Business Central 29.0: What’s New in 2026 Release Wave 2 and How to Prepare

Business Central version 29.0 is now available for new environments, and it will reach existing online environments as an update over the coming months. It opens 2026 release wave 2 and brings roughly 80 new or improved capabilities, from a larger set of AI agents to an updated report design experience and deeper subcontracting support. 

The short answer for busy admins: if 29.0 is already selected as your next update, Microsoft schedules it automatically within a few days and sends a second notice with the date. If it is not selected, nothing is scheduled until you choose it in the admin center. Either way, the update period runs until February 2027. That is enough time to test properly, but not enough to ignore it. 

This guide covers what is new, what changes whether you opt in or not, and how to get ready. It draws on Microsoft’s official 29.0 release notes on Microsoft Learn (last updated October 1, 2026) and on the upgrade work we do with Business Central customers at Sarakadiya Inc. In our experience, late surprises rarely come from core features. They come from third-party extensions, integrations and customized report layouts, so we have pointed those out throughout. 

Planning your 29.0 update? 

Before your update date is set, ask us to review your environment for extension, integration and report risks. Talk to the Sarakadiya Inc team and start your 29.0 readiness review today. 

Business Central 29.0 at a Glance

If you only have a minute, this table covers the facts that shape your planning. 

How the 29.0 Update Reaches Your Environment

The mechanics are simple, but this is where surprises happen, so it is worth being precise. 

• New customers and new environments get 29.0 from day one. 
• Existing customers receive a notification when the update is available. An administrator can then schedule it for any date within the five-month update period. 
• If 29.0 is already set as the next update for an environment, it is scheduled automatically within a few days. You will receive another notification with the details, and you can reschedule or select a different version. 
• If 29.0 has not been selected, it will not be scheduled for you. You can still schedule it manually in the Business Central admin center. 

Treat the automatic scheduling notice as a deadline for your testing, not as a courtesy message. Once a date is on the calendar, the time to find a broken extension or integration is already running short.

Copilot and Agents: The Biggest Shift in This Release

Microsoft lists nine items under Copilot and agents, and most of them serve one goal: making agents something a finance or operations team can supervise day to day. 

What is new 

• Copilot chat experience (public preview), a conversational way to work with Business Central. 
• Better purchase order matching in the Payables Agent (generally available). 
• Easier management of agent permissions. 
• A dedicated task pane that gathers tasks from all agents in one place. 
• The ability to review agent-generated content directly on the pages where it lands, plus review notifications on lists. 
• Updates to the agent user interface, and avatars that show who created or modified a record. 
• Data queries through the MCP Server (generally available), which opens Business Central data to compatible AI tools. 

Expense Agent updates (public preview) 

The Expense Agent also gains a long list of additions, all in public preview: date ranges and vehicle types in mileage calculations, AI-driven approvals, VAT and withholding tax calculation from expense reports, stronger duplicate prevention, more countries and languages, and an option to use only assigned projects in the web app. If your team still processes expenses by hand, this is a good candidate for a sandbox pilot. 

Our practical advice: pick one process, such as payables matching, and agree the review rules before you switch anything on. Agents are far easier to trust when the checkpoints are defined in advance.  

Reporting and Document Layouts

Reporting gets the longest list in this release, with 14 items. For many customers it will be the most visible change in daily work, because it touches invoices, quotes, statements and financial reports. 

• An updated Word add-in for designing document reports, with support for report themes, reusable header and footer layouts, and conditional visibility. 
• Report themes that let you brand document reports consistently. 
• Lifecycle control for all report layouts. 
• Automated report outputs, and the ability to run multiple financial reports into a single PDF. 
• Less complex report datasets. 
• G/L account usage tracing in finance reports, and financial report changes that are now always logged. 
• Bookmarks for list views and analysis tabs, and system audit fields in analysis mode and in profiles. 

The new document report experience ships as an optional feature and is disabled by default. That is good news: you can pilot it on a few layouts, compare the output with your current documents, and move over when you are ready. If you rely on heavily customized sales documents, start there. 

Supply Chain, Finance and Shopify Updates

Supply chain: subcontracting leads the way 

Manufacturers and distributors get six improvements, and subcontracting is the clear theme. 

• Easier setup and exploration of subcontracting scenarios. 
• Subcontracting instructions that carry through into purchase orders. 
• Inventory put-aways and picks that now work with subcontracting. 
• Direct transfer orders that can be posted from warehouse-enabled locations. 
• Less manual work in quality tests and inspections. 
• More efficient handling of manufacturing documents and capacity calendars.

