Business Central April 2026 Release
Version 28 Release OverviewPrepared by ERP Efficiency ExpertsOverview
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central version 28 represents the 2026 release wave 1 update, generally available beginning April 2026. The release continues Microsoft’s investment in AI-powered agents, finance and reporting, e-commerce, supply chain, and developer productivity. The release wave runs in two parts: Wave 1 (version 28.x) covers monthly updates from April 2026 through September 2026, and Wave 2 (version 29) is planned for delivery from October 2026 through March 2027.
Wave 1 — Currently Available (Version 28, April – September 2026)
The features below are available in the Wave 1 release of version 28 or are scheduled to land in monthly updates during the wave window. Some items remain in preview and may carry feature-management toggles. Confirm availability for each customer environment before promising functionality in production.
AI, Copilot, and Agents
● Payables Agent — Receives vendor invoices via a monitored mailbox and posts them automatically. Up to 50 invoices per month are included at no additional charge; pricing beyond that allowance is to be confirmed with Microsoft. Behavior with PO-related invoices is still being validated and should be tested before broad rollout.
● MCP Server (Model Context Protocol) — Preview in Wave 1; exposes Business Central data to AI clients such as Copilot Studio. Enables agents to read BC data for use cases like monthly compliance checks and security-risk audits. Listed in Feature Management in 28.0 (enabled for all users) and expected to be removed from Feature Management in a later update as it becomes mandatory.
● Custom agents in BC — Customers and partners can design agents directly inside Business Central or build agent projects in Visual Studio Code. Copilot Studio can also be used to connect to Business Central.
● Agent task management — Dedicated task pane to manage tasks across all agents, on-page review of agent-generated content, controls to stop active tasks for a selected agent, and an Agent Consumption Overview for monitoring AI usage.
● AI evaluation tooling — Tools to evaluate AI behavior against larger datasets are part of the wave’s developer story (BC-Bench and related evaluation harnesses).
Finance, Tax, and Compliance
● Withholding taxes and excise taxes — Native support for posting withholding-tax entries and running periodic withholding-tax settlements. New plastic and sugar-tax calculations support environmental and product-based levies.
● Self-billing invoices — Generate invoices on behalf of vendors for self-billing scenarios.
● Original VAT date editing — Authorized users can edit the Original VAT Date on posted VAT entries; related tables (purchase invoices, credit memos, VAT entries, journals, control reports) update accordingly, with confirmation prompts and validations.
● IRS 1099 submission — Defects in the 1099 submission flow have been corrected in this wave.
Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Quality
● Quality Management — Built-in, end-to-end quality checks across manufacturing and supply chain. Define standards, track inspections, and manage non-conformities inside BC rather than in spreadsheets or external systems.
● Subcontracting enhancements — Improvements to the subcontracting flow for outside-processing scenarios.
● Drop shipment from sales orders — Create purchase orders directly from sales orders and post the SO and PO in either sequence. Resolves longstanding sequencing constraints in the drop-ship process.
● Approval workflows for supply-chain journals and worksheets — Formal approval workflows extended to key supply-chain journals and worksheets.
● Planning without SKUs — Run planning at the item level even when stockkeeping units are not maintained.
● Description 2 across planning and routing — Description 2 field exposed on planning, routing, production-order creation, and related pages for richer item context.
E-commerce and Shopify Connector
● Shopify API uplift — Connector now uses the Shopify API released January 2026, including the new inventorySetQuantities mutation for on-hand quantity sync. Customers on the October 2025 connector should upgrade before June 30, 2026.
● Variant images: store pictures per item variant for color/size differentiation
● Custom Collections support
● Unit cost sync alongside price sync
Reporting and Document Output
● Word add-in for layouts — Updated Word add-in with an enhanced UX for the data picker, search across data fields, tooltips on table fields, layout statuses (only approved layouts shown to users), and a configurable default language in Company Information.
● OnPreRendering trigger — New trigger lets developers add attachments or apply protection (e.g., password or read-only) to generated documents before rendering.
● PDF attachments — Native support for PDF attachments on generated documents. Reference: aka.ms/bctech.
● Customer/Item Sales reports in Word — Customer Sales and Item Sales reports can now be authored as Word layouts, with some remaining limitations versus RDLC.
● Direct-to-Excel report output — Selected reports now print directly to Excel without an intermediate format.
● Send posted shipments and return receipts by email — Aligns the experience with posted invoices and credit memos; supports Send by Email, standard Send, and Attach as PDF, with the Attachment part now available on additional pages.
