In This Article:

TL;DR

If you’re short on time, here’s what you need to know about Business Central Wave 1:

  • AI agents are now operational infrastructure inside Business Central — create, configure, and manage them directly in the platform
  • A brand-new native Quality Management module is available — no ISV required
  • Financial reporting is now automated, schedulable, and dimension-aware
  • Drop shipments, self-billing invoices, and purchase workflows all received meaningful improvements
  • The V1.0 API is being retired — if you have Power Automate or custom integrations, act now
  • Still on Dynamics GP? This release makes a compelling case for modernization

Business Central Just Got Smarter: Wave 1 Release Highlights You Need to Know

TMC’s consultants break down the features that matter most — and what they mean for your business.

🎥 Missed the live session? Watch the full recording here: 👉 Watch the BC Wave 1 Release Highlights Webinar →

On May 21, 2026, TMC hosted its first-ever Business Central Wave 1 Release Highlights webinar. We had 111 registrations and 84 attendees join our consultants live to walk through the most impactful updates Microsoft has introduced in Business Central Wave 1.

This wasn’t intended to be a deep technical training session or a feature dump. The goal was practical exposure: highlighting what’s new in Business Central Wave 1, what matters, and what organizations should start thinking about as they plan for the future of their ERP environment.

And there was a lot to cover.

AI & Copilot: What’s New in Business Central Wave 1 for AI Users

The biggest theme throughout this release is clear: AI functionality inside Business Central is becoming operational infrastructure — not just experimentation.

Business Central Wave 1 introduces a dedicated agents pane where organizations can create, configure, and manage custom AI agents directly within the system. These agents can:

  • Automate workflows
  • Monitor operational tasks
  • Integrate with Power Automate
  • Support job workflows
  • Operate with assigned permissions and security roles

Agents are now being treated as actual operational participants within Business Central — not add-ons or experiments.

Additional Copilot enhancements include expanded item insights and AI-generated KPI summaries, helping organizations gain deeper visibility into operations without requiring additional reporting overhead.

If your organization hasn’t started discussing how AI fits into your ERP workflows, Business Central Wave 1 makes a compelling case for starting that conversation now.

Platform & User Experience Improvements: Small Changes, Real Impact

Several updates in this release fall squarely into the “finally” category — improvements users have wanted for years that are now built directly into the platform.

External Document Storage — No ISV Required

Businesses can now store document attachments outside the Business Central database using SharePoint or Azure Blob Storage without requiring a third-party add-on.

This is especially impactful for companies managing large document volumes such as invoices, contracts, PDFs, shipping documents, and purchase records. Keeping documents outside the core database helps improve performance, backup speed, database size management, and overall responsiveness.

Created By / Modified By Visibility

Users can now see Created By and Modified By fields directly on list pages without drilling into individual records. During audits, troubleshooting, or month-end review processes, this change saves significant time and removes unnecessary clicks.

Automated Posting Date Controls

Posting date windows can now be controlled using date formulas instead of requiring manual updates every accounting period. For organizations with strong financial controls, this removes repetitive administrative maintenance and reduces the risk of human error.

Other Notable Platform Improvements

Additional enhancements include currency symbols displayed directly beside amounts, improved Dataverse connectivity, and expanded index management visibility for database performance monitoring. These updates create smoother day-to-day experiences for users across departments.

Sales & Purchasing Enhancements: Streamlining Core Processes

Business Central Wave 1 introduces several practical improvements focused on order-to-cash and procure-to-pay workflows.

Email Posted Sales Shipments Directly from Business Central

Users can now email posted sales shipments directly from Business Central without requiring custom reports or workaround solutions — it’s built in.

Purchase Quotes from Contacts

Purchase quotes can now be created directly from contacts. When converted, Business Central automatically creates vendor records using configurable templates based on territory code, country code, or contract type.

Improved Invoice Matching Visibility

Invoice matching now includes additional identifying columns such as order number, external document number, and reference fields. This helps users more easily identify the correct receipt and shipment lines during invoice processing and reduces errors.

