Business Central 2026 release wave 2 — version 29, or “BC29” — arrives the first week of October 2026, and it’s a big one. The public preview is already live, and Microsoft’s official Update 29.0 feature list counts roughly 80 new features. This release is also a bit of history in the making: BC29 is the last release Microsoft will announce under its familiar twice-yearly wave model, which is giving way to the always-on AI at Work roadmap.
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
We’ve been hands-on with BC29 at Aisling Dynamics since the Early Access Preview opened on August 14 (Platform Build 29.0.53497.0 / Application Build 29.0.53512.0, confirmed by Microsoft MVP Yun Zhu). Here’s the complete picture, organized by module, along with our honest take on what each change means for your day-to-day.
Key Dates and Availability
- Public preview: Live now — deploy a sandbox from the admin center by selecting version “29.0 preview” (online sandboxes only)
- General availability: First week of October 2026; on-premises details arrive at GA
- Preview sandbox cleanup: Microsoft auto-deletes preview sandboxes ~30 days after GA (early November 2026)
- Feature rollout: Capabilities continue shipping in monthly 29.x updates through March 2027
Source: Microsoft Learn — Update 29.0 public preview
⚠ First, the One Change You Can’t Ignore: SOAP Is Gone
Before we get to the fun stuff, let’s talk about the change that can actually break things. Version 29.0 permanently removes the ability to expose Microsoft UI pages as SOAP web services. The feature key that has kept older integrations running is gone for good. If any of your integrations, reports, or third-party connectors still call SOAP endpoints on Microsoft pages, they will stop working when your environment updates (Microsoft Learn — deprecated platform features).
The good news? You have options, and there’s still time. You can move to REST APIs (our recommendation), switch to OData V4 endpoints, or recreate the pages you rely on in a per-tenant extension. If you haven’t checked your environment for SOAP dependencies yet, now is the moment — not after your October update is already scheduled.
Copilot and AI Agents
Here’s the headline of the release: Copilot stops feeling like an add-on and starts feeling like part of the product. If you’ve been waiting to see whether AI in Business Central would grow into something genuinely useful, this is the wave where it happens.
- Unified Copilot chat experience — Business Central adopts the Microsoft Copilot experience, reasoning over your business data, web results, and general knowledge in one modern chat surface consistent with the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem. Community walkthroughs show Agent Mode, model switching, file and image uploads, temporary chats, and near-full-screen resizing (Yun Zhu).
- Payables Agent: smarter purchase order matching — matching now uses line amounts and expected receipt dates, and draft finalization aligns with Receipt on Invoice settings.
- MCP Server data queries — define, validate, and run custom data queries via new Model Context Protocol tools, so MCP applications can query data even where no API exists.
- Agent review notifications on lists — a new review bar on documents and lists shows where agents need human interaction.
- Easier agent permission management — grant additional permissions to agents when they request them.
- Updated agent UI — grouped agent avatars and a dedicated action to start new tasks.
Expense Agent
The Expense Agent grows up in this release. What started as a receipt-capture helper is now a complete expense management workflow:
- Approval process support — submitted expense reports get AI-based policy validation that flags suspicious or noncompliant items across lines and reports.
- Travel requisitions — plan and approve travel in advance, with multi-traveler support and integrated approval workflows.
- Interim approvers — route submissions through a temporary reviewer before final approval.
- Automatic withholding tax — employee withholding taxes calculated within expense reports.
- Mileage by vehicle type and date range — configure rates by effective date range and vehicle type.
- Better duplicate prevention — enhanced detection even against already-posted documents.
Financial Management
- Withholding taxes for vendors — now in the standard version of Business Central, no localization app required.
- Withholding taxes on employee transactions — accurate calculation, posting, and compliance across employee payments.
- Multiple excise duties per item — calculate and manage complex excise tax requirements on a single item.
- Accelerated depreciation methods — compliant accelerated depreciation calculations and reporting for fixed assets.
- Vendor-specific number series for self-billing invoices — meet supplier requirements and improve invoice traceability.
Reporting and Data Analysis
This is where Microsoft invested most heavily, and it shows. Whether you build reports or just run them, there’s something here for you:
- Report themes for branded documents — the new composable layouts feature applies themes to layouts for consistent PDF output, with defaults settable globally, per company, per report, or per layout.
- Reusable header/footer layouts — design once, apply across document reports.
- Updated Word add-in — new design components, document sample controls for themes and headers/footers, and conditional visibility via the new HideIf logic control.
- Financial report packs — run multiple financial reports as one job and get a single PDF, run immediately or scheduled to report inboxes or email.
- Report output automation — new report inbox APIs extend automation with Power Automate or MCP.
- G/L account usage tracing — identify uncategorized accounts, trace account usage and calculations, and preview definitions before publishing.
- Financial report change logging — changes to row, column, and report definitions are always recorded in the change log for auditing.
- Bookmarkable analysis tabs and list views — pin them to role centers or build them into profiles.
- System audit fields in analysis mode — use creator/modifier audit fields in analysis tabs and profile pages.
- Simplified report datasets — Word layouts get a shared company information dataitem across all report datasets.
- Layout lifecycle control — set status on all layout types to control what end users see.
E-Commerce (Shopify)
- B2B companies, catalogs, and pricing — map company tax identifiers, manage B2B catalogs, and control price synchronization.
- Tax Matching Agent — review suggested tax jurisdictions, confidence levels, and rate differences before processing sales documents with sales tax.
