Business Central 29 Is Live: What's GA, What's Still Preview, What Breaks and How to Upgrade

Business Central 29 — 2026 release wave 2 — became generally available on 1 October 2026. New online environments are now created on version 29, and existing environments start getting the update offer about a week after GA. From there, the clock runs: you have until February 2027 to schedule the update yourself, a one-month grace period in March, and after that Microsoft enforces it.

We published a feature walkthrough during the preview in September. This post is the other half: what Business Central 29 actually shipped as generally available versus still in preview, what it breaks, what it costs if you switch the agents on, and how to run the upgrade without a bad Monday morning.

Everything below was checked against Microsoft’s own documentation on 1–2 October 2026. Where Microsoft’s pages disagree with each other, I say so.

Business Central 29 at a Glance

One naming note, because it confuses people: Microsoft stopped publishing release plan documents in September 2026 and moved feature announcements to the AI at Work roadmap. That did not change the Business Central release rhythm. Business Central still ships a major version every April and October, and Microsoft still calls this one “2026 release wave 2”. What changed is where you read about it.

GA or Preview? What You Can Actually Rely On in Production

This is the distinction that matters most for planning, and most “what’s new” coverage blurs it. Microsoft’s 29.0 release notes tag every feature with an availability status. Public preview features are usable, but they come with supplemental terms of use, they can change, and I wouldn’t build a month-end process on one.

The pattern is clear. The operational features are GA — Payables Agent, MCP, warehouse, manufacturing, reporting, Shopify, sustainability. The finance-and-HR-adjacent AI features are not — the whole Expense Agent track and the three finance items are preview. If someone sells you the Expense Agent as finished in October 2026, they’re ahead of Microsoft.

Two features need a switch before you see them:

• Microsoft Copilot chat needs the Chat capability turned on in Copilot & agent capabilities, plus user permission.
• Accelerated depreciation (a wave 1 feature) arrives in 29.0 as a new optional Feature Management key — it’s off until you turn it on. The same goes for the New Document Report Experience.

What Breaks in Business Central 29

1. SOAP on Microsoft pages is gone — and the feature key with it

Since version 26, SOAP endpoints on Microsoft pages were blocked by default, with a Feature Management key to turn them back on. In 29.0 that key — Disable SOAP web services on Microsoft UI pages — becomes mandatory. There’s no switch left.

Be precise about the scope, because both under- and over-reacting cost money:

• Affected: any page from an app whose publisher is Microsoft, exposed as a SOAP web service. That’s the Base Application, the System Application and every first-party app — not only the “standard” pages you think of.
• Not affected: SOAP on codeunits, and SOAP on pages in your own extensions or ISV apps.
• When it bites: at the moment each environment updates to 29. For online customers that’s whatever date in the update window you (or Microsoft) pick. It isn’t one global switch-off date.
• The supported workaround: copy the Microsoft page into your own extension and publish that page instead.

And the trap: don’t “fix” a SOAP integration by moving it to OData on the same Microsoft page. Exposing Microsoft pages as OData endpoints is removed in version 30 (April 2027). Go to the REST API v2.0 or your own API pages and queries. The full playbook, including how to find what’s actually calling these endpoints through telemetry, is in our SOAP and OData migration guide.

2. The old Copilot chat is replaced, not supplemented

Microsoft Copilot replaces the previous Chat with Copilot from version 29. There’s no switching back. What users need to know:

• It’s read-only against Business Central data — it can find and show records, not change them.
• Business Central agents can’t be called from it. The Sales Order Agent, Payables Agent and any agent built on the Business Central agent framework are still used from their own experiences inside Business Central.
• Reaching into emails, meetings and files requires a Microsoft Copilot licence. Business Central data access works without one.

If your users relied on the old chat, tell them before the update — not after.

3. Six feature keys become mandatory

Feature Management keys that were optional become permanent in 29.0. Besides the SOAP key:

• ‘Manual’ flushing method without requiring pick
• Default values for financial reports
• New communication texts for reminder terms
• UI support for masking sensitive data
• Per-activity-code VAT settlements (Italy only)

If you deliberately kept any of these off, test the affected processes in a sandbox on 29 before production updates. The flushing and reminder-text changes in particular can surprise warehouse and credit-control teams.

4. Anything reading the database directly

The new table-extension data model (more on it below) changes how extension fields are physically stored. Anything that reads Business Central’s SQL tables directly — on-prem BI connectors, ETL jobs, home-grown reporting databases — and expects the old companion tables will break. AL code, APIs, queries and OData/API integrations are unaffected. This is mainly an on-premises risk, because SaaS customers can’t query the SQL database directly anyway.

