Microsoft Cloud · Microsoft Dynamics 365
As your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner, we deliver the ERP of choice for 10–500 employees — the direct successor to NAV/Navision. Standard implementations, NAV migrations, and AL extensions — pragmatic, without the ERP overkill that has little to do with your mid-market reality.
30 days free
We set up the trial tenant in 48 hours, train your key users (2 hours), hold weekly office hours with the architect, and prototype your target use case. After 30 days you receive an architecture recommendation — you decide on adoption or shutdown.
Clear positioning
Microsoft has two ERP worlds: Business Central (SMB target, 10–500 employees, successor to NAV/Navision) and the five Finance & Operations apps (enterprise target, from several hundred employees, successor to AX/Axapta). Both worlds are separately licensed, separately developed, and require different specialists.
We implement Business Central ourselves. For Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, Human Resources, and Intelligent Order Management we refer to specialized F&O partners from our network. If you're unsure which fits: we classify it honestly in the discovery call. A detailed overview of the F&O world is in our Insights section "Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP".
Capabilities
Six functional areas that make up the standard scope in mid-market daily operations.
General ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, bank ledger, fixed-asset accounting. Chart of accounts SKR03/SKR04, DATEV export, GoBD conformity, dunning, SEPA payments. Multi-entity capability for subsidiaries.
Multi-warehouse, locations, bins. Serial numbers and lots with full traceability. Stock counts, transfers, reservations. WMS features with pick/put strategies — sufficient out of the box for many mid-market warehouses.
Quotes, orders, deliveries, invoices, credit memos. Price lists, discount models, commissions. Connection to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales — the field force works in CRM, the back office takes over in ERP.
Purchase requests, purchase orders, goods receipts, vendor invoices. Vendor evaluation, framework contracts, automatic purchase suggestions based on minimum quantities or planning. Approval workflows for purchases above thresholds.
BOMs, routings, work centers, production orders. Single-level and multi-level manufacturing, pre- and post-costing, variant production. Works for classic discrete goods — for process manufacturing, AppSource or an AL extension becomes necessary.
Service contracts, service orders, asset hierarchies. Connection to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service for complex field-service models. For simple service contracts in the SMB mid-market, the Business Central standard is often enough.
Typical use cases
Three constellations from our practice where Business Central works as the ERP of choice — and a clear note on when other ERPs fit better.
Example: a plant builder with 80 employees, BOMs, routings, smaller workshop area, custom production. Standard production with variant manufacturing, connection to accounting with pre- and post-costing.
Example: an industrial wholesaler with three warehouses, 12,000 items, lot tracking for safety products. Multi-warehouse with pick-and-put strategies, supplier portal via EDI, automatic planning.
Example: a special-purpose machine builder with project-based business, 60 employees, service share for installed assets. Connection to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations for project business, service orders in the ERP.
For very large groups with complex consolidation needs, multi-currency treasury, and thousands of concurrent postings per hour, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is the right choice. For small service providers under 10 employees without inventory, Lexware, sevDesk, or Datev Unternehmen Online are leaner.
Our approach
Five work packages we cleanly process in every Business Central project — adapted to your industry, your size, and your existing systems.
Set up the tenant, chart of accounts, master data, document number series, workflows. Four phases: diagnose, analyze, design, develop. With clear deliverables per phase. Training of power users before go-live, hypercare after go-live.
Microsoft's Cloud Migration Tool for master data and transactional data. Switch C/AL customizations to AL. Critical assessment: what do we translate, what do we replace with standard or AppSource? A 1:1 takeover of old NAV customizations is usually money badly spent.
Prebuilt extensions from Microsoft AppSource for industry- and process-specific requirements: DATEV interfaces, supplier portals, EDI, warehouse WMS extensions. We know the solid vendors and sort the wheat from the chaff.
When standard and AppSource don't suffice: AL code from us, cleanly documented, update-safe against Microsoft release waves. Code reviews, versioning in Git, automated tests — like a software project, not like a customization jungle.
Finance dashboards (cash flow, P&L, receivables), inventory dashboards (stock, reach, slow movers), sales dashboards (revenue, margin, top customers). Built in Power BI, attached to Business Central — management gets a real steering view.
