ERP Upgrades · NAV → Business Central

Upgrade Dynamics NAV to Business Central — with AI on your side.

Dynamics NAV 2016 reaches end of extended support on April 14, 2026, and the remaining NAV versions follow soon after. Business Central is NAV's direct successor — the same DNA, now in the cloud with Microsoft's AI stack built in. Qixas moves you across with zero data loss, and uses AI to accelerate the upgrade itself.

Book a NAV Upgrade Assessment See How AI Helps

Microsoft

Solutions Partner

20+ yrs

of NAV & Business Central experience

Apr 14, 2026

NAV 2016 extended support ends

Zero

data loss guarantee

Sound familiar?

Still Running Dynamics NAV? The Clock Is Now Real

This isn't a soft 'you should upgrade eventually.' Microsoft has published the end-of-support dates, and every month on legacy NAV adds risk that has nothing to do with features.

Support is ending on a fixed date

Dynamics NAV 2016 reaches end of extended support on April 14, 2026, and the remaining NAV versions reach end-of-life shortly thereafter. After that you're running your financial system of record outside Microsoft's supported lifecycle.

No more security updates

Once extended support ends, security patches stop. For a system holding customer, employee, supplier, and transaction data, that's a compliance and audit exposure, not just an IT inconvenience.

The NAV talent pool is shrinking

Most partners and developers have moved on. Finding someone who still speaks C/AL and understands your version gets harder and more expensive every year you wait.

Years of aging customizations

Undocumented C/AL modifications have piled up since go-live. Nobody fully remembers why half of them exist — and they quietly block every upgrade you consider.

On-prem cost and fragility

Servers to patch, backups to babysit, and a version that never updates itself. The total cost of standing still is higher than teams realize until something breaks.

AI is passing you by

Copilot, natural-language reporting, and AI agents simply don't exist in NAV. Every competitor that moves to Business Central gets an AI layer you structurally cannot add to your current system.

The platform

Business Central Is NAV's Successor — Plus an AI Layer NAV Can Never Have

Business Central isn't a rip-and-replace to a foreign platform. It's the same product lineage as Navision and Dynamics NAV, re-engineered for the cloud with a modern extension model and Microsoft's AI stack running through it. Your team keeps the concepts and workflows they know, and gains Copilot, the Power Platform, and Fabric-ready data on top. The upgrade preserves what works and retires what doesn't.

The Same Product DNA

General ledger, dimensions, posting logic, and the roles your team already knows carry forward. This is an upgrade of a familiar system, not a leap to something unrecognizable.

Cloud With Continuous Updates

No more version freezes. Business Central updates itself twice a year with no server to patch, so you never fall this far behind again.

Copilot Built In

Copilot drafts sales lines, reconciles bank statements, explains data, and answers questions in plain English — native capabilities that exist only from Business Central forward.

Modern Extensions, Not Bolted-On Code

AL extensions and AppSource apps replace fragile C/AL modifications, so future upgrades stay clean and low-risk instead of getting harder every year.

Power Platform & AI Agents

Once you're on Business Central, Power Automate, Power Apps, and custom Copilot agents can automate the manual work NAV forced your team to do by hand.

Fabric-Ready Data Foundation

Business Central data flows cleanly into Microsoft Fabric and Power BI, giving you a governed, AI-ready analytics platform NAV could never feed.

Core capabilities

How the Microsoft AI Stack Accelerates Your Upgrade

AI doesn't replace the discipline of a finance-grade migration — it makes each phase faster, more thorough, and less dependent on tribal knowledge. Here's where we put it to work.

AI-Assisted Assessment & Readiness

The first job is understanding exactly what you're upgrading from. We use AI code-analysis tooling to read your NAV objects far faster than a human ever could.

AI-scanned inventory of every C/AL object, customization, and integration point

Automated classification: now-standard in BC, convert to extension, or retire

Dependency mapping that surfaces hidden links between modifications

A realistic, evidence-based upgrade path instead of a guess

Findings a human consultant validates — AI accelerates, experts decide

Outcomes

What Upgrading Off NAV Delivers

The point isn't just to beat a deadline — it's to come out the other side on a supported, AI-ready platform that costs less to run.

Apr 2026

the deadline you get ahead of

NAV 2016 extended support ends April 14, 2026.

Zero

data loss at cutover

Full history preserved and provably reconciled.

Weeks

compressed by AI tooling

Code analysis and conversion that used to take months.