● Trial Balance Excel performance — Performance improvements to Trial Balance-related Excel reports.
Administration, Storage, and Migration
● External storage for document attachments — Document attachments can be stored outside the BC database. Reduces database growth and supports customer storage governance policies, with no customization required.
● Permissions Overview page — New page to audit user and group permissions across apps in a single view.
● Custom cloud migrations — Expanded support for partner-driven custom cloud migration scenarios.
● Performance tuning and built-in indexes — Built-in index recommendations and platform performance work shipped in the wave; security auditing capabilities also expanded.
Developer and AL Productivity
● Semantic search across data and metadata for faster object/field discovery
● Download symbols from a NuGet feed for modern build pipelines
● Run AL objects and open record references using fully qualified names (namespaces)
● Run AL tests directly from Visual Studio Code
● Troubleshooting MCP Server for AL
● BC-Bench for evaluating AL coding agents
● Developer documentation: aka.ms/bcdeveloper
Brand Refresh
Version 28 introduces a refreshed Business Central logo as part of Microsoft’s broader visual update, signaling the platform’s evolution toward more integrated and AI-powered experiences.
Wave 2 — Planned Features (Version 29, October 2026 – March 2027)
Wave 2 corresponds to Dynamics 365 2026 release wave 2 and Business Central version 29. Microsoft’s official wave 2 plan typically becomes available in mid-July, with general availability beginning in October 2026 and monthly updates running through March 2027. The items below are previewed or signaled but not yet generally available; treat dates as approximate and subject to Microsoft’s release policy.
Approximate Timing
● Release plan publication — Mid-July 2026 (typical cadence).
● General availability — October 2026, delivered through monthly updates 29.0 through 29.5.
● Wave window — October 2026 through March 2027.
Planned and Previewed Features
● Expense Management (general availability) — Expense management entered preview in May 2026 during Wave 1; full GA is expected in Wave 2. Includes a mobile app that lets users capture receipts directly from their phone camera.
● MCP Server enhancements (28.1+ and beyond) — Microsoft is expected to mature the MCP server during Wave 1 monthly updates and bring additional capabilities into Wave 2 as the feature exits preview.
● Real Copilot in BC — Microsoft signaled at Directions NA that a more deeply integrated Copilot experience is “coming soon.” Expected to land or expand during Wave 2.
● Document reporting evolution — Continued investment in letting end users (not developers) design layout and content for any document in Word. Microsoft is also working on a report designer where users can pick fields, with nested repeaters under consideration. Wave 2 is expected to continue reducing RDLC usage in the base application.
● Project plans and Gantt charts — Microsoft has previewed enhanced project planning, including a planning worksheet and Gantt-style visualization for the Projects module. Targeted for Wave 2 delivery.
● Posting groups setup improvements — Streamlined setup experience for posting groups was previewed and is expected to be refined further in Wave 2.
● Analysis improvements — Additional improvements to in-product analysis and ad-hoc reporting are expected to continue through Wave 2.
Open Questions to Track
The following items were raised at Directions NA but remain unconfirmed by Microsoft. EEE will monitor the official Wave 2 release plan when it publishes and update clients as details become available.
● Pricing for Payables Agent invoices beyond the 50-per-month included allowance
● Whether the Payables Agent will fully support PO-related invoice matching
● Final scope and licensing for “Real Copilot in BC”
● Confirmed GA timing for Expense Management
Next Steps for EEE Clients
EEE recommends the following to prepare for version 28 and the upcoming Wave 2:
● Review the Wave 1 mandatory feature list and validate sandbox environments before scheduling production updates (admins have a 5-month window ending August 31, 2026).
● Audit on-premises deployments — version 24 or earlier must upgrade to version 25 before moving to version 28.
● Test extensions, custom reports, and integrations against version 28 sandboxes; pay particular attention to RDLC layouts that may benefit from Word migration.
● Plan for Shopify Connector uptake before June 30, 2026 if currently on the October 2025 connector.
● Identify candidate processes for Payables Agent and other AI agents, and prepare governance for MCP-based AI access to BC data.
● Schedule a Wave 2 readiness review with EEE once Microsoft publishes the official 2026 release wave 2 plan.
Sources: Microsoft Learn (Business Central 2026 release wave 1 plan and update 28.0 release notes), Directions NA 2025 session notes, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 release planner. Feature timing is subject to Microsoft’s release policy and may change.