Finance, tax and e-documents 

Finance teams working across several countries will notice a set of tax and compliance additions. Most are in public preview, so evaluate them before you roll them out. 

• Multiple excise duties per item (public preview). 
• Withholding tax on employee transactions (public preview). 
• Vendor-specific number series for self-billing invoices (public preview). 
• EDI document exchange through E-Documents (public preview). 
• Accelerated depreciation methods for fixed assets, available as a new optional feature. 

Shopify, sustainability and everyday usability 

Five generally available Shopify updates strengthen the connector: more control over sales document creation for orders and returns, connections that stay current, B2B companies, catalogs and pricing, processing of order changes, exchanges and refunds, and synchronized tariff numbers and origin values. Online sellers who manage wholesale and retail in one store will feel this most. 

Six Sustainability Management updates extend carbon tracking. You can estimate emissions in Service Management, track them for fixed assets and through item journals, use formulas in purchase documents, reverse Sustainability Ledger entries, and apply a specific calculation method when item tracking is enabled. Small usability gains round out the release: image previews in the web client, recently searched items in Tell Me, and recently used values in lookups. 

Platform, Admin and Developer Updates

Several changes work quietly in the background, and they matter most for IT teams and partners. 

• An improved data model for table extensions, which Microsoft says enables faster data loading. 
• Administrators can turn SIFT indexes on or off, and Open in Excel usage can now be monitored with telemetry. 
• New Dataverse fields can be mapped in Business Central, which helps Power Platform scenarios. 

Developers get more than 20 updates. The main themes are AI-assisted development (an AL MCP server, agent-based debugging and session profiling), automation (running AL tests from the command line and in CI/CD pipelines, and tracking compiler diagnostics in builds), and language improvements such as indexes that span a base table and its extensions, default implementations for interfaces, and Page Scripting reaching general availability. 

If you run extensions from several vendors, now is the time to check compatibility. We covered a similar situation in our guide to migrating from OPplus to Continia Banking, where timing against Business Central versions shaped the whole plan. existing operational challenges. For instance, Microsoft has published a customer story describing Sage Freight’s improvement in close time of 33% with Business Central. This is an individual customer result, not a guaranteed outcome or a benchmark for every organization. 

Mandatory Changes and Your 29.0 Readiness Checklist

Some features that were previously switchable in Feature Management become mandatory in 29.0. Check these first, because they apply whether or not you want them: 

• Disable SOAP web services on Microsoft UI pages. Any integration that still calls those pages through SOAP needs review. 
• UI support for masking sensitive data. 
• The manual flushing method without requiring a pick. If your shop floor relies on manual flushing, confirm in a test environment how your process behaves. 
• Default values for financial reports. 
• New communication texts for reminder terms. 
• Per Activity Code VAT settlements in Italy (Italy localization only). 

For on-premises customers, the base application no longer includes several objects that were marked obsolete in earlier versions. Custom code or extensions that still reference them must be updated before the upgrade. 

Your readiness checklist 

1. Confirm your status. Check in the admin center whether 29.0 is your selected next update and when it is scheduled. 
2. Create a sandbox. Test on a copy of production data, not on assumptions. 
3. Inventory your integrations. Look for SOAP calls to UI pages, then test each API and web service connection. 
4. Check every extension. Ask each vendor, including Continia and other ISVs, whether their app supports 29.0. 
5. Review custom reports and layouts. Decide whether to pilot the new document report experience now or later. 
6. Define agent rules. Before enabling any agent, decide who reviews its work and what permissions it gets. 
7. Brief your users. Cover the visible changes: new report options, the task pane, and recent items in lookups. 
8. On-premises only: verify you are on version 25 or later, and clean up obsolete object references.

How Sarakadiya Inc Can Help You Upgrade with Confidence

Upgrades go smoothly when someone has already tested the awkward parts. Sarakadiya Inc works with Business Central customers on update readiness, extension and integration testing, report layout migration and AI agent rollout. 

• Not sure whether 29.0 is scheduled for your environment? We will help you check. 
• Running third-party extensions or custom reports? We will test them in a sandbox before your date arrives. 
• Curious about agents? We will help you choose a first process and set the review rules. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

• Business Central 29.0 starts 2026 release wave 2 and is live for new environments today. 
• Existing environments update within a window that ends in February 2027, and 29.0 schedules itself only if it is your selected next update. 
• AI agents are the headline: better governance, review and permission tools make them practical for daily finance and operations work. 
• Reporting, subcontracting and Shopify get the biggest functional upgrades, while many tax features remain in public preview. 
• Several previously optional features are now mandatory, so check SOAP integrations and manual flushing first. 
• Start sandbox testing now and confirm extension compatibility before your scheduled date.