Applies to: Dynamics 365 Business Central online, update 29.0 (2026 release wave 2). Tested in a Business Central online sandbox, build 29.0.54011.55407 (platform 29.0.55365.0), in CRONUS International Ltd. (W1), October 2026.
CodeCore Dynamics LLC. 7 October 2026.
In Brief
- Business Central 29 lists 80 features, and all 10 finance and expense features among them are previews. The finance changes you can use on update day are in financial reporting and the Payables Agent.
- Microsoft's launch videos show 6 more capabilities that are on neither the list nor the roadmap, among them cross-environment master data management and Fabric mirroring.
- The Payables Agent will cost about $0.65 in Copilot Credits for a 3-line invoice. That is roughly 1 minute of a clerk paid $40 an hour. In our sandbox it saved 1.8 minutes on a 3-line invoice, but the VAT on its invoice was GBP 304.10 short of the PDF.
- Shopify customers will need 29 by 31 December. Integrations that call Microsoft pages over SOAP will stop at the update unless an administrator switches SOAP back on.
- Past public previews that ran longer than 6 weeks took a median of 2.2 months to become generally available. Agents took 4 to 8 months. Most 29.0 previews are promised within 3 months.
Microsoft's What's New page for Business Central 29 lists 80 features, and 12 of them are public previews. Development is the largest area with 22 features. That is 28 per cent of the list and the highest share in 6 waves. AI features also make up 28 per cent of the list. They made up 7 per cent of the first release plan of 2024.
All 10 Finance and Expense Agent features are previews, while all 14 reporting features are generally available.
Microsoft stopped publishing release plans in September 2026. Each plan marked the features an administrator had to switch on, and these made up 12 to 21 per cent of the features in each plan. The roadmap that replaced them has no such field.
The Development share in 29.0 is the highest since 2024.
What Is New for Finance
Learn says changes to financial report definitions are now logged automatically, with nothing to set up (Auditing and financial reporting). Change Log Activated on Change Log Setup was off in our new 29.0 environment, and an edit to a row definition did not appear in the log. We did not test the logging with the switch on. We would suggest checking that switch before relying on the log.
A new Packages action on Financial Reports prints several reports as 1 PDF. Each report in a package can have its own filters and dates (View a financial report). A package can also be scheduled to the Report Inbox. Our package of 4 reports for the current year printed as 1 PDF of 6 pages, which saves 3 separate runs at each month end.
4 financial reports in 1 package.
The package printed as 1 PDF of 6 pages.
The Chart of Accounts now has a view for accounts with no category. Reports generated from account categories, such as M-BALANCE, will not include an account that has none. The view listed our test account 99999 and 8 heading and total accounts, which have no category in the demo data.
Test account 99999 in the Uncategorized accounts view.
Row definitions also have a FactBox listing the accounts behind each totaling line. Where-Used List on a G/L account now covers report definitions as well. It found an account typed on its own into a totaling line. It missed accounts 2900 and 2910, which sit in the range 2900..2990 on the Cash line of the same report. The M-BALANCE lines we checked all use ranges. The FactBox would be the better check.
The FactBox lists the accounts behind the Assets line.
Where-Used List finds nothing for 2900, the start of the Cash range.
Document reports can now combine a body layout, a theme and a header/footer. The theme and header/footer can be set for all reports, for one company, for one report or for one layout. No theme is assigned in a new environment, and Microsoft says no shipped layout changes its default in this release. Documents will then look the same after the update until someone assigns a theme. Our environment had 4 themes, 12 header/footer layouts and 3 body layouts. Microsoft's launch video says more than 50 body layouts will arrive across 29.0 and 29.1.
The same report in 3 layouts.
Analysis mode can now show audit fields such as Created By. Image attachments also preview without downloading, and lookups have a Recent button that lists the records you used last.
The Recent view in a vendor lookup.
Payables Agent
The Payables Agent reads PDF invoices from a monitored mailbox and prepares purchase document drafts for review. Nothing is posted until a person finalises the draft and posts the invoice (Payables Agent overview). It uses 50 Copilot Credits for each invoice and 5 more for each invoice line (Manage consumption-based billing). Each credit costs $0.01 on pay-as-you-go. A pack of 25,000 credits costs $200, which is $0.008 per credit (Copilot Studio licensing).
We emailed 4 test invoices to the agent's mailbox in our sandbox. Each became a task that waited for us to confirm the email before the agent started. For a 3-line invoice from First Up Consultants, confirming the email, reviewing the draft and finalising it took 2 minutes 42 seconds. Entering the same invoice by hand took 4 minutes 29 seconds, by someone new to the company's chart of accounts. The agent saved 1.8 minutes, above the break-even of 1 minute at $40 an hour. A clerk who knows the accounts might enter it in 3 minutes 30 seconds, and the saving would then fall to 0.8 minutes.
The measured saving covers the agent's cost at all 3 staff costs, while the estimated saving covers it only at $60 an hour.
The agent finalised the invoice 3 minutes after the email was confirmed.
