What is Business Central?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning () platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It connects your financial management, supply chain, manufacturing, project accounting and customer operations within a single integrated system.
Key Facts about Tres Tria
What Business Central Does
Business Central provides a broad set of capabilities across financial management, operations and reporting. Here is an overview of the core modules available.
Financial Management
General ledger, accounts receivable and payable, bank reconciliation, fixed assets, multi-currency, budgets and financial reporting. The foundation of every Business Central implementation.
Supply Chain
Purchase orders, sales orders, inventory management, warehouse operations, item tracking with serial and lot numbers, and demand planning.
Manufacturing
Production orders, Bills of Materials, routings, capacity planning, shop floor recording and standard cost management. Available in the Premium edition.
Project Accounting
Projects with task hierarchies, budget vs. actual tracking, Work in Progress (WIP) calculations, time and materials billing, and resource management.
Service Management
Service orders, contracts, planned and reactive maintenance, resource allocation and service item tracking. Available in the Premium edition.
Reporting and Analytics
Built-in financial reports, account schedules, Analysis Mode for ad-hoc data exploration, Copilot-assisted reporting, Power BI integration, data export to Excel and customisable dashboards for role-based insight.
Sustainability Management
Track greenhouse gas emissions across Scope 1, 2 and 3, record water usage and waste intensity, set scorecards and goals, manage carbon credits and generate reports aligned to ESG frameworks. Available on both Essentials and Premium.
Under the Surface
For those who want to understand the technical architecture and platform capabilities in more detail.
Business Central runs on Microsoft Azure, hosted in data centres across multiple regions worldwide. Organisations select their preferred Azure region at provisioning to ensure British data residency, with additional regions available across Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. The platform is Software as a Service (), meaning Microsoft manages the infrastructure, security patches and platform updates automatically.
Updates are released twice annually (Wave 1 in April, Wave 2 in October), with minor updates released monthly. Each environment supports up to 80GB of database storage with the ability to purchase additional capacity. Three sandbox environments are included per production environment, allowing you to test configurations and extensions before applying them to production.
Business Central is built on a proprietary development language called (Application Language). Extensions developed in AL are compiled as .app packages and deployed through extension management or Microsoft AppSource. The platform follows an extension-only model, meaning all customisation is delivered through extensions rather than direct code modification.
This architecture ensures that customisations survive platform updates without regression. Tres Tria's Astral 365 suite demonstrates this approach with multiple published AppSource extensions that integrate seamlessly with the base application.
Business Central exposes RESTful APIs for integration with external systems. Standard API pages cover customers, vendors, items, sales orders, purchase orders, general ledger entries and more. Custom API pages can be created for specific integration requirements.
Power Automate connectors provide no-code integration with over 500 third-party services. Power BI connectors enable direct reporting from Business Central data without the need for a separate data warehouse for many use cases.
Essentials includes financial management, supply chain, project accounting, warehouse management, assembly management and CRM integration. Premium adds the Manufacturing module (production orders, BOMs, capacity planning) and the Service Management module (service orders, contracts, planned maintenance).
Licences are per-user, per-month, billed by Microsoft. Full users get comprehensive access. Team Member licences provide limited, read-heavy access at a lower cost point. Tres Tria can advise on the optimal licence mix for your organisation based on actual user roles and access requirements.
Business Central supports multi-currency transactions, multiple languages and country-specific localisations. For organisations with international operations, each entity can have its own company within a shared Business Central environment, or separate environments per country with intercompany transaction automation.
Tres Tria has delivered multi-entity configurations spanning the United Kingdom, Europe, North America and beyond. Country-specific localisations handle local tax requirements, statutory reporting and banking formats automatically.
Essentials vs Premium
Business Central is available in two editions. Your industry typically determines which edition you need. Most distribution, professional services, ecommerce, telecoms and MSP implementations use Essentials. Manufacturing and facilities management implementations typically require Premium.
| Capability | Essentials | Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Financial Management | ||
| Supply Chain | ||
| Project Accounting | ||
| Warehouse Management | ||
| Assembly Management | ||
| Manufacturing | ||
| Service Management |
Which edition for your sector?
Essentials is usually sufficient for:
Distribution, professional services, ecommerce, telecommunications, managed service providers. These sectors use financial management, supply chain, project accounting and warehouse management without needing the manufacturing or service management modules. Light manufacturing requirements can also be managed under the Essentials license through Assembly.
Premium is typically required for:
Manufacturing (production orders, BOMs, capacity planning) and facilities management (service orders, planned preventive maintenance, contract management). These sectors need the additional modules that Premium provides.
Licence Costs (per user, per month, billed by Microsoft)
| Essentials | £73.80 |
| Premium | £101.20 |
| Team Member | £7.44 |
Team Member licences provide read access and basic data entry. Ideal for staff who approve purchase orders, enter timesheets or view reports. Prices shown are Microsoft's published list prices and may vary.
See How Business Central Fits Your Industry
Select your sector to explore industry-specific configuration, or use our pricing page to see guide prices for your implementation.