Business Central
Ina Rogalev
6. May 2026
Since the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics Business Central a little over eight years ago, support for Dynamics NAV / Navision installations has steadily decreased. Extended support for the latest official version, Dynamics NAV 2018, ends on January 11, 2028. The availability of partner extensions has also been significantly limited since then. This is hardly surprising, given that there are now a full 17 release versions between Dynamics NAV 2018 (internal version number v11.0) and the current version of Business Central v28, along with Business Central’s newer and more modern architecture.
The announcement from Microsoft therefore comes as no great surprise: the official and final end for Dynamics NAV / Navision on April 30, 2031.
This decision means that, effective immediately:
In principle, the existing purchase license can continue to be used. However, from a licensing perspective, it effectively becomes a “dead” license: Dynamics NAV / Navision will not stop working, but it can no longer be upgraded. In addition, you lose the right to a free license upgrade to Business Central.
Customers who use Dynamics NAV under a rental license will be affected much more severely by this change: If the subscription cannot be renewed after April 30, 2031, the right to use Navision will also end when the existing license period expires.
As things stand now, developer licenses for partners will also begin to expire as of that date.
Current requirements are already repeatedly pushing aging Dynamics NAV/Navision systems—which are no longer part of the regular update cycle—to their limits. These include, for example:
This required constant adjustments or the use of third-party systems.
The end of the ability to extend Dynamics NAV / Navision licenses further complicates future customizations. Existing objects may need to be cleared out first. In some cases, new employees may not be able to access the system if no additional licenses can be added.
Microsoft’s decision therefore means that Dynamics NAV/Navision customers need to address the issue of upgrading as soon as possible. Not because a switch must be made today, but to ensure that they are not forced into a corner tomorrow.
When planning the next steps, two fundamental questions arise: How should Business Central be licensed and deployed in the future? How should existing processes, customizations, and data be migrated?
“On-premises” means that Business Central is not provided by Microsoft as an online service. For the purposes of classification as on-premises, it does not matter whether the system is run on your own server, on a hosting provider’s infrastructure, or on infrastructure in Microsoft Azure. Anything that is not Business Central Online is on-premises.
Microsoft has discontinued the sale of Business Central on-premises perpetual licenses to new customers as of April 1, 2025. Existing Dynamics NAV/Navision customers with a perpetual license and an active Enhancement Plan are expressly exempt from this and may still upgrade their existing license to Business Central until April 30, 2031.
As part of their active Enhancement Plan, these customers have the corresponding upgrade rights to Business Central without having to purchase a new Business Central license. The costs for the technical and business migration are separate from this.
You can switch to Business Central SaaS at any time. It’s important to note that when you switch, your current Enhancement Plan or license volume will not be carried over. However, Microsoft frequently offers promotions for switching to SaaS.
In addition to organizational planning, the timing of the Dynamics NAV/Navision license renewal also plays a role when switching to SaaS.
Depending on the scenario, SaaS licenses and Dual Use Rights can allow on-premises and SaaS to be operated in parallel for a limited time.
When calculating the effective costs of SaaS, it’s important to keep in mind that the license includes not only Business Central but also the entire infrastructure and its maintenance by Microsoft.
In addition to licensing and deployment considerations, the transition from Dynamics NAV/Navision to Business Central raises the question of how to handle existing data, customizations, and processes.
While upgrading the on-premises license is free as part of an active Enhancement Plan, or the switch to SaaS can be discounted through ongoing Microsoft promotions, the actual migration incurs varying costs depending on the approach taken.
Generally, there are three distinct approaches:
New Start and Clean Start are based on the same fundamental principle: The Dynamics NAV/Navision system, which has evolved over the years, is not simply migrated one-to-one to Business Central. Instead, the processes are reevaluated and rebuilt based on the capabilities Business Central offers today.
Especially in older Dynamics NAV / Navision installations, many requirements were implemented through custom programming because the corresponding functions were not available in the standard version at the time.
Business Central has evolved significantly since then. Features that previously had to be custom-developed are now, in some cases, part of the standard system or can be implemented using commercially available extensions.
Therefore, whether it’s a new installation and a clean start , a process analysis should be an integral part of the project. For existing processes, the following should be reviewed:
The older a Dynamics NAV/Navision installation is and the more extensive the customizations that have accumulated over time, the more important it is not to transfer them to Business Central without first reviewing them.
New Start and Clean Start thus offer more than just the opportunity to technically replace Dynamics NAV / Navision. The necessary migration can also be used to further develop the company’s digitalization strategy and increase its level of digital maturity.
For example, this can involve:
In older Dynamics NAV / Navision installations, some of these capabilities could only be implemented with significant development effort.
This aspect can also be relevant when it comes to financing the project. Investments that go beyond a simple replacement purchase and represent a genuine step toward digitalization may, under certain conditions, be eligible for support through public funding programs.
A transition from Dynamics NAV/Navision to Business Central—which is necessary in any case—should therefore not be viewed solely through the lens of the question:
“How do we replace our existing ERP system?”
