Business Central 2025 release wave 2

Business Central 2025 release wave 2: Key updates and enhancements

With the release of Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP 2025 release wave 2, Microsoft has delivered a set of updates, enhancements, and new features scheduled between October 2025 and March 2026. These changes span AI-driven assistance, workflow automation, reporting, compliance, and integration capabilities. In this blog, we’ll walk through the key updates shaping how organizations use Business Central to streamline operations and make better decisions.

Copilot & AI-driven enhancements

In the Business Central 2025 release wave 2, Microsoft expands Dynamics 365 Copilot and AI-driven features across the application to streamline decision-making, automate tasks, and provide clearer insights directly within the ERP workspace. These updates build on earlier AI investments and give users more control over how intelligent agents interact with data.

• Add instructions for AI agents: Users can now review and refine how Copilot agents execute their tasks. Through the new Additional Instructions field in the task pane, you can guide an agent if it’s blocked or needs clarification. This keeps humans in the loop while ensuring that automation continues efficiently.
• Estimate gas emissions with Copilot: When working in sustainability journals, Copilot can estimate greenhouse-gas emissions based on entered descriptions or parameters and adjust emission factors for future reporting. This reduces manual calculation time and improves accuracy in ESG tracking.
• Find pages and reports faster with advanced Tell Me search: The enhanced Tell Me feature uses AI to understand search intent, not just exact keywords. It locates reports or pages even when you don’t remember their names, cutting the time spent navigating menus.
• Enhanced chat with Copilot: The Copilot chat pane now performs better, loads faster, and supports 20 additional languages. Users can resize the pane for a more flexible workspace, allowing smoother conversation-based assistance alongside real-time data.
• Autofill contact details with Copilot: Copilot can now search the web to suggest customer or vendor contact details such as address, phone, or email. This autofill reduces typing errors, speeds up record creation, and ensures consistent data quality.
• Enhanced analysis assist with Copilot: Users can now describe analyses in plain language, such as “show vendors by region sorted by purchase volume.” Copilot builds the view automatically, includes related fields, and provides performance feedback to speed up data exploration.
• Improved record summaries with Copilot: Copilot delivers concise summaries for customer records, orders, or transactions. The new version adds deeper insights on key pages, standardized currency display, and expanded language support, helping users grasp key information quickly.

Payables Agent updates

In Business Central 2025 release wave 2, Microsoft continues improving the Payables Agent to reduce manual effort in invoice processing and improve accuracy through AI. These updates make accounts payable workflows faster, smarter, and more transparent, allowing finance teams to maintain oversight while automating repetitive work.

• Automate payables processes with the Payables Agent: The Payables Agent captures vendor invoices from Microsoft 365 email, uses OCR to extract data, and creates purchase invoices automatically. It relies on purchase history and accounting policies to categorize expenses, reducing manual effort and errors.
• Get more contextual invoice drafts: The agent now understands invoice context more deeply, learning from past entries to improve draft accuracy. It recognizes subtle differences between similar invoices, suggesting the right G/L accounts and reducing the need for corrections.
• Match purchase invoices to orders: A new AI-powered 3-way matching feature links invoices, purchase orders, and receipts even when reference numbers are missing. This ensures more accurate reconciliation and less manual lookup across procurement documents.
• Prioritize invoice draft changes by confidence level: Each AI suggestion now includes a confidence score and reason. This transparency helps users focus their review where it’s most needed and improve the model’s future performance.
• Use Payables Agent in more countries and regions: Availability has expanded to Canada, Denmark, Germany, and Spain. Organizations in these markets can now benefit from automated invoice processing powered by AI within Business Central.

Sales Order Agent enhancements

Microsoft expands the Sales Order Agent’s capabilities in the 2025 release wave 2 to automate complex order handling, accelerate quote generation, and improve accuracy when processing customer inquiries. These updates help sales and service teams manage higher volumes of requests with less manual input and faster turnaround times.

• Handle more complex sales requests: The Sales Order Agent can now interpret unstructured or incomplete email inquiries, automatically extract details, and generate accurate quotes. It supports attachments like PDFs and images, reducing time spent on manual data entry.
• Support multiple ship-to addresses: When a customer specifies a particular delivery location, the agent automatically selects the correct ship-to address, eliminating follow-up clarification and ensuring accurate order fulfillment.
• Provide capable-to-promise responses: The agent can include items available for later delivery in availability responses. This feature uses built-in planning tools to suggest realistic delivery dates and improve customer satisfaction.
• Enable automatic email processing: The agent can start processing messages from trusted customers automatically without manual confirmation, streamlining order intake for repeat business relationships.
• Resume workflows with user input: Users can add natural language guidance mid-process when assisting the agent. It resumes from the point of interruption, applying user feedback immediately without restarting the workflow.
• Skip quote confirmation for recurring customers: With proper configuration, the agent can generate and convert quotes directly into sales orders for established customers, cutting down on approval delays and accelerating the order-to-cash cycle.
• Customize communication and processing limits: Administrators can add company-branded email signatures to agent messages and set daily processing limits for emails, maintaining control over workload distribution and brand consistency.