AI-ready

the day you go live

Copilot and Power Platform available from cutover on.

Why Qixas

Why Qixas for Your NAV Upgrade

A lot of firms will happily 'move you to the cloud.' Very few still genuinely understand the system you're leaving. Qixas has spent 20+ years inside Navision and Dynamics NAV — from the 3.x days through NAV 2018 — and we pair that depth with the modern Microsoft AI toolchain. That combination is what turns a risky, drawn-out NAV upgrade into a predictable, AI-accelerated one.

Deep, current NAV expertise — Navision 3.x through NAV 2018 and C/AL, so nothing about your source system is guesswork

Customization rationalization, not lift-and-shift — most clients eliminate 40–60% of legacy modifications instead of carrying debt forward

AI-accelerated delivery — GitHub Copilot and AI code analysis compress the assessment and conversion work that traditionally drags

Finance-led migration with reconciliation gates — balances, subledgers, and dimensions provably tie out before cutover

Parallel running with a real rollback path — we cut over around your quiet periods with a documented safety net

A Copilot-ready destination — we set up Business Central so your team can use Microsoft AI in daily work from day one

Client stories

NAV Upgrades, Completed With Zero Data Loss

Mid-market companies that moved off legacy Dynamics NAV onto Business Central with Qixas — history intact, business uninterrupted.

National distributor operations after upgrading from Dynamics NAV to Business Central

Zerodata loss at cutover

“The migration from NAV was seamless. Zero downtime, zero data loss — and the team was productive on Business Central almost immediately.”

COO

National Distributor

Retailer that modernized from Dynamics NAV to Business Central across its stores

70stores modernized

“We'd been stuck on an old NAV version for years because every upgrade looked terrifying. Qixas mapped every customization and got us onto Business Central without the drama.”

Finance Director

Health Food Retailer

NAV 2016 support ends April 14, 2026. Your options don't.

Book a NAV Upgrade Assessment

Keep reading

From the Dynamics Toolbox

NAV Upgrade

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions, Answered

When does Dynamics NAV actually reach end of support?

Dynamics NAV 2016 reaches end of extended support on April 14, 2026, and the remaining Dynamics NAV versions reach end-of-life shortly thereafter. After a version's end-of-support date, Microsoft stops issuing security updates and fixes, which means you'd be running your financial system of record outside the supported lifecycle. Because ERP holds sensitive customer, employee, supplier, and transaction data, most finance and IT leaders treat these dates as a hard deadline to plan around, not a suggestion.

Is Business Central really the same product as NAV?

Effectively, yes. Business Central is the direct successor to Dynamics NAV and Navision — the same product lineage, re-architected for the cloud with a modern extension model. Core concepts your team already knows (the general ledger, dimensions, posting routines, and roles) carry forward. That's why we call it an upgrade rather than a replacement: the destination is familiar, just modernized and with Microsoft's AI stack built in.

How does AI actually help with the upgrade?

In two ways. First, AI accelerates the upgrade work itself: AI code-analysis tools inventory and classify your C/AL customizations far faster than manual review, and GitHub Copilot speeds the conversion of that code into modern AL extensions. AI also assists data reconciliation by flagging anomalies and outliers before cutover. Second, moving to Business Central unlocks AI you can use every day — Copilot for bank reconciliation, sales-line suggestions, natural-language questions about your data, and custom AI agents. NAV structurally cannot offer any of this.

What happens to our NAV customizations?

We inventory every C/AL customization and categorize each one: now standard in Business Central, worth rebuilding as a modern AL extension, or safe to retire. Nothing is carried forward blindly. Most clients eliminate 40–60% of their old customizations in the process, which lowers cost, simplifies future upgrades, and reduces support risk. AI code analysis makes this inventory faster and more thorough than a manual audit.

How safe is our data during the migration?

Very. We run multiple trial migrations with automated, AI-assisted reconciliation so balances, subledgers, and dimensions provably tie out before anyone relies on the new system. We preserve full historical data — not just open balances — and you get a documented rollback plan, so cutover is reversible if anything looks wrong. This is treated as a controlled finance transition, not a bulk data copy.

Get Ahead of the NAV Deadline — With AI Working For You

Start with a NAV upgrade readiness assessment. We'll inventory your system with AI-assisted analysis, map every customization and add-on, and give you a realistic, week-by-week path to Business Central — with zero data loss and Copilot waiting on the other side.