Business Central 2025 release wave 1

Explore the 2025 release wave 1 of Dynamics 365 Business Central

Microsoft has published the release plans for the 2025 release wave 1 of Business Central, outlining the upcoming updates, new features, and enhancements. This release focuses on improving usability, expanding integration capabilities, and refining financial and operational workflows. In this blog, we break down the key changes users can expect in this wave and how they may impact Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) environments.

Copilot & AI enhancements

Microsoft continues to expand AI-driven capabilities in D365 BC with new Copilot features aimed at improving efficiency, automation, and decision-making. The Business Central 2025 release wave 1 introduces several enhancements that help users interact with data, automate processes, and streamline daily operations.

• Chat with Copilot to learn how to use installed add-on apps: Users can now ask Copilot about features from installed ISV add-ons, such as new pages, fields, and business processes. Copilot provides guidance based on documentation from the installed apps, making it easier for users to learn and utilize third-party functionality.
• Summarize with Copilot: A new summary FactBox appears on card and document pages, providing key insights in a few bullet points. Copilot analyzes data across related pages and statistics to highlight important information, helping users quickly understand records without extensive manual review.
• Use Sales Order Agent to automate sales order-taking: The new Sales Order Agent streamlines order processing by automating key steps, reducing workload, and improving efficiency. This AI-driven tool focuses user attention on critical tasks, helping businesses process orders faster while minimizing manual input.
• Suggest gas emissions in sustainability journals with Copilot: Copilot can now estimate greenhouse gas emissions based on input parameters and adjust emission factors for future calculations. This enhancement improves accuracy in sustainability reporting and reduces the effort needed to track and manage environmental impact.
• Enhance purchase order line matching with Copilot: Copilot improves invoice-to-purchase-order matching by incorporating item references and G/L mappings. If discrepancies exist, users can create purchase order lines directly from incoming e-documents, reducing manual reconciliation time and improving accuracy.
• Autofill fields with Copilot: When entering or editing records, Copilot suggests values for editable fields based on company data, frequently used inputs, and AI-driven predictions. Users can review and accept or modify these suggestions, reducing data entry time and minimizing errors.
• Automate payables processes with the Payables Agent: The Payables Agent automates accounts payable tasks by sourcing vendor invoices from email and SharePoint, then processing them using OCR technology. It creates purchase invoices based on company policies and past transactions, helping businesses streamline financial operations and reduce manual workload.

Business Central and Field Service integration improvements

Microsoft is strengthening the integration between Business Central and Dynamics 365 Field Service in the 2025 release wave 1, improving how service operations, inventory, and financial processes connect across both platforms. These updates aim to streamline service management, enhance inventory tracking, and improve work order efficiency.

• Integrate Field Service with service management: D365 BC now integrates more deeply with D365 Field Service for managing service orders, consumption, and invoicing. When enabled, service order types, service lines, and service item lines sync between the two systems. Work order updates, including used products and services, reflect in Business Central as consumption and invoices. Businesses can also track allocated inventory from work orders in Field Service as part of Business Central’s inventory planning.
• View item availability in Field Service work orders: Technicians and dispatchers can now check real-time item availability from Business Central warehouses and technician trucks directly within Field Service work orders. This integration helps optimize scheduling, reduce travel costs, and improve service efficiency. Business Central locations sync with Field Service warehouses, allowing seamless tracking of stock levels between the two platforms.

Use the latest Shopify connector

The latest update to the Business Central and Shopify integration improves performance, enhances order management, and aligns with Shopify’s evolving API framework. These enhancements streamline product synchronization, improve tax handling, and provide better control over order processing.

• Bulk updates of product variants: The Shopify connector now creates and updates product variants in bulk rather than individually. This change improves performance by reducing the number of API calls required when adding or modifying product listings.
• Handling the Price Including Tax setting: Business Central now pulls tax-inclusive pricing information directly from Shopify instead of using the Price Including VAT toggle. This ensures accurate tax calculations for merchants selling in multiple regions with different tax rules.
• More capabilities for filtering orders: Order synchronization now supports additional filters, including Ship-to, Bill-to, and Sell-to Countries, as well as Tax Amount. These filters help businesses selling across EU member states where VAT may not apply due to reverse charges.
• Sorting in the Shopify Orders to Import page: The Shopify Orders to Import page now sorts orders with the newest ones at the top. This makes it easier to troubleshoot import issues and manually process specific orders when needed.
• Deprecation of REST resources: Shopify has deprecated REST endpoints for country and province data, shifting to GraphQL. The Shopify connector now retrieves country information differently while maintaining functionality for country-based shipping and tax setup.
• Other improvements: After importing a Shopify order, Business Central can now automatically create a sales document, either as an invoice or sales order, based on fulfillment status. Additionally, a new setting allows businesses to control whether Business Central order numbers sync back to Shopify as attributes.
• Changes that became mandatory: Bulk operations for the Shopify connector are now mandatory, affecting price synchronization. Businesses can monitor sync status in the Shopify Bulk Operations page to track updates.

