Frequently Asked Questions about Using Business Central

This section contains answers to frequently asked questions about signing up for a trial, buying a subscription, and using Business Central. You can also learn how to get technical support.

Is Business Central available in my country/region?

Business Central is available in a limited number of markets, but new countries are added through Microsoft-led localization or through partner-led localization on a quarterly basis. For more information, see Country/Regional Availability and Supported Translations (available in English only).

How do I get Business Central?

You can sign up for a free trial to explore Business Central. Start a free trial! If you want more time to explore, you can extend your trial period.

To help you get ready for doing business in Business Central, you can launch assisted setup guides, videos, or help topics for selected setup tasks. For more information, see Getting Ready for Doing Business.

When you are ready to buy Business Central, you can find a Business Central partner on the I'm looking for a solution provider page. For more information, see How do I find a reselling partner?.

Where do I go if I have questions?

If you have questions about Business Central that you can't find an answer for in this documentation, you can ask the Business Central community. For more information, see Dynamics 365 Business Central community.

From the community home page, you can also find links to our blogs where you can also find tips and tricks. For more information, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central on the Dynamics 365 blog and the older Dynamics 365 Business Central Blog.

Finally, you can contact your Business Central reselling partner. For more information, see the How do I get technical support? and How do I find a reselling partner? sections.

Why can't I find that capability in my Business Central?

Did you read about a new capability in the release plan or on our blog recently? In that case, your Business Central might not have been upgraded to the latest version yet. You can check which version your Business Central is based on in the Help and Support page.

This applies to Business Central online and on-premises.

Also, if the capability is published as an extension in AppSource, then there is a delay between the extension being announced and its availability in AppSource. This applies to Business Central online only.

Are there any differences between an on-premises deployment and Business Central online?

Yes. Business Central is optimized for online deployment, and some capabilities may run on premises only under certain circumstances, while others are not supported at all. For more information, see Features not implemented in on-premises deployments of Dynamics 365 Business Central (available in English only).

Can I get training in Business Central?

Yes, you can! You can find free eLearning content on the Microsoft Learn site. You can also ask your reselling partner for additional training. If you don't know who that is, see the How do I find a reselling partner? section.

For more information about training across Dynamics 365 that is provided by Microsoft, see the Microsoft Dynamics 365 training page.

Additional content is provided by the Business Central community, such as the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Field Guide that is written by a partner.

How do I get technical support for Business Central?

Business Central is sold through partners, and you should contact your reselling partner to get help with technical problems. If your Business Central partner then cannot resolve the problem, they will raise a support ticket with Microsoft.

For more information, see Help and Support and the How do I find a reselling partner? section.

Where is the save button?

There is no save button on pages like in other programs that you might be familiar with. In Business Central, changes that you make to a field are automatically saved as soon as you move to the next field or close the page, as long as there are no errors. When you make changes to a field and move to another field, you will see the text Saving in the top-right corner of the page, which will quickly change to Saved if no errors occur. If an error occurs, the text will change to Not Saved.

Where do I find that line number?

Documents such as sales order or purchase invoices consist of headers and lines. Each line has a number that Business Central uses to identify this particular line. As a result, you might see a warning or an error message that something is wrong in line number 1000, for example. In the default version of Business Central, line numbers are hidden. If you want to see the line numbers, you must personalize the current page and add the Line No. field. For more information, see Personalize Your Workspace.

Why does Help describe functionality that I cannot access?

If your Experience setting on the Company Information page is set to Essential, then UI elements for the Manufacturing and Service Management features are not visible to you because they require the Premium experience. A text note is inserted in high-level help topics for these feature areas. For more information, see Change Which Features are Displayed.

Why is new information not available in my language?

On the docs.microsoft.com site, content about business functionality is published in a number of languages. The content is authored in English and published to URLs with en-us as the language code. When new information is published in English, it is then sent off for translation into the supported languages. This means that you will not be able to read this new content in your own language for up to 4 weeks.

We understand the problems this can cause, and we encourage users to search for what they are looking for in English if they cannot find it in their own language.

What email address can I use with Business Central online?

Business Central online requires that you use a work, or school, email address to sign up. Business Central online does not support email addresses provided by consumer email services or telecommunication providers. This includes outlook.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, and others.

If you try to sign up with a personal email address, you will get a message indicating to use a work or school email address. For more information, see Troubleshooting Self-Service Sign-Up.