Enhanced Drop Shipment Functionality

Microsoft significantly improved drop shipment processing in Business Central Wave 1, including:

  • Creating purchase orders directly from drop shipment sales orders
  • Independent invoice posting
  • Reversal capabilities for drop shipments

Historically, correcting drop shipment mistakes could become extremely complicated. This release dramatically improves that experience.

Self-Billing Invoices

Organizations can now create vendor invoices themselves without waiting for vendor-issued invoices. The system automatically assigns invoice numbers, sends copies to vendors, and supports established billing agreements — simplifying vendor billing workflows significantly.

Inventory, Warehouse & Manufacturing: More Visibility, Less Setup Effort

Business Central Wave 1 delivers several meaningful improvements for organizations managing inventory and warehouse operations.

Variant-Level Pictures & Attributes

Users can now manage images and attributes at the item variant level instead of only the base item level. This is especially useful for businesses managing size variations, color variations, and product-specific visual identifiers — improving accuracy in inventory management.

Prebuilt Inventory Analysis by Location

Microsoft introduced its first out-of-the-box inventory analysis view directly within Business Central. Organizations can now analyze inventory by location without needing to build custom reports from scratch — available directly from the item list.

Copy Location Setups

Entire warehouse location setups — including zones, bins, and configurations — can now be copied between locations. For organizations managing multiple warehouses or facilities, this is a major time saver that eliminates redundant manual configuration.

Expanded Workflow Approvals

Workflow approvals now extend into operational areas including item journals, output journals, requisition worksheets, physical inventory journals, consumption journals, and planning worksheets. This adds stronger governance and approval control directly into warehouse and manufacturing operations.

Manufacturing Enhancements

The Description 2 field has been expanded across additional manufacturing pages for organizations that rely on it operationally — a meaningful improvement for teams using this field across production orders and planning.

Financial Reporting: Moving from Manual to Automated

One of the strongest areas of improvement in Business Central Wave 1 is financial reporting automation. Finance teams are likely to feel these changes immediately.

Scheduled Report Distribution

Financial reports can now be automatically generated and distributed on a schedule — delivered inside Business Central, emailed automatically as PDFs, or sent to groups or departments. This removes repetitive manual processes that previously relied on Outlook.

Dimension-Based Reporting Automation

Finance teams can now automate reporting across multiple dimensions simultaneously instead of manually running reports multiple times. For example, teams can generate department, division, and location reporting together in a single run, which saves significant time during month-end and reporting cycles.

Report Organization & Governance

New report categorization and status controls make it easier for users to identify draft reports, active reports, archived reports, and department-specific reports at a glance — reducing confusion and improving compliance.

Automatic Branding

Organizations can now automatically include company branding and logos directly in report PDFs — no manual formatting required.

Audit Logging & Traceability

Users can now track who ran reports, when reports were run, and what changes were made. This is a major governance improvement for organizations with audit and compliance requirements.

Shopify Integration: Better Synchronization & Product Control

For businesses using Shopify integrations, Business Central Wave 1 introduces several meaningful updates.

Custom Product Collections

Shopify product collections can now synchronize directly into Business Central, giving teams better control over how products are organized across both platforms.

Item Attribute Synchronization

Up to three Business Central item attributes can now synchronize directly into Shopify product data for better product classification.

Variant-Level Image Synchronization

Variant-level product images now synchronize directly into Shopify when item sync is enabled. For organizations with complex eCommerce catalogs, this creates significantly better consistency between ERP and storefront systems.

Quality Management: A Major New Native Module in Business Central Wave 1

One of the most exciting additions in Business Central Wave 1 is the brand-new native Quality Management module built directly into the platform.

Previously, many organizations relied on third-party ISVs for this functionality. That changes with this release.