Power Platform connector enhancements

Microsoft has expanded the capabilities of the Power Platform connector for Business Central in the 2025 release wave 1, allowing users to automate environment management tasks. By leveraging the Business Central Admin Center API, businesses can streamline operations, reduce manual effort, and minimize errors when managing their Business Central environments.

• Automate environment creation: Users can now automate the creation of new Business Central environments, reducing setup time and ensuring consistency across deployments.
• Copy environments with ease: The connector enables automated environment duplication, allowing businesses to quickly replicate existing setups for testing, development, or expansion purposes.
• Schedule environment updates: Organizations can now automate update scheduling, ensuring environments remain up to date without requiring manual intervention.
• Integrate environments with other systems: The connector supports integration with other business applications, improving data flow and enabling more efficient multi-system management.

Reporting & data analysis updates

Microsoft is enhancing financial reporting, analytics, and report customization in Business Central. The 2025 release wave 1 introduces new tools for financial and manufacturing reporting, improved templates, and better metadata handling for Word layouts. These updates make it easier to generate, customize, and analyze reports while improving accessibility and accuracy.

• Use enhanced financial reporting capabilities: Business Central’s financial reporting tool now allows users to hide empty rows, format negative numbers in accounting style, and print in portrait mode. Report owners can add descriptions, write introduction and closing paragraphs, and use saved Excel templates. Administrators gain new documentation and telemetry tools to monitor report usage and permissions.
• Use enhanced analytics for manufacturing: Manufacturing analytics now include new KPIs and Power BI scenarios, along with customizable Excel layouts for various reports. Legacy RDLC layouts are being phased out, and enriched datasets offer deeper insights. Teaching tips and comprehensive documentation help users transition to the new reporting structure.
• Use new templates for financial reporting: New financial reporting templates provide improved balance and net change comparisons across multiple years and quarters. The North American localization introduces two audit lead schedule reports for balance sheets and income statements, making internal and external audits more efficient.
• Access report and request metadata in Word layouts: Word layouts now support metadata access, similar to Excel layouts, eliminating the need to encode this information in report datasets. Report metadata includes object IDs and names, while request metadata captures details like company name, user name, and request date/time.

Introducing a new Power BI app for subscription billing

Microsoft has introduced a new Power BI app for analyzing subscription billing data in the 2025 release wave 1 of Business Central. This app provides detailed insights into key subscription metrics, helping businesses monitor revenue trends, optimize sales strategies, and manage cash flow. With built-in reports and KPIs, users can track monthly recurring revenue, net profit, contract value, and customer deferrals to make data-driven decisions.

• Access prebuilt Power BI reports for subscription billing: The new Power BI app includes reports on subscription revenue, contract value, customer trends, and salesperson performance. These reports help businesses track revenue growth and identify areas for improvement.
• Monitor key subscription KPIs: Built-in KPIs such as Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), Net Monthly Recurring Profit, and Revenue Forecast provide real-time insights into subscription performance. Businesses can also track churn, upgrades, and downgrades to assess customer retention.
• Optimize cash flow with customer and vendor deferrals: The app helps businesses track deferred revenue and expenses, improving financial planning and cash flow management. These insights ensure better alignment between revenue recognition and actual billing cycles.
• Analyze revenue trends across different dimensions: Reports break down revenue by item, customer, and salesperson, allowing businesses to refine pricing strategies and optimize sales efforts. The year-over-year comparison reports provide a clear view of growth and profitability trends.

Supply chain management improvements

The 2025 release wave 1 of Business Central includes improvements to supply chain management capabilities, improving flexibility in production planning, cost accuracy, and order processing. These enhancements streamline manufacturing workflows, optimize inventory management, and provide greater control over production order handling.