If you want to deploy Business Central on-premises, then you can use other authentication methods. For more information, see Deployment of Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Do I have to buy Microsoft 365?

No. But if you want to experience Business Central as fully integrated with Microsoft 365, you can sign up for a 1-month free trial of Microsoft 365 here.

If the account you sign up with is a non-Microsoft 365 work account (such as joe@mysolution.com), and you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, then you can associate your domain (mysolution.com) with the Microsoft 365 subscription. For more information, see What is a domain? in the Microsoft 365 content.

If you do not have a Microsoft 365 subscription, and you do not want to buy one, then, when you sign up, we provision a new Azure Active Directory tenant for you so that you have access to the advanced administration tools in the Azure portal.

What is the integration with Microsoft 365 about?

Business Central online is fully integrated with Microsoft 365 so that you can navigate freely between Microsoft 365 apps and Business Central using the app launcher. In Business Central, you can open data in Excel, print reports using Word, and you can work with your Business Central data in Outlook, for example. For more information, see Using Business Central as your Business Inbox in Outlook.

Can I extend my 30-day "New Company" trial period?

Yes. When the expiration date for your trial period is approaching we will display a notification to alert you when you sign in. The notification contains a link to the Extend Trial Period guide that you can use to extend your trial period. The extra 30 days start the moment you choose Extend Trial in the guide. You can extend the trial period one time yourself. After that, a Microsoft partner can extend it for another 30 days. For more information, see Extend Your Trial Version.

Note

It may take up to two business days to complete the trial extension process.

For more information about finding a partner, see How do I find a reselling partner?.

What are the service level agreements for the cloud?

Business Central online is governed under the Modern Lifecycle Policy. The service level agreement terms are described in the document that you can download from the Service Level Agreements for Microsoft Online Services section on the Licensing terms page.

Furthermore, as an administrator, you can monitor your tenant's health and specify upgrade windows in the Business Central Administration Center.

Databases are protected by automatic backups that are retained for 30 days. As an administrator, you cannot access or manage these backups because they are managed automatically by Microsoft. For more information about the underlying technology, see Automatic backups.

Our administrator has moved me to another plan to give me another role, but I still see the same Home screen in Business Central?

This is a bit complicated, but it looks like your administrator didn't change your assigned role and assign user groups that match the new license. Essentially, your access to Business Central is determined by the type of plan (license) that you have - this sets permissions, your assigned role and your default Home screen. You can change your current role manually in My Settings, but if you are moved to another plan, such as moving you from the Business plan to the Team Members plan, you might see the old Home screen because your permissions were not changed.

Can I cancel my subscription?

Yes, but depending on how you signed up to Business Central, your data can be deleted or preserved. For more information, see Canceling Business Central.

Can I use multi-factor authentication?

Sure. If you do, you might need an app password in order to send email messages. App passwords give an app or a device access to your email account. The steps for getting an app password vary, depending on your email provider. For more information, see the help from your provider. For example, if you're using Outlook, see Multi-factor authentication for Microsoft 365.

How do I find a reselling partner?

Business Central is sold and implemented through a global network of Dynamics 365 partners with industry expertise. Contact a partner for a detailed assessment, consulting services, and additional pricing. For more information, see the Pricing section on the Dynamics 365 Business Central page on microsoft.com.

When you are ready to buy Business Central, you can find a Business Central partner on the I'm looking for a solution provider page. You can also find solutions and services from partners in Microsoft AppSource.

If you want guidance from Microsoft, contact the Microsoft Sales team.

Your reselling partner will also handle technical support for you. For more information, see Resources for Help and Support.

Is the Windows client supported?

The first releases of Business Central on premises included an installed client derived from Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Starting with 2019 release wave 2, this legacy component, referred to as "the Windows client", will no longer be available for Business Central. For more information, see FAQ About the Windows Client and Business Central.

See Also

Getting Ready for Doing Business
Tell Me FAQ
Searching and Filtering FAQ
List Views FAQ
Changing Language and Locale
Using Business Central as Your Business Inbox in Outlook
Using Business Central without Outlook
Change Basic Settings
Working with Business Central
Getting answers to questions
Resources for Help and Support
Business Central Learning Catalog
Assign Permissions to Users and Groups
Country/Regional Availability and Supported Translations
Service Terms
FAQ About Developer and ITPro Experiences

Start a free trial!

Note

Can you tell us about your documentation language preferences? Take a short survey.

The survey will take about seven minutes. No personal data is collected (privacy statement).