5. Shopify: a hard date of 31 December 2026

If you run the Shopify Connector, your deadline is earlier than February. The connector shipped with the April 2026 release uses Shopify’s API 2026-01, which Shopify supports only until 31 December 2026. Version 29 moves the connector to the July 2026 API and to Shopify’s expiring access tokens. Shopify customers should be on 29 before the end of December — and after the update, check that the shop reconnects cleanly, because tokens now refresh automatically and an expired refresh window means reconnecting from the Shopify Shop Card.

6. On-premises specifics

• PowerShell 5 is no longer supported. The administration modules are PowerShell 7 script modules with a Microsoft.BusinessCentral prefix, in the server’s Admin folder. Update your deployment and maintenance scripts.
• Data-defined-only permission sets are gone. The UsePermissionSetsFromExtensions = false escape hatch no longer exists. If you still run on permission sets stored as data, convert them before upgrading.
• Upgrade path: directly from v25, v26, v27 or v28. Version 24 or earlier must step through v25 first.

Start Preparing for Version 30 Now

April 2027 is closer than it looks — especially because the end of the v29 update window runs straight into it. Microsoft has already announced for version 30:

• OData on Microsoft pages is removed — same logic as SOAP, same workaround (copy the page into your own app) or, better, API pages.
• Uploading per-tenant extensions from the Extension Management page goes away. Use the Business Central admin center or its API. If your deployment script or your partner still uploads PTEs from inside the environment, change it now.
• Peppol BIS 2.0/2.1 is removed in favour of BIS 3.0.
• The Finance reports API (beta) is removed — it’s already marked obsolete in 29.

The Table-Extension Change, Explained Properly

This is the most valuable change in 29 for the largest number of customers, and it’s worth getting the mechanism right.

• Before version 23, every table extension’s fields lived in their own companion table. A table extended by seven apps could need a seven-way join on every read.
• From version 23, all extensions’ fields for a table moved into one shared companion table — so a read needed at most one join.
• From version 29, Microsoft removes that last join: all fields on an AL table are stored in the same database table, base and extension alike.

Microsoft describes the result as “faster performance on all database operations that involve table extensions”. Two honest caveats:

• Since v23 the penalty was already a single join, so don’t expect a dramatic jump on a lightly customised tenant. The gain shows up on heavily extended tables — Item, Customer, Sales Line, Item Ledger Entry — that are read constantly.
• It’s a platform change with no opt-in, and Microsoft hasn’t published how long the storage conversion takes on very large tables. For big on-prem databases, time the upgrade on a copy of production first.

For developers it unlocks something new: from runtime 18.0, a table extension can define keys that combine base-table and extension fields. That’s real query performance for ISVs — with the limit that a key can’t include fields from a different table extension. And because base and extension fields now share one SQL table, the compiler warns (AL0914/AL0915) when a table’s total field count gets close to SQL Server’s column limits. Popular tables extended by many apps are where that bites.

What the Agents Cost: Honest Numbers

The Business Central licence doesn’t include agent usage. Payables Agent, Sales Order Agent and Expense Agent are billed in Copilot Credits through Copilot Studio — either prepaid credit packs or pay-as-you-go through an Azure subscription. Microsoft’s published consumption rates:

What that means in money, using Microsoft’s own worked examples and the list prices at the time of writing (pay-as-you-go $0.01 per credit; prepaid packs $200/month for 25,000 credits, about $0.008 per credit):

Three things people find out too late:

1. When credits run out, the agent stops. It doesn’t degrade, it doesn’t queue — the capability is unavailable until capacity is added. Set budgets and alerts, and decide who owns topping up.
2. Credits are shared across the tenant. By default, Business Central draws from the default Power Platform environment, where other Copilot Studio usage also lives. If you want production protected from sandbox testing, allocate capacity to a linked Power Platform environment per Business Central environment.
3. The new Copilot chat has no documented Business Central charge. The agents do. Don’t let the two get mixed up in a budget conversation.

Pricing changes; check Microsoft’s Copilot Studio pricing page before you commit a number to a budget.

The Upgrade Timeline: What to Do When

One detail that matters for rollback planning: once an environment has updated successfully, you can’t restore it to a version that’s in its grace or enforced period. Your safety net is the sandbox test, not a restore.