License costs & configuration
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central comes in two editions: Essentials and Premium. In November 2025 Microsoft substantially recalibrated the license architecture — both the pricing list and the capacity entitlements were adjusted. Current list prices per Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide, May 2026:
Which edition fits depends primarily on whether you need production with BOMs and routings. If yes: Premium. If no: Essentials is enough. Our License Cost Calculator calculates this transparently — also in mixed models of full users and Team Members licenses, with the current arades CSP discount. Source: microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-365/business-central/pricing — as of May 2026.
Pricing notice: Microsoft adjusts list prices regularly (currency adjustments, NCE updates, plan restructurings). Figures here are indicative values from May 2026. For current prices including arades CSP conditions, see the License Cost Calculator (licenses.arades.de) ↗ daily.
Configuration note from practice: the most common pitfall in Business Central projects is not the system but the pre-cleansing of master data. 30 years of NAV history rarely yield a clean dataset. We take the first weeks to sort through with you — before we migrate.
Strategic cost lever
In the Licensing Guide May 2026 Microsoft anchored a special rule little noticed in the market: if Business Central Premium is the Base license (annual contract term), you can add Customer Service Enterprise, Field Service, or Sales Enterprise for only €19.10/user/month as Attach — instead of standalone full prices around €91.00/user/month.
This makes BC Premium the only non-Customer-Engagement license in the current Microsoft Dynamics 365 lineup that qualifies as a Base for Customer Engagement Apps. It fits the reality of many mid-market companies that have their center of gravity in ERP and want to add CRM apps — not the other way around.
Suppose a mid-market wholesaler with 25 employees needs Business Central Premium for ERP plus Customer Service Enterprise for structured complaints handling:
When this is the right setup: mid-market wholesalers or manufacturers with BC as the ERP base and additional CRM or service needs. Anyone running pure CRM without ERP is usually cheaper with a Customer Engagement App as Base. We check this in the 30-min discovery call with your concrete employee profile. Source: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide, May 2026, page 6.
GA since November 2025
In November 2025 Microsoft brought two AI agents for Business Central to general availability. Both address typical pain points in the mid-market — sales order capture from emails and accounts payable — and both run directly in the BC tenant, without an external AI platform.
The agent analyzes incoming customer emails, locates the customer in Business Central, runs a multi-turn conversation with the salesperson (for example on missing delivery details), checks availability against inventory and supplier stocks, and automatically creates a quote or sales order. The employee is relieved of typing and can focus on review and approval.
The agent captures incoming vendor invoices (PDF attachment or email body), validates the invoice data against master data, matches it against open purchase orders (POs) and goods receipts, routes discrepancies to approver routing, and generates cash-flow dashboards. This turns AP processing in many setups from manual entry to pure review.
License mechanics: Both agents require a Business Central license plus Copilot Credits. Business Central Premium users get the necessary credits included (part of the Premium bundle); Business Central Essentials users must buy credits separately. Credits are pooled tenant-wide and consumed by the agent conversations — a sales-order transaction typically consumes 5–15 credits, an invoice capture 8–20 credits, depending on complexity.
What this concretely means for arades clients: anyone with an order intake of 50–200 sales orders per day or an accounts payable function of similar volume typically gains 0.5–1.5 FTE per quarter through both agents. In the SMB mid-market that's often the factor deciding the question "hire an additional accounting role or not". We check the business case in the discovery call with your concrete volume numbers. Source: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide, May 2026, page 8.
Free bonus
An underestimated license mechanic in the market: internal users with Microsoft 365 Business or Microsoft 365 Enterprise (and selected other Microsoft 365 plans) get read-only access to Business Central data directly in Microsoft Teams — without needing an additional Business Central license.
Requirement: the organization has at least one Business Central license (Essentials or Premium) active in the tenant. The read-only function covers:
Strategic note: anyone with employees working in Teams who only occasionally need to look up Business Central data (e.g. sales back office, field force, management) saves the separate Business Central license and uses the Microsoft 365 license they already have. The lever makes Business Central setups significantly cheaper in total cost than often assumed — especially in organizations with 30+ employees, of whom 10–20 only read. Source: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide, May 2026, page 8.
Frequently asked questions
Lean standard implementation for a 25-person business with accounting, inventory, and purchase/sales starts at €45,000 net. With production, service management, multiple warehouses, and a NAV migration, mid-market engagements range between €90,000 and €280,000. A more accurate estimate comes after the 30-min discovery call.