• Enable overpicking for production orders: Warehouses can now pick more raw materials than initially required for production orders. This allows users to pick full pallets or boxes, consume what is needed, and return the excess to inventory. Overpicked components can also be posted as additional consumption, improving flexibility in manufacturing.
• Achieve greater accuracy in manufacturing costing: Standard costs for produced items now account for stockkeeping units (SKUs) and specific locations, improving cost accuracy. Non-inventory items can also be included in cost calculations, giving businesses a more complete view of production costs.
• Track and rebill quantity changes in subscriptions: Subscription billing now supports rebilling when a quantity changes after an invoice is issued. Business Central automatically detects these changes and adjusts the next billing cycle accordingly, ensuring accurate charges for medium- and long-term subscriptions.
• Combine service shipments on a single service invoice: Businesses can now consolidate multiple uninvoiced service shipments into a single invoice. This improves invoicing efficiency and aligns service billing processes with standard sales invoicing flows.
• Reschedule production orders within a safety lead time: A new manual scheduling feature allows users to adjust production start and due dates while maintaining a buffer for unexpected delays. Safety lead times can be configured at the stockkeeping unit, item, or system level to ensure production remains on schedule.
• Cancel production orders that have consumption: Users can now reverse production order transactions, returning unused raw materials and correcting reported operations. This helps maintain accurate inventory, cost, and financial records when production changes or errors occur.

Sustainability updates

Microsoft is expanding Business Central’s sustainability tracking capabilities with new tools for emissions monitoring, enhanced analytics, and water and waste management. These updates help businesses better assess their environmental impact, meet compliance requirements, and integrate sustainability data with financial records.

• Specify default sustainability values for various entities: Users can now configure default sustainability accounts and emissions data for general ledger accounts, items, resources, work centers, and machine centers. These predefined values ensure consistent tracking of inbound emissions and streamline sustainability reporting.
• Use enhanced analytics for sustainability: The updated Power BI Sustainability app introduces new KPIs, including emissions by category and scope, carbon reduction progress, and water and waste analysis. Social and governance metrics, such as workforce demographics and qualifications, are also now available.
• Capture sustainability data with general journals: Businesses can now record greenhouse gas emissions alongside financial transactions using general journals. This integration allows for better tracking of high-emission activities and enhances sustainability decision-making. The data is easily accessible through ledger entries and posted journal pages.
• Use water and waste management with sustainability: New sustainability tracking features now include water and waste intensity measurements. Users can log withdrawn, discharged, recycled, and disposed water data, supporting compliance with Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requirements. Sustainability goals now extend to water and waste management.

Improvements to user experience

In the 2025 release wave 1 of Business Central, Microsoft implemented improvements to the web client with new user interface updates, better screen optimization, and enhanced document handling. These enhancements provide a more flexible, efficient, and visually refined experience for users working in Business Central.

• Preview PDF attachments directly in the web client: Users can now open and preview PDF attachments within the Business Central web client without downloading them. This streamlines document handling and improves productivity by allowing users to stay within their workflow.
• Optimize screen space usage on the web: The web client now adjusts to better utilize large screens, external monitors, and different viewing modes. Improvements include optimized default page sizes, better FactBox pane animations, and improved proportions between field labels and values.
• Adjust the FactBox pane width: Users can now resize the FactBox pane to view more details without affecting the main page content. The adjusted width is remembered per page and user session, and double-clicking the divider resets it to the default size.
• Use user interface enhancements for better experience: Several UI refinements improve usability, including a refreshed FactBox layout, updated Power BI embedded experience, and improved Role Explorer and Report Explorer functionality. Additional enhancements include a search icon in the environment picker, clearer menu dividers, and an updated Copilot chat icon.

Want to learn more?

The updates, new features, and enhancements highlighted above are just a few of the many improvements coming in the 2025 release wave 1 for Business Central. These new features and capabilities are available today, allowing businesses to start leveraging them immediately. However, to fully utilize, optimize, and maximize the return on investment (ROI) of Business Central, working with a trusted Microsoft partner is highly recommended.

The right Business Central partner can guide users through the upgrade process, help configure new features to align with business needs, and provide training to ensure teams get the most out of the system. From implementation and integration to ongoing support and performance optimization, an experienced partner ensures a smooth transition and helps businesses unlock the full potential of Business Central’s latest innovations.