Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1: A Feature-by-Feature Guide

Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1 covers every new capability Microsoft plans to ship between April 2026 and September 2026. The headline theme is the shift toward AI-driven ERP — but underneath the Copilot story is a long list of practical improvements to financials, e-invoicing, the developer experience, administration, and platform performance. This guide walks through what is actually landing, area by area, so you can decide what to turn on and when.

If you want the strategic view first, read our companion piece on Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1 AI trends. Below, we get into the specifics. Everything here is drawn from Microsoft’s official 2026 release wave 1 plan.

Copilot and Autonomous Agents

The biggest area of investment is agents — AI that does not just answer questions but completes multi-step work inside Business Central with human oversight. Building on earlier waves, Microsoft is extending agents to handle more complex, end-to-end processes.

• Payables Agent — automates accounts payable from start to finish: reading invoices, matching vendors and accounts, and preparing entries for approval so a person reviews rather than keys in.
• Copilot Chat — an assistive experience for finding records, comparing data, and summarizing, ready to use with no complex setup.
• Task-specific Copilot — features such as bank account reconciliation assistance that work out of the box.
• Custom AI for makers and pro developers — connect Business Central to the wider Microsoft AI cloud, including agents built in Copilot Studio using natural-language instructions.

Two important caveats: Copilot and agents are available only to Business Central online customers, and every Business Central license includes Copilot at no extra cost, though some agent scenarios are metered. Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles and enterprise-grade security, privacy, and compliance controls apply throughout.

Financial Management

Finance is where agents get real work first. This wave focuses on using AI to streamline data entry, automate routine tasks, and surface intelligent insights for decision-making.

• Agents assist with bookkeeping tasks based on previous patterns and your established business practices.
• Continued enhancements to tax management help you stay compliant with a range of international regulations.
• Ongoing updates keep pace with an evolving global financial landscape.

For finance teams under pressure to close faster and stay audit-ready, the direction is a leaner function that scales without adding headcount or complexity.

Electronic Documents (E-Invoicing and Beyond)

The e-documents framework removes manual data entry from the exchange of e-invoices and other business documents — improving accuracy, security, and compliance while lowering processing cost. The notable change this wave is breadth:

• Beyond e-invoices, the framework now supports more document types, including shipments and transfer shipments and other operational documents.
• Partners and organizations can extend electronic exchange to a wider range of business processes on a scalable, future-ready foundation.

If you operate in a region with e-invoicing mandates — or expect one — this is the framework to standardize on.

Governance and Administration

Administrators managing multiple environments get several meaningful controls this wave:

• Per-environment partner access — assign partner access to specific environments to simplify control and compliance.
• Customer-managed encryption keys — bring your own keys to strengthen data protection and meet privacy standards.
• Extended update windows — more flexibility to schedule upgrades around your business.
• Unified management of PTEs and Marketplace apps — a single interface for per-tenant extensions and Marketplace apps streamlines deployment across environments.
• IPv6 support — broader connectivity with continued security and reliability.

Developer Experience

The AL and extensibility story continues to mature, with features aimed at cleaner code and faster troubleshooting:

• Profile extension objects — customize user profiles without duplicating code, keeping code integrity intact.
• Add resources to extensions and access them from AL — simplifies data initialization and setup.
• Improved “Explore in Visual Studio Code” — seamless access to GitHub repositories so you can pull, inspect, or hotfix code versions even when IP protection is in place.
• Full-text search metadata on table fields — enables faster, more accurate data search.
• Public NuGet feed for Marketplace validation — run multiple Marketplace apps with downloadable symbols, with AL-Go for GitHub automating the work.
• Rule-based scheduling for performance profiling — background profiling pinpoints performance issues so you spend less time troubleshooting.

Service and Platform Performance

Under-the-hood investments in performance, stability, and resource governance mean fewer interruptions and a generally faster experience:

• Full-text search on lists, drill-downs, and look-ups — targets only relevant columns for quicker, more precise results, with the option to re-enable the previous search method when needed.
• Smarter job queue — keeps first-in, first-out order and adds a priority system in job queue categories so high-priority tasks run first.
• Reduced locking during concurrent warehouse postings — fewer bottlenecks in high-traffic environments.
• Automated performance testing in AL-Go for GitHub — catches performance regressions earlier in the development cycle.

Supply Chain and Manufacturing

For organizations running more complex production and delivery models, supply chain investments this wave center on two areas:

• Quality management — better tools to manage quality across production and delivery.
• Subcontracting — enhancements for managing outsourced production steps.

Ecommerce: Shopify Integration

The Shopify connector is refined again based on customer feedback, improving data flow and operational visibility across systems. You can manage planning, procurement, and product costs; control inventory across locations and item variants; and simplify pricing, discounts, and tax reporting — on both Shopify and Shopify Plus (with its B2B capabilities).

Reporting, Data Analysis, and Microsoft 365

Business Central’s reporting strategy is universal BI and analytics within the product experience — in-context, immersive content from first and third parties, with flexible self-service access. Alongside that, the deep Microsoft 365 integrations continue: attach quotes and invoices from Outlook, analyze any list in Excel and publish it back, collaborate on records in Teams, co-author documents via OneDrive, and build reports and email templates in Word. Power Platform integration — Power Automate templates and Copilot Studio agents connected to Business Central — rounds out ERP in the flow of work.

Sustainability Management

Sustainability capabilities keep expanding to match customer feedback and regulatory demand:

• Capture environmental data through sustainability journals and purchase documents; monitor emissions, water, and waste; and even purchase carbon credits directly in Business Central.
• Import emission factors via open APIs, and use Copilot to estimate a carbon footprint when factors are not yet available.
• Track progress with the Sustainability Role Center, baselines, targets, scorecards, and goal management.
• Report in line with the CSRD, and calculate data for CBAM and extended producer responsibility (EPR) compliance, including Scope 3 value-chain tracking.

Country and Regional Compliance

Every wave includes foundational updates that keep Business Central aligned with evolving legal, fiscal, and data-governance requirements — from tax schema adjustments to electronic invoicing mandates — plus extensible frameworks and guided setup that reduce the burden on IT and finance teams while keeping you audit-ready.

How to Prepare for 2026 Wave 1

A few practical steps make the difference between reacting to updates and getting value from them:

• Review the two feature buckets. Some features are enabled automatically for users; others must be turned on by an admin, maker, or analyst. Both deserve a look in a sandbox before they reach production.
• Test in a sandbox first. Validate agents, e-document changes, and performance features against your own data and extensions.
• Confirm you are online. Copilot and agents require Business Central online — another reason on-premises and NAV users should plan a move to Business Central Online.
• Map features to real problems. Not every capability moves the needle for every business. Prioritize the ones that address a bottleneck you actually have.

Want the full list of capabilities and target dates? Microsoft publishes it in the 2026 release wave 1 plan for Business Central.