Shopify Connector improvements

In Business Central 2025 release wave 2, Microsoft introduces a series of updates to the Business Central Shopify Connector that enhance e-commerce performance, streamline synchronization, and improve visibility between online and back-office systems. These improvements focus on efficiency, internationalization, and data accuracy, giving merchants more control over how Shopify and Business Central interact.

• Updated Shopify API support: The connector now uses Shopify’s July 2025 API, ensuring compatibility with the latest features and improved stability, security, and performance for integrations.
• Bulk variant updates: Product variants are now created and updated in bulk rather than one by one, significantly reducing sync times and improving overall connector performance during large catalog updates.
• Cash rounding on POS transactions: For markets without small coin denominations, cash transactions in Shopify POS now automatically round to the nearest available denomination. The rounding adjustment is captured in Business Central, ensuring ledger accuracy.
• Weight export in sales invoices: When sales invoices are exported to Shopify, the system now includes item weights, allowing customers to view accurate shipment details within their Shopify account.
• New fulfillment statuses: Added fulfillment statuses like Scheduled and Request Declined give users better visibility into order progress directly from the Shopify Order page.
• Improved background synchronization: The renamed Run Syncs in Background option clarifies its purpose and lets users continue working while large data syncs complete in the background.
• Shopify Sync Payouts report: The renamed and updated report aligns terminology between Shopify Admin and Business Central, improving consistency and clarity for finance users.
• Archive processed orders: A new option lets businesses automatically archive fully processed Shopify orders. This keeps Shopify storefronts organized without disrupting integrations with other connected apps.
• Optional Business Central Fulfillment Service: Shopify no longer requires automatic registration of Business Central Fulfillment Service, giving administrators flexibility to enable it manually only when needed.

Electronic IRS 1099 form submission

In Business Central 2025 release wave 2, Microsoft adds direct integration with the IRS Information Returns Intake System (IRIS), allowing U.S. businesses to file 1099 forms electronically without leaving the application. This feature eliminates manual uploads, streamlines reporting, and ensures compliance with current IRS electronic filing standards. By connecting Business Central to the IRIS platform through secure API integrations, users can automatically submit 1099 data and track filing status in real time through the IRIS Transmission page.

The new process reduces administrative overhead and minimizes the risk of delays or data-entry errors. Finance teams can manage tax reporting from within Business Central, improving both accuracy and efficiency. This update not only simplifies annual compliance but also supports long-term digital transformation in financial operations. For organizations managing a large number of vendor payments, this capability in Business Central 2025 release wave 2 represents a practical step toward faster, more reliable tax submission workflows.

Financial management capabilities

The financial management capabilities in Business Central 2025 release wave 2 bring new flexibility, control, and automation to accounting and reporting workflows. These updates focus on simplifying everyday finance tasks, supporting compliance, and improving accuracy across ledgers and tax calculations.

• Alternative posting groups for employees – Controllers can now define and assign alternative posting groups for employees, allowing payroll and expense transactions to post to different G/L accounts. This flexibility ensures that travel, reimbursements, or special project expenses are recorded correctly without manual reclassification.
• Automatic creation of multiple fixed asset cards – When posting a purchase invoice that includes bulk asset purchases, Business Central can now generate multiple fixed asset cards automatically. This saves time and guarantees accurate tracking for high-volume acquisitions like equipment or IT hardware.
• Audit Trail report – The new Audit Trail report delivers a transparent record of all posted transactions, showing data from G/L Register and G/L Entry tables. This report supports audit readiness by giving finance teams and auditors clear traceability of every accounting entry.
• Accounts Payable Role Center – A dedicated role center now centralizes all payables tasks and documents in one workspace. Users can manage invoices, e-documents, and payments from a single interface, improving visibility and reducing administrative overhead.
• Excise tax calculation – Businesses can now automate the calculation of excise taxes for regulated goods, using configurable models and rates for different products or jurisdictions. This feature ensures compliance with tax obligations while minimizing manual calculations and potential errors.

Power BI reporting & analytics improvements

In the latest release, Microsoft expands Power BI & Business Central integration with new and enhanced analytical apps across finance, projects, inventory, manufacturing, sales, and purchasing. Each app introduces deeper data models, modernized reports, and open-source flexibility, giving organizations the tools to monitor performance, identify trends, and make informed decisions faster.

