents are being designed to do more than simply answer questions or generate text. They can increasingly work with Business Central data, interpret a task and carry out steps on behalf of users, while retaining controls and human approval where required.

For customers, that distinction is important.

This isn’t necessarily about replacing the people who currently complete these processes. It is about reducing the amount of time those people spend on repetitive administration.

Microsoft’s Sales Order Agent, for example, can already monitor a mailbox for customer enquiries, interpret incoming requests, identify customers and products, check availability and help prepare quotations or sales orders.

Likewise, Microsoft's Payables Agent is designed to help finance teams capture, validate and match invoices against purchase orders and receipts, reducing some of the manual work involved in accounts payable.

Why should you care?

Think about the processes in your organisation that involve someone repeatedly:

• reading information from an email or document;
• entering it into Business Central;
• checking it against another record;
• creating a transaction;
• and passing it to somebody else for approval.

Those are precisely the kinds of processes Microsoft is beginning to target with agents.

If your Business Central users spend significant time processing orders, invoices and other routine transactions, BC 29 is another reason to start identifying where automation could give that time back.

2. More functionality is becoming part of standard Business Central

Another important theme is Microsoft's continued investment in capabilities that previously required separate applications, extensions or workarounds.

A good example is employee expense management.

Microsoft is introducing native expense reports that allow organisations to capture, approve and reimburse employee expenses within Business Central itself. The functionality includes expense entry, approval workflows, reimbursement posting and dedicated expense ledger entries. General availability is currently planned for October 2026.

Why should you care?

Every additional system has a cost.

Not just the subscription fee, but administration, integration, training and the risk of data being duplicated or becoming inconsistent between applications.

As Microsoft adds more capabilities directly into Business Central, there may be opportunities to simplify your technology stack.

That doesn't mean every third-party solution suddenly becomes unnecessary. Specialist applications will continue to offer functionality that standard Business Central doesn't.

But it does make this release a good opportunity to review what you currently use.

You may find that a process you built a workaround for several years ago can now be handled much more simply within Business Central. 

3. Finance teams should expect more automation

Finance remains one of the biggest areas of investment in Business Central.

Microsoft has been steadily improving invoice processing, electronic documents, reporting, fixed assets, expenses and financial controls across recent releases, and that investment is continuing into BC 29.

The direction is straightforward: reduce repetitive transaction processing and give finance teams more time to focus on exceptions, analysis and decision-making.

For accounts payable teams in particular, smarter invoice matching is a good example. Microsoft's Payables Agent can help match incoming invoices with open purchase orders, even when the invoice doesn't provide a perfect reference to the corresponding order line.

Why should you care?

For many organisations, finance teams are already being asked to do more without increasing headcount.

Automation can help remove some of the low-value work that sits between receiving a transaction and actually making a decision about it.

The result isn't just time saved.

Better automation can potentially mean:

fewer manual errors, faster processing, improved data consistency and better visibility of outstanding work.

For finance leaders, those benefits are likely to be more valuable than any individual new screen or button introduced in BC 29.

4. Better reporting should help turn Business Central data into decisions

Business Central contains a huge amount of operational and financial information.

The challenge for many organisations is turning that information into something useful.

Microsoft continues to invest in reporting, analysis and Power BI integration so that organisations can move beyond simply recording transactions and start answering practical questions about what is happening across the business.

Instead of reporting being something that happens at month-end, the aim is increasingly to give users access to relevant information as part of their normal workflow.

Why should you care?

The value of your ERP system isn't simply the amount of data you can put into it.

It's what you can learn from that data.

For management teams, better reporting can mean spotting changes in profitability, stock, customers or cash flow earlier.

For operational teams, it can mean identifying where something requires attention without waiting for somebody to manually produce a spreadsheet.

If you're still exporting significant amounts of Business Central data into Excel simply to understand what is happening in the business, this is an area worth reviewing.

5. The update is also a reason to review your current Business Central environment

New functionality naturally attracts the attention, but one of the most important things existing customers can do ahead of a major release is understand how the update interacts with their existing Business Central environment.

Business Central follows a six-month release cycle, with major releases accompanied by ongoing updates. Existing online customers receive updates through Microsoft's update process, rather than remaining indefinitely on the same version.

That means it's important to consider:

Extensions and customisations
Are all the extensions you rely on compatible with the new version?

Integrations
Are there connections to other systems that should be tested?

Existing processes
Has Microsoft introduced standard functionality that could replace one of your current workarounds?

New functionality
Which features could genuinely save your users time?

Training
Are there changes your users should know about before they arrive?

A Business Central release shouldn't simply be treated as an IT update.

Used properly, it is an opportunity to ask whether your current system is still configured in the best way for your business.

So, what should Business Central customers do now?

You don't need to adopt every new capability Microsoft releases.

And you certainly shouldn't introduce AI or automation simply because it's available.

Instead, start with the problems your users already have.

Where are people spending too much time?

Where are the manual processes?

Where is information being copied between systems?

Where are spreadsheets compensating for something you can't currently do easily in Business Central?

Where do users regularly say, “there must be an easier way to do this?”

Those are the areas to revisit as BC 29 arrives.

Microsoft's 2026 Release Wave 2 represents another step towards a Business Central platform that is more automated, more intelligent and capable of handling more processes natively.

For existing customers, the biggest opportunity isn't simply receiving another software update.

It's using that update to make Business Central work harder for your business.

Preparing for Business Central 2026 Release Wave 2

BC 29 is expected to begin rolling out from October 2026, with functionality continuing to arrive during the release wave. Microsoft also makes clear that planned capabilities and release dates can change before general availability.

That makes the months ahead a useful opportunity to review your Business Central environment, identify the features most relevant to your teams and make sure important extensions, integrations and processes are ready for the next release.

At The HBP Group, we work with Business Central customers to help them get more value from the technology they already have — from understanding new Microsoft functionality to improving existing processes, integrations, reporting and automation.

If you'd like to understand what BC 29 could mean specifically for your Business Central environment, speak to our team. We can help you identify the changes worth paying attention to and make sure you're prepared for the next release.