But also:
“Which processes can we improve and make more digital with the new ERP system?”
In this way, a necessary system migration can become a digital transformation project that may also meet the requirements for relevant funding programs.
In the case of a New Start , you start with a new Business Central environment without the historical transaction data from Dynamics NAV / Navision.
Required master data, open items, and opening balances are either transferred or recreated at the time of the migration.
This makes the timing of the migration particularly important. If Business Central is used as the primary financial accounting system—especially in the case of a mid-year migration—it is essential to determine which data is required for accounting as well as for monthly and annual financial statements.
Depending on organizational and accounting requirements, a migration at the start of a fiscal year may therefore offer advantages.
The advantage of a New Start lies in the complete separation from the previous system:
The Clean Start takes the same approach to processes and customizations as the New Start. Existing customizations are removed, and the required functions are rebuilt based on the current Business Central standard.
The main difference lies in the historical data.
With the Clean Start , the standard data from the previous Dynamics NAV/Navision database that can be migrated is transferred to Business Central. Customizations and their business logic, however, are not transferred.
Data from former custom tables or fields may still exist technically, but without a corresponding new implementation, it cannot be automatically accessed via Business Central forms, reports, or functions.
In simple terms, a clean start can therefore be described as a “New Start” with a history .
The main advantage is that historical financial, sales, and master data—insofar as they are part of the standard migration—remain directly available in Business Central.
This also reduces the dependence of the conversion date on the fiscal year. Historical data does not have to be provided exclusively through opening balances or a separate legacy system.
Both approaches allow for a fresh start from a technical standpoint and the revision of existing processes. The main difference lies in how history is handled:
This makes the Clean Start particularly useful when you want to make a fresh start in a specific area but still need direct access to your history in the new Business Central.
The third option is the Full Upgrade. In this case, it’s not just the Dynamics NAV/Navision standard that is migrated to Business Central; the customizations and the program code developed for them are also migrated to the current Business Central architecture.
The fundamental goal here is to preserve the existing functionality—and thus the existing processes—as completely as possible.
This is precisely where a key difference lies compared to the New Start and Clean Start.
Even with a New Start or Clean Start , abandoning previous customizations does not mean that no further individual developments will be necessary. After analyzing future processes, there may still be requirements that are not covered by either the Business Central standard or available extensions. These functions must then be developed from scratch.
The difference lies rather in the starting point of the analysis:
New Start and Clean Start: First, the business process is examined. What should the process look like in the future, and which of Business Central’s current capabilities can be used to implement it? Only when the standard and available extensions are insufficient is custom development planned.
Full Upgrade: The functionality already exists as program code in the legacy system. If it is to be fundamentally reevaluated, one must first understand what the existing code represents and why it was originally developed.
This can be particularly time-consuming when dealing with older and highly customized Dynamics NAV / Navision systems. Documentation is not always complete or up-to-date, and the actual business logic is sometimes embedded in program code that has been modified over many years.
If you do not simply want to adopt such a function, you must first extract the business requirement—or the underlying business process—from the existing technical implementation. You can then determine whether this process can be better modeled today using the Business Central standard, an extension, or a new custom development.
This additional step can make a complete process analysis significantly more time-consuming during a full upgrade.
For the full upgrade , there are essentially two approaches in practice:
Retain Existing Functionality
The existing functionality is technically migrated to Business Central. The scope of the analysis is limited to the technical considerations required for the upgrade. As a result, the existing process—and possibly its weaknesses—are carried over.
Re-evaluate Existing Functionality
The existing functionality is first analyzed from both a business and technical perspective. The underlying process is reconstructed and then evaluated against the current capabilities of Business Central.
This opens up the same opportunities for process optimization as with a New or clean start, but can result in significant additional analysis effort, especially when dealing with complex legacy code.
A Full Upgradetherefore by no means precludes a process analysis. However, a conscious decision must be made regarding which functions warrant this analysis and which existing processes should be adopted unchanged.
An analysis is particularly useful in cases where:
The latter is not uncommon in large Dynamics NAV/Navision systems that have undergone extensive customization over many years. If customizations were not properly integrated into the standard system at the time or were repeatedly expanded across multiple versions, Business Central may require extensive refactoring anyway.
At that point, at the very latest, it should be assessed whether it makes sense to rebuild the existing implementation or to redesign the underlying process.
The full upgrade is therefore not automatically the option that bypasses process analysis. Rather, it allows you to decide on a case-by-case basis which processes should be carried over unchanged and for which functions the migration should be used as an opportunity for redesign.
The migration from Dynamics NAV / Navision doesn’t have to happen today—but it should be planned today.
The best licensing strategy, whether Business Central Online or On-Premises is the better solution, and whether a New Start, Clean Start, or Full Upgrade is appropriate for the migration depend heavily on your existing installation and your company’s requirements.
Please feel free to contact us. We’ll advise you on both the licensing options and timelines as well as the appropriate migration strategy, and we’ll support you in planning your transition from Dynamics NAV / Navision to Business Central.
MARKUS WEILAND
project manager
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