- The Payables Agent reads vendor invoices from an inbox and drafts the purchase invoice, while the Sales Order Agent turns an emailed order into a draft sales order, both for a human to approve.
- The agents follow a 'draft, then approve' pattern and never post to your ledger on their own, which is what makes them safe to adopt.
- The 2026 Agent Designer lets you prototype and adjust an agent inside Business Central, turning customization into a configuration conversation instead of a six-month build.
- Built-in expense management lets employees submit grouped receipts inside Business Central, potentially replacing a standalone expense app you currently pay for.
Microsoft ships two big Business Central updates a year, one in spring and one in fall, and the release notes read like a phone book. Most of it won't change your week. A few things in the 2025 and 2026 waves genuinely will, especially if you run finance for a small or mid-sized business. Here's the plain-English version of what's worth your attention, and why.
The headline: agents that do the busywork, with a person still approving
The biggest shift across these releases is the arrival of AI "agents" in Business Central, Microsoft's cloud ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. An agent isn't a chatbot you ask questions. It's a worker that watches for something to do and drafts the work for a person to approve. Two are worth knowing now:
- The Payables Agent watches an inbox for vendor invoices, reads them, and drafts the purchase invoice for your AP clerk to review and post.
- The Sales Order Agent does the same on the sell side, turning an emailed order into a draft sales order.
Why it matters: these target the highest-volume, lowest-judgment data entry in the building. For a small finance team, that's often where the overtime and the errors live. Nobody loses control, because the agent drafts and a human approves. You're deleting the typing, not the oversight.
The pattern to watch for across all of these is "draft, then approve." The agents don't post to your ledger on their own. That design is what makes them safe to adopt, and it's the right question to ask of any AI feature: does a person still sign off?
Build your own agent, without a six-month project
The 2026 wave added an Agent Designer, which lets you prototype and adjust an agent inside Business Central instead of commissioning a custom development cycle. For most SMBs that won't be a do-it-yourself project, but it changes the economics: tailoring an agent to your process becomes a configuration conversation, not a big custom build. If you have a repetitive, rules-based task the shipped agents don't cover, it's now worth asking about.
The quieter wins your accountant will actually feel
| Update | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| Built-in expense management | Employees group receipts into one report and submit it; finance approves and tracks reimbursement without leaving Business Central or buying a separate expense tool |
| Smarter invoice-to-PO matching | A single invoice line can now match multiple purchase-order and receipt lines, which fixes a real headache for anyone with partial receipts and consolidated vendor invoices |
| E-document and e-invoicing | Built-in support for structured electronic invoices, which matters if you sell internationally or into customers and governments that increasingly require them |
The expense-management piece is the sleeper. Plenty of SMBs pay for a standalone expense app; if you're on Business Central, that may now be a line item you can drop.
What to actually do about it
You don't need to chase every release. A practical move once or twice a year: have someone who knows your processes look at the new wave and ask one question, "does anything here replace a manual task or a tool we pay for?" Most waves, the answer is one or two things, and acting on those is where the value is.
If you're on Business Central and want a short read on which recent updates are worth turning on for your business specifically, that's exactly the kind of review we like to do. Let's talk it through.