Your Business Central Questions Answered
Updated: Mar 18, 2022
You've got Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Questions and we've got answers.
Is Business Central an ERP?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is absolutely a full ERP. It has the capability and functionality for financial management, artificial intelligence, customer relationship management (CRM), electronic services, human resource management (HR), project management, supply chain management, warehouse management and inventory, service order management, and manufacturing management.
Is Business Central a CRM?
Technically, no it is not. It's an enterprise resource planning software that has some basic CRM capabilities. More often than not these CRM capabilities are more than enough for a lot of businesses. However, if you need more functionality Business Central fully integrates with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to give you a connected real-time experience.
Is Business Central SaaS?
Yes, Business Central has an offering that is Software as a Service (SaaS). Business Central also has an on-premise version that is not SaaS for organizations that are reluctant to be in the cloud. This is a major differentiator from Business Central's competitors.
Is Business Central NAV?
This can be one of those trick Business Central questions. Business Central is built on the Dynamics NAV platform and is the next upgrade to NAV 2018 version. So, the answer for this questions can be both yes or no depending upon personal preferences. I believe that the answer to this question is yes, Business Central is NAV and NAV is Business Central.
Can every object in Business Central be extended?
According to Microsoft, only pages with Extensible Property set to true can be extended.
What can Business Central do?
Business Central provides you with and end-to-end view of your organization allowing for strategic decisions to be made.
For a list of functionality see: Business Central Functionality
Why Business Central?
Organizations choose Business Central for a number of reasons but I think there are three that really stand out. The first reason is they want their ERP software to integrate seamlessly with their other Microsoft software. Products such as Power BI for reporting or Excel for spreadsheets.
The second reason is the price point of users. Currently you can can get a BC user license for $70 and a team member license for less than $10.
The third and final reason is the advanced functionality, and the ability for Business Central to be on-premise or cloud based software. It's no secret that a lot of businesses are moving to the cloud but some have so many customizations that it makes sense to first upgrade or purchase Business Central on-premise v14.0. This way you can keep your object changes in your new software and then plan and begin the transition to full extensions and a cloud migration.
How much is Business Central?
As of the publishing of this article Business Central cloud user licenses are $70 per month for Essentials and $100 per month for Premium. What's the difference you ask? Check out our Business Central pricing page that includes an Essentials vs Premium breakdown.
How to learn Business Central?
There are many different avenues for learning Business Central. You can talk to your partner and setup training with them, you can take free classes on Microsoft Learn, you can view different YouTube videos, or you can read different documents online. In my opinion, training from your partner and utilizing Microsoft Learn should be your first two learning steps.
How to update Business Central?
If you are running the cloud version of Business Central automatic updates will automatically be applied each month unless scheduled otherwise. If you are using Business Central on-premise consult with your Microsoft Partner as to how often you'd like to update.
What is a Business Central tenant?
In a single Business Central tenant your information is housed in a private database such as Azure. In A Business Central multi-tenant environment your data is housed with others on the same server. A common analogy is single tenant users live in a single family home and multi-tenant users live in an apartment building.
What is a Business Central sandbox?
A Business Central sandbox is a testing environment that is separate from your production environment(s). It's commonly used to test different setups, updates, and apps.
If you have any more Business Central questions please leave them in the comments below.