Lean implementation without migration: 12–16 weeks. With NAV/Navision migration: 18–28 weeks. With production, service, and multiple AL extensions: 28–48 weeks. We work in sprints, with clearly defined phases: diagnose, analyze, design, develop, test, go-live — you see the status weekly.
Yes. NAV/Navision migrations are our classic migration case, from NAV 2009 R2 to NAV 2018. We use Microsoft's Cloud Migration Tool for master data, translate C/AL customizations to AL, and check what we can replace with AppSource add-ons — a 1:1 takeover of old customizations is rarely advisable.
Mid-market manufacturing with BOMs and routings, wholesale with multi-warehouse and batch tracking, service providers with material flow (e.g. special-purpose machine building, service firms with spare parts), industrial chemicals and similar industrial suppliers. 10–500 employees is the typical corridor.
Yes, and this is often the better path. Standard accounting, inventory, purchasing, sales, production are usable out of the box. AppSource offers prebuilt add-ons for many specialized requirements. We only write AL extensions when standard and AppSource demonstrably aren't enough.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales receives order and customer data from Business Central — an order created in the CRM flows into the ERP without double entry. Power BI for finance and inventory dashboards, Power Automate for approval workflows, Microsoft 365 apps (Outlook, Excel, Teams) are deeply integrated. Interfaces to third-party systems (warehouse management, EDI, supplier portals) run via standard APIs.
Business Central is the SMB line (small and mid-sized business) — successor to NAV/Navision, designed for 10–500 employees. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is the enterprise line — successor to AX/Axapta, designed from several hundred employees with complex group structures. We implement Business Central ourselves and refer for Finance to specialized F&O partners from our network. Our Insights section on D365 ERP explains the world in detail.
Business Central Premium list price is €95.30/user/month (annual contract term). In November 2025 Microsoft adjusted both the pricing list and capacity entitlements. Premium includes production with BOMs and routings, advanced service management, and — as a strategically important bonus — Copilot Credits for the Business Central Agents (Sales Order Agent, Payables Agent). Business Central Essentials is €69.30/user/month without included Copilot Credits; Team Members is €6.90/user/month. Source: microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-365/business-central/pricing — as of May 2026.
In November 2025 Microsoft brought two Business Central Agents to general availability: the Sales Order Agent analyzes customer emails, locates customers in BC, runs a multi-turn conversation, checks availability, and creates quotes or sales orders. The Payables Agent captures incoming vendor invoices, matches them against purchase orders and goods receipts, routes discrepancies to approver routing, and generates cash-flow dashboards. Both agents require a BC license plus Copilot Credits. BC Premium users get the credits included; BC Essentials users must buy them separately. With an order intake of 50–200 sales orders per day, you typically gain 0.5–1.5 FTE per quarter.
60-min demo · concrete ERP scenario
Bring a typical scenario from your order processing. We'll show Business Central in the tool — create an order, post inventory, write an invoice, generate a P&L. From your perspective, not from a slide-deck perspective.
Accompanying services
Engineering projects rarely stand alone — license logic, architecture clarification, quality gates, knowledge transfer, and follow-up operations usually run in parallel. Here are the most common accompanying services we add via Discovery Spike, sprint fixed price, or Application Care contracts.
Before · Architecture
Before implementation begins: tenant structure, data model, security concept, integration mapping. The result is an architecture document any engineering team can build on — including one other than us.
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Before · CSP
Which license bundles for which users, which add-on SKUs are required, where you are over- or under-licensed. Sourced as a Microsoft Licensing Partner — with the option to use CSP purely as control without margin maximization.
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During · Quality gate
An independent second opinion during a running implementation project — whether we run it ourselves or another partner does. CMMI-based quality gates, risk reviews, fixed price per gate.
During · Adoption
Not the classic two-day workshop that's forgotten a week later — but a dynamic learning program over 4–6 weeks with initial training, application phases, and follow-up sessions. Training matrix across roles and topics.
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After · Operations
After go-live: a predictable Application Care contract with a monthly flat fee, SLA-based. Includes releases, hotfixes, enhancements, tenant hardening — and continuous guidance rather than ticket-only response.
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After · Knowledge
When the original developers are gone, the predecessor partner is no longer reachable, or documentation is outdated — reverse engineering of the existing solution with a documented result: code map, data model, customization inventory.
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More on Microsoft ERP? Find the full overview of the ERP family (Business Central, the F&O successors, and Modular ERP) in our Insights area — knowledge content, not a sales pitch. To the ERP knowledge area →