Now, organizations can:

  • Trigger quality inspections automatically
  • Create custom inspection templates
  • Define pass/fail testing criteria
  • Generate certificates of analysis
  • Track nonconformance reporting

Quality inspections can be triggered from purchase receipts, warehouse movements, production outputs, sales return orders, and assembly orders.

One important prerequisite: Items must be serial tracked or lot tracked for quality inspections to function properly.

For manufacturing and distribution businesses with compliance requirements, this is a major advancement in Business Central Wave 1.

Important Deprecations: What Organizations Need to Address

V1.0 API Retirement

Microsoft is retiring the V1.0 API with this release. Companies using Power Automate flows, custom integrations, or third-party integrations built on V1.0 pages should prioritize migration to V2.0 immediately to avoid disruptions.

Legacy Power BI App Retirement

Microsoft retired the legacy embedded Power BI apps and replaced them with seven new focused applications covering finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, projects, and manufacturing. Organizations with customizations built on older Power BI apps should review their environments carefully before updating.

Still on Dynamics GP? Business Central Wave 1 Is Worth Paying Attention To.

Many of the features in Business Central Wave 1 — including AI agents, automated financial reporting, workflow expansion, and native quality management — represent the direction Microsoft is continuing to invest in.

While Dynamics GP remains supported, Microsoft’s primary innovation focus has shifted toward Business Central and the modern cloud platform experience.

If your business is still on GP, this is an excellent time to begin evaluating what modernization could realistically look like. A migration assessment is an opportunity to understand your current environment, your timeline, your operational needs, and your options moving forward — not a sales pitch.

Every organization’s path looks different.

[Request a Migration Assessment Conversation →]

How TMC Can Help

TMC is a premier Microsoft Solutions Partner with more than 30 years of experience helping organizations modernize their operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, CRM, Power Platform, and Azure.

The consultants who presented in this webinar — John, Leanne, Nick, Stacy, Leah, Ting, Michael, and Brian — are the same people who work side by side with clients every day on implementations, upgrades, and AI strategy. What you saw in this webinar is exactly what you get when you work with TMC.

Here’s how we can help your organization specifically:

Current Business Central users: We can help you understand which Business Central Wave 1 features apply to your environment, assess your readiness for the V2.0 API migration, configure new workflow approvals and agent functionality, and build a roadmap for AI adoption inside your ERP.

If you’re evaluating Business Central: We offer a complimentary Business Process Review to help you understand whether Business Central is the right fit for your organization and what implementation would realistically look like.

Still on Dynamics GP? We specialize in GP to BC migrations and have helped dozens of organizations make the move successfully. Our migration assessments are practical, honest, and designed to give you clarity — not pressure.

If you have questions about this webinar: Reach out directly. Our team is happy to go deeper on any of the features covered in Business Central Wave 1 today.

📧 Email us: info@tmc-la.com 🌐 Visit us: abouttmc.com 📅 Book a conversation: Contact TMC →

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to upgrade to get these features?

If you are on Business Central’s cloud (SaaS) version, Microsoft updates are delivered automatically with each wave release — no manual upgrade required. If you are on-premises or in a private cloud environment, your company will need to plan and apply the update with your partner.

What version includes the new AI agent functionality?

The expanded AI agent functionality is included in Business Central V28 as part of the Business Central Wave 1 2026 release.

Is the Quality Management module available without an ISV?

Yes. The native Quality Management module is now built directly into Business Central Wave 1. There may still be specialized use cases where an ISV offers additional functionality, but core quality management capabilities are now available natively.

How urgent is migration away from the V1.0 API?

Very urgent. Companies using V1.0 API integrations should prioritize migration immediately to avoid disruptions when support is removed.

Can GP users access these new features without migrating?

Unfortunately, no. Features like AI agents, native quality management, automated financial reporting, and expanded workflows are innovations specific to Business Central.

Will TMC host more webinars like this?

Yes. Based on the strong response to this webinar, TMC plans to continue hosting future Business Central Wave Release Highlights sessions. Stay connected to make sure you don’t miss the next one.