- Order changes, exchanges, and refunds — edited and exchanged Shopify orders stay aligned when creating sales documents and processing refunds.
- Tariff numbers and country of origin sync — include HS codes and origin countries in product synchronization.
- Sales document creation control — use Shopify order numbers and process returns with contact review before document creation.
- Current API compliance — Shopify’s July 2026 API, secure access tokens, and clearer sync diagnostics with Skipped Records and API Errors cues.
Electronic Documents and EDI
- EDI through E-Documents — send and receive electronic orders and payments through the E-Documents framework using the Peppol BIS 3 standard. This is a meaningful step toward retiring separate EDI middleware for standards-based trading partners.
Supply Chain and Manufacturing
- Subcontracting, expanded — assisted setup with notifications for missing vendor/location configuration, Contoso demo data for evaluation, inventory put-aways and picks in basic warehouse configurations, and routing comments and attachments carried into purchase orders.
- Italian legacy subcontracting migration — a guided path to move setup, prices, and active document references into the Subcontracting app.
- Direct transfers from warehouse-enabled locations — direct transfer orders now work with locations requiring inventory picks or warehouse shipments.
- Quality management improvements — finishing an inspection auto-fills passed/failed quantities, actionable posting errors jump to blocking inspections, and editing prompts self-assignment.
- Manufacturing workflow efficiency — create released orders from the Planning Worksheet, monitor capacity calendars, and open production BOMs and routings from actionable errors.
Sustainability Management
- Carbon tracking for fixed assets — sustainability accounts and CO2e values on fixed asset transactions.
- Carbon tracking in item journals — CO2e per unit and total emissions in item and reclassification journals with value chain traceability.
- Formula-based emissions in purchase documents — calculate CO2, CH4, and N2O using emission factors mirroring sustainability journal logic.
- Specific tracking method for serialized items — precise carbon footprint calculation for serial/lot-tracked items.
- Carbon estimates in Service Management — estimated footprint on service invoices from item and resource sustainability data.
- Reversible sustainability ledger entries — reverse posted entries directly from the Sustainability Ledger Entries page.
User Experience
- Recently searched in Tell Me — Tell Me (Alt+Q) surfaces your most recent searches (community walkthrough).
- Recently used records in lookups — lookup dialogs suggest your most recently accessed records for faster data entry.
- Image preview in the web client — preview images without leaving Business Central.
Platform, Performance, and Administration
- New table extension data model — the release’s biggest under-the-hood change: all fields on an AL table are now stored in the same database table, rather than in companion tables. Expect faster database operations wherever table extensions are involved, plus the ability to define keys spanning base and extension fields (Dynamic Communities deep dive).
- Admin control of SIFT indexes — turn SIFT indexes on or off directly in the client.
- Open in Excel telemetry — data export events become auditable for compliance and security investigations.
Development and AL Tooling
Developers get about 25 features of their own this wave. A few standouts:
- AL test modernization — parameterized, data-driven test suites with lifecycle handlers; ALTool runs compile/deploy/test from CI/CD pipelines with structured JSON results.
- Default interface implementations — evolve AL interfaces without breaking existing implementors.
- AI-assisted diagnostics — agents can record failing sessions for offline AL debugging and profile slow sessions with CPU/memory/SQL summaries.
- Integer to BigInteger migration — upgrade field types with compiler warnings on narrowing risks.
- Index management in AL — developers can toggle indexes in code; compiler warnings flag tables approaching SQL column limits.
- Standalone AL language server — completion, navigation, and refactoring features usable from AI agents and editors beyond VS Code.
- Quality-of-life items — tooltip inheritance to actions, ModuleInfo application links, namespace-aware translations, cross-platform layout paths, cleaner object-structure diagnostics, transaction isolation control, IsDirty record checks, and automatic .NET runtime acquisition in VS Code.
Country and Regional (Czechia)
- Cash documents and compensations sent by email using standard document sending profiles
- Enhanced Draft and Pro Forma Invoice reports with Czech layouts
- A new framework for automatic default dimensions with migration from existing setups
One More Thing: How Microsoft Announces Features Is Changing
BC29 closes a chapter. Starting in September 2026, new Business Central capabilities publish continuously to the AI at Work roadmap as soon as Microsoft commits to them, and the Release Planner retires on November 15, 2026. Existing release plans stay online for reference (Microsoft Learn). In plain terms: instead of two big announcements a year, feature news will now arrive as a steady stream. We’ll be watching it closely so you don’t have to.
Is Your Environment BC29-Ready?
Every release wave rewards the teams that prepare early — and this one, with its SOAP removal and new data model, rewards them more than most. That’s why we offer a BC29 Readiness Assessment: we check your environment for SOAP dependencies, test your extensions against the 29.0 preview, point out which new features will actually save your team time, and help you plan your upgrade window so October doesn’t catch you off guard.
Reach out to schedule your assessment — or spin up a 29.0 preview sandbox today and we’ll walk through it together.
Sources
- Microsoft Learn — Update 29.0 public preview for Business Central 2026 release wave 2
- Microsoft Learn — Deprecated features in the Business Central platform
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog — One always-on roadmap
- Yun Zhu (Microsoft MVP) — BC29 Early Access Preview
- Yun Zhu (Microsoft MVP) — Unified Copilot chat in BC29
- Dynamic Communities — BC 29.0 table extension and SQL storage change