The agent copied the lines, quantities and prices correctly, and Doc. Amount Incl. VAT holds the PDF's total of GBP 2,415.50. The VAT on the lines it created comes to 179.00 against 483.10 on the PDF, so the invoice totals 2,111.40. The VAT on a line comes from its G/L account, and the agent chose accounts 8320 and 8430. We did not notice the difference during the review.
The lines match the PDF, while the VAT comes to 179.00 against 483.10.
Check Doc. Total Amounts on Purchases & Payables Setup stops an invoice from posting when its lines do not add up to Doc. Amount Incl. VAT and Doc. Amount VAT (Validate purchase amounts). The switch was off in our new environment, so invoice 107216 could have been posted with VAT that differs from the PDF. We would suggest switching it on before the agent goes live.
Check Doc. Total Amounts is off in a new environment.
After that invoice, the agent stopped because it had used up its AI quota. The other 3 invoices will wait until the quota resets on 1 November. We found no page in Business Central that showed the credits each invoice used.
The other 3 invoices wait for the quota to reset on 1 November.
The agent now also matches on Line Amount and Expected Receipt Date. This should help with service lines, where quantity alone cannot tell the lines apart. Receipt on Invoice can also be set on the vendor card and will then apply to new orders (Payables Agent setup).
Receipt on Invoice set to Automatic on the vendor card.
Not on the List
Microsoft's launch videos for this release show these capabilities. None is on the 29.0 What's New page or the roadmap (checked 6 October 2026).
| Capability | What it does | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-environment master data management | Subsidiaries in other environments of the tenant pull master data from headquarters | This release |
| Shopify tax matching (US) | AI assigns or creates tax areas on Shopify orders | Preview |
| EUDR certificate capture | Certificates on items and lots, printed on invoices | This release |
| Database export | Shown on the admin center operations page | This release |
| Production-like sandbox | A sandbox copies the production database configuration for 72 hours | This release |
| Fabric mirroring | Chosen tables and companies copied into OneLake | Preview, likely 29.1 |
The last release plan promised 11 features for September or October 2026. 3 of them shipped in 28.x, and 7 have no release record yet. Learn still marks expense reports as preview. Accelerated depreciation ships as a switch in Feature Management that stays off, even in a new environment, until version 31.
Accelerated depreciation, off until version 31.
What Comes Next
Shopify's 31 December deadline falls 2 months before the update window closes.
29.1 is due in November. Microsoft's launch videos place Fabric mirroring in 29.1 as a public preview. New excise models and more composite layouts are also due in 29.1. Mirroring will copy chosen tables and companies into OneLake. Microsoft also plans single-company and multi-company versions of its 9 Power BI apps on top of it (Business Central Integration with Microsoft Fabric). The 29.0 build had no Fabric app yet.
23 features in the last 5 release plans spent more than 6 weeks in public preview. They took a median of 2.2 months to become generally available. The Payables Agent took 4.1 months to become generally available. The Sales Order Agent took 8.1 months, and excise taxes took 7.2 months.
Most 29.0 previews are promised faster than the agents before them.
The Expense Agent has been in preview since May 2026. A December release would put it at 7 months, in line with the agents before it. Multiple excise duties per item is promised within 3 months. The first excise feature took 7 months. We would treat January as the earliest date for it.
Before You Update
- The Shopify connector in 28 uses an API that Shopify retires on 31 December 2026. Shopify customers will therefore need 29 by then (feature details).
- Disable SOAP web services on Microsoft UI pages is on for all users from 29.0. Learn lists it as mandatory, but 29.0 still lets an administrator set it to None until SOAP on Microsoft pages is removed in version 30.
- Masking sensitive data, the Manual flushing method without a pick, new reminder texts and default values for financial reports become mandatory. Auto-save on every field change becomes automatic in version 30, and multi-user posting becomes automatic in version 31.
- Page Scripting is now generally available for recording user tests. A sandbox can also copy the production database configuration for 72 hours to test performance.
- The update can be scheduled until February 2027. On-premises installations on version 24 or earlier will need to move to 25 first.
The SOAP switch, on for all users and still editable.
Sources
- What's new in update 29.0
- Feature details for update 29.0
- AI at Work roadmap, Business Central
- Release plan, 2026 release wave 1
- Optional features that are now mandatory
- Payables Agent setup
- Validate purchase amounts
- Manage consumption-based billing
- What's New in Business Central 2026 Release Wave 2, launch playlist
On Method
Feature counts come from the 29.0 What's New page, the AI at Work roadmap on 1 and 6 October 2026, and every Business Central release plan since 2024. A feature counts as AI when its area or title mentions Copilot, agent, AI or MCP. Preview lengths count features with both dates released and more than 6 weeks apart. Version months assume a minor update every month except April and October.
This article was assisted by Claude (Anthropic).
About Author
Dean Fachrie is a Functional Analyst at CodeCore Dynamics LLC, working on Microsoft Dynamics 365 architecture and enterprise system design.
Planning the update to Business Central 29, or deciding which of its previews to wait for?
We help finance and operations teams test each update in a sandbox, check integrations and switches before the date, and set up agents and reporting so that they pay for themselves.
Contact us or connect on LinkedIn for architecture reviews.
Top comments (0)