Who Needs to Be at the Table

The Upgrade, Phase by Phase

Phase 1 — Inventory (week 1)

Your role: list the processes that would hurt most if they broke: invoicing, payment runs, month-end, e-invoicing, warehouse shipping. What we handle: export the installed apps and PTEs with versions, list every published web service with Type = Page, and check the incoming web-service telemetry to see what’s actually called — published and used are different lists.

Phase 2 — Sandbox on 29 (weeks 1–2)

Your role: none yet. What we handle: copy production to a sandbox, schedule the update to 29 immediately (allowing it to run outside the update window), and read the result. Failed updates tell you exactly which app blocked them.

Phase 3 — Regression test (weeks 2–4)

Your role: key users run their real processes in the sandbox — post a sales order end to end, run a payment proposal, print the documents customers see, run the financial reports the board sees. What we handle: integration tests, Copilot chat and agent behaviour, and checking the mandatory feature keys against how you actually work.

Phase 4 — Fix and confirm (weeks 3–6)

Your role: sign off each process. What we handle: update or replace incompatible PTEs, chase ISVs for v29 builds, move Microsoft-page SOAP integrations to APIs, and adjust layouts if you adopt report themes.

Phase 5 — Production update (by end of January 2027)

Your role: choose the date — a quiet week, not month-end, not the week before a VAT return. What we handle: schedule inside your maintenance window, monitor the update, and run a smoke test the morning after.

Phase 6 — Turn things on deliberately (after go-live)

Your role: decide which new features you want. What we handle: switch on the GA features that pay back quickly (report packs, report themes, Payables Agent matching improvements, direct transfers), pilot preview features in a sandbox only, and set up agent credit budgets before any agent touches production.

For Companies in Romania

Business Central has no Microsoft localization for Romania. Microsoft lists Romania as a partner-localized country running on the W1 base application, with Romanian available as a platform translation and the application translation coming from partners. In practice that means:

• Your localization app is the biggest upgrade risk, not Microsoft’s features. e-Factura, SAF-T (D406), e-Transport, VAT returns and the Romanian chart of accounts all come from partner apps. Before you schedule production, confirm your localization provider has a version tested on 29. We cover what a compliant Romanian setup needs in our Romania compliance guide.
• Nothing in 29.0 is Romania-specific. The new EDI exchange in E-Documents (preview) is Peppol-based — it isn’t an ANAF e-Factura (RO_CIUS / SPV) connector.
• The Expense Agent added languages in 29 — Romanian isn’t one of them. Czech, Dutch, Finnish, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish were added; it does now cover all Business Central countries.
• Withholding tax on employee transactions and the self-billing number series are relevant to Romanian finance teams, but they’re preview in 29 and need checking against Romanian rules and your localization before anyone relies on them.

What Nobody Tells You

“Automatic update” isn’t the same as “safe update”. Microsoft’s compatibility checks catch apps that won’t compile. They don’t catch an integration that silently stops receiving data, or a report that prints a blank logo. Only your own processes, tested on your own data, catch those.

Most upgrade failures aren’t Microsoft’s code. In practice the blockers are usually a per-tenant extension nobody has touched in two years, or an AppSource app whose publisher hasn’t shipped a compatible build. Find out in October, not in March.

The preview label is doing real work. Twelve of the 80 features are preview, including every Expense Agent improvement. Preview features can change shape between versions. Pilot them; don’t redesign a process around them yet.

The v30 deadline starts inside the v29 window. If you spend the whole update window getting onto 29, your v30 work — OData on Microsoft pages, PTE deployment — starts with weeks, not months, to go.

Business Central 29 Upgrade Checklist

• Confirm who receives Business Central update notifications in the admin center
• Export test evidence from any preview sandbox before ~31 October 2026
• Copy production to a sandbox and update it to 29
• List installed AppSource apps and PTEs with versions; confirm v29-compatible builds — including your localization
• List every web service with Type = Page; check telemetry for what’s actually called
• Move SOAP integrations on Microsoft pages to the REST API or your own API pages — not to OData on Microsoft pages
• Check the six newly mandatory feature keys against your processes (flushing, reminders, financial report defaults)
• Shopify customers: update production to 29 before 31 December 2026 and check the shop reconnects
• On-prem: move scripts to PowerShell 7; convert data-defined permission sets
• On-prem: check BI and ETL jobs that read SQL tables directly
• Key users regression-test posting, payments, month-end, documents and reports in the sandbox
• Brief users on the new Microsoft Copilot chat (read-only, no agents from chat)
• Decide on agents: owner, monthly credit budget, prepaid or pay-as-you-go, capacity per environment
• Schedule production for a quiet week before the end of January 2027
• Smoke-test production the morning after the update
• Put the v30 items (OData on Microsoft pages, PTE upload, Peppol BIS 3) on the plan for Q1 2027

FAQ

When was Business Central 29 released?