• Power BI Projects app: Project managers can analyze profitability and performance with greater precision using improved semantic models and new Project Statistics measures. The updated visuals make it easier to compare budgets to usage, track invoices, and customize analytics through the app’s open-source model.
• Power BI Manufacturing app: Manufacturers gain clearer visibility into production efficiency and costs with new Gantt chart visuals, capacity unit standardization, and expanded KPIs such as Total Actual Cost. Updated Excel and Word layouts modernize traditional reports for flexible analysis.
• Power BI Finance app: Finance teams can now monitor late payments and aging trends with new reports like Late Payments (Receivables) and an updated Aged Receivables These enhancements highlight cashflow risk and support smarter forecasting with rolling 12-month views.
• Power BI Inventory app: The new Inventory Forecasting page predicts stock needs based on historical patterns, helping businesses reduce waste and prevent shortages. Flexible dimension filters allow for deeper, more tailored insights across product categories or regions.
• Power BI Sales app: Sales teams can explore new reports like Sales Forecasts and Sales by Projects, along with refreshed Excel-based layouts and enriched datasets. The app also merges data from projects and the general ledger to create unified, actionable sales analytics.
• Enhanced Power BI Purchasing app – Procurement professionals benefit from new pages such as Key Purchasing Influencers, Vendor Quality Analysis, and Purchase Forecast Report. The app’s redesigned semantic model, map visuals, and Pareto reporting offer a clearer view of vendor performance and purchasing risk.

Manufacturing and supply chain advancements

The Business Central 2025 release wave 2 update delivers greater visibility, control, and efficiency across manufacturing & supply chain operations. New features strengthen production oversight, improve quality management, and simplify personalization to align workflows with each organization’s needs.

• Improved sales and purchase postings: Business Central now sorts document lines by type before posting, rather than only by line number. This change enhances concurrency in inventory posting and reduces deadlocks when multiple sessions run at the same time.
• Expanded page personalization options: Users can now add more fields and columns—such as Statistics Group, Allow Multiple Posting Groups, and Price Calculation Method—to pages like the Item, Vendor, and Customer Cards. This flexibility helps teams surface the information most relevant to their roles without custom development.
• Subcontracting in production processes: A new framework supports end-to-end subcontracting workflows, including raw material transfers, flexible pricing, and finished goods receipts. Businesses can now manage external vendors as part of production with full visibility and item tracking.
• Quality management for incoming goods: A new Quality Management extension allows companies to define quality parameters, set test plans, and apply quarantine procedures. Users can perform checks at various stages—such as purchase receipt, production output, or assembly—to ensure compliance and consistent product standards.
• Default settings for consumption calculations: Manufacturers can set a default method for the Calculate Consumption report in the Manufacturing Setup. This reduces repetitive setup and ensures consistency when calculating material consumption across production journals.

Sustainability and ESG reporting

The Business Central 2025 release wave 2 update strengthens sustainability management by expanding support for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. New tools simplify data collection, automate emissions tracking, and align reporting with global standards like CSRD, ESRS, and the Digital Product Passport. These capabilities help businesses move beyond compliance, toward measurable progress on sustainability goals.

• Integrated ESG reporting: Businesses can now connect Business Central data directly to the Project ESG Reporting app for end-to-end ESG compliance. This integration eliminates duplicate data entry and supports multiple standards, including CSRD and BRSR, providing a single source for sustainability metrics.
• Scope 3 value chain automation: Expanded automation now calculates and tracks indirect (Scope 3) emissions across purchasing, assembly, transfers, and projects. These calculations use CO₂e values to capture full value chain impact and prevent double-counting within sustainability ledgers.
• CSRD and ESRS taxonomy setup: Built-in taxonomies for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) simplify data aggregation. Users can configure and export structured data to meet EU reporting requirements or generate CSRD preparation reports directly.
• Digital Product Passport support: New sustainability fields on the Item Card help companies report on recyclability, materials, and environmental impact, meeting upcoming EU product transparency mandates and supporting circular economy initiatives.
• CBAM and EPR compliance tools: Features for the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) automate calculations for carbon-related costs and recycling fees. These tools help manufacturers and importers comply with EU environmental regulations while improving cost accuracy and traceability.

User experience improvements

The Business Central 2025 release wave 2 updates refines the overall user experience by improving workspace flexibility and reinforcing data privacy. These improvements focus on usability, visibility, and control, making it easier for users to stay productive while protecting sensitive business information.

• Concealed text fields for sensitive data: A new Concealed field type masks confidential information on-screen, such as financial details or personal identifiers. Users can toggle visibility with a reveal button, ensuring privacy in shared environments while maintaining full audit and role-based access controls.
• Adjustable side panes: Users can now resize the Copilot, Help, and Page Scripting panes by dragging the divider between panels. The panes remember your preferred width, reflow content smoothly, and can be reset with a double-click, offering a more adaptable and efficient workspace layout.

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 2 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 Dynamics Business Central consulting 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.