Business Central 29 (2026 release wave 2) entered public preview in the first week of September 2026 and became generally available on 1 October 2026. New online environments are created on 29 from GA, and existing environments receive the update offer about a week after GA.

How long do I have to update to Business Central 29?

Online administrators can schedule the update on any date in the five-month update period, which Microsoft’s 29.0 release notes say ends in February 2027. March 2027 is a one-month grace period in which you can’t postpone, and from April 2027 Microsoft enforces the update and may uninstall extensions that block it (their data is kept).

Which Business Central 29 features are still in preview?

Twelve of the 80 features in Microsoft’s 29.0 list are public preview: the new Microsoft Copilot chat experience, all seven Expense Agent improvements, multiple excise duties per item, withholding tax on employee transactions, vendor-specific number series for self-billing invoices, and EDI document exchange in E-Documents. The other 68 are generally available.

Does Business Central 29 remove SOAP web services?

It removes the ability to expose pages from Microsoft-published apps as SOAP endpoints; the Feature Management key that re-enabled them becomes mandatory. SOAP on codeunits and on pages in your own or ISV extensions still works. The supported workaround is to copy the Microsoft page into your own extension. Don’t move these integrations to OData on Microsoft pages, because that’s removed in version 30 (April 2027).

Do Shopify customers have a different deadline?

Yes. The Shopify Connector in the April 2026 release relies on Shopify API 2026-01, which is supported only until 31 December 2026. Business Central 29 moves the connector to the July 2026 API, so companies using the Shopify Connector should update production to 29 before the end of December 2026 rather than waiting for the February 2027 end of the update period.

Is the new Copilot chat in Business Central 29 free?

Microsoft documents no Business Central charge for the Microsoft Copilot chat experience, which is a production-ready preview in version 29. It’s read-only against Business Central data and needs the Chat capability turned on. Access to emails, meetings and files requires a Microsoft Copilot licence. The Payables, Sales Order and Expense agents are billed separately in Copilot Credits.

How much do Business Central agents cost to run?

The Payables Agent uses 50 Copilot Credits per invoice plus 5 per line, the Expense Agent 50 per receipt, and the Sales Order Agent about 14 per typical request. At the pay-as-you-go list price of $0.01 per credit, 100 three-line vendor invoices a month cost about $65, and 100 sales order emails about $16.50. When credits run out, the agents stop until capacity is added.

Do I need to change anything for the new table-extension data model?

Not in AL code, APIs or integrations — the change is automatic and invisible at that level. On-premises customers should check BI or ETL tools that read the old companion tables directly in SQL, and time the upgrade on a copy of a large production database. Developers gain keys that combine base-table and extension fields from runtime 18.0.

Can I upgrade to Business Central 29 directly from an older version on-premises?

Yes from version 25, 26, 27 or 28. Deployments on version 24 or earlier must upgrade to version 25 first. On-premises upgrades to 29 also require PowerShell 7 for the administration modules, and data-defined-only permission sets are no longer supported.

Is there anything specific to Romania in Business Central 29?

No. Romania remains a partner-localized country on the W1 base application, so e-Factura, SAF-T and e-Transport come from partner apps. The most important step for Romanian companies is confirming that their localization provider has a version tested on Business Central 29 before production updates.

Sources

Checked on 1–2 October 2026:

• Microsoft Learn — What’s new in update 29.0 and 29.0 feature details
• Microsoft Learn — Update cycles
• Microsoft Learn — Deprecated features in the platform
• Microsoft Learn — Use Microsoft Copilot in Business Central (preview)
• Microsoft Learn — Manage consumption-based billing
• Microsoft Learn — Upgrading to Business Central 2026 release wave 2
• Microsoft Learn — Countries and translations
• Microsoft Learn — Table keys and the 2023 wave 2 note on table-extension storage
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 blog — One always-on roadmap (25 August 2026)

Planning your move to Business Central 29 — or worried about an integration, an extension or your Romanian localization? Book a call and we’ll run the sandbox upgrade with you before production. Or see how we handle support and upgrades.