Copilot in Business Central Every feature, and how to roll it out
Copilot in Business Central is the AI layer built into Business Central online — chat, Analysis Assist, Bank Reconciliation Assist, item and document suggestions, and autonomous Sales Order, Payables, and Expense agents. Included assistive features ship with the BC license at no extra cost and no minimum user count; autonomous agents bill separately in Copilot Credits. From update 25.0, features and cross-geography data movement are active by default unless an administrator deactivates them. This guide maps every named experience, the included-vs-metered line, 2026 operational limits and model defaults, and the enablement and governance playbook to turn Copilot on safely.
TL;DR — Key takeaways
- Prerequisite: Business Central online plus an administrator role that can open Copilot & agent capabilities
- Copilot in Business Central is Microsoft's AI assistant built directly into the Business Central web client.
- Microsoft documents the Copilot surface in Business Central as a fixed set of named capabilities, each with its own setup page and responsible-AI FAQ.
- Bank Reconciliation Assist is the Copilot experience that most accounting teams notice first, because bank rec is a recurring, detail-heavy task where matching transactions to ledger entries eats hours every month.
What Copilot in Business Central actually is
Copilot in Business Central is Microsoft's AI assistant built directly into the Business Central web client. It combines a chat pane that finds records and answers questions in natural language, inline drafting and summarization on records and lists, specialized assists for finance work like bank reconciliation, and a growing set of autonomous agents that take multi-step actions such as processing inbound sales orders or purchase invoices. Microsoft positions it as the AI layer across every line of business a small or mid-sized company runs in Business Central.
The part most overview pages blur is that 'Copilot in Business Central' is a specific, product-embedded experience — not the same thing as the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on. The Business Central Copilot runs inside the ERP, is grounded in your Business Central data, inherits each user's Business Central permissions, and does not require expensive model training on your tenant data before it works. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the separate per-user add-on that brings Copilot into Outlook, Excel, and Teams and can reach Dynamics 365 data through agents and products such as Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance. You can run Business Central without ever buying Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the Copilot inside the ERP still works. Microsoft documents that there is currently no direct connection the other way: Copilot features inside Business Central are unaware of your Microsoft 365 Graph data.
For a finance or operations team already on Business Central online, the practical implication is that Copilot is a feature set you govern inside an environment you already pay for — there is no second ERP license to buy and no minimum headcount to satisfy. The decisions are which experiences stay active, who gets access, whether Bing web grounding is allowed, and which of the metered autonomous agents you are willing to pay consumption for. On-premises, private cloud, and ISV Embed deployments do not get Copilot; SaaS migration is the gate.
Every Copilot experience in Business Central
Microsoft documents the Copilot surface in Business Central as a fixed set of named capabilities, each with its own setup page and responsible-AI FAQ. They split into three families: assistive features that help a human work faster (chat, analysis, summaries, suggestions), a finance-specific assist (bank reconciliation, including G/L account suggestions for unmatched residuals), and autonomous agents that act on their own (sales orders, payables, expenses). Knowing which family a feature sits in tells you both how much governance it needs and whether it bills consumption.
The assistive features are the ones most users touch first because they are low-risk and included. The bank reconciliation assist is the flagship finance feature and the one that delivers the most measurable time savings for an accounting team. The autonomous agents are where the value scales — and where the cost and governance story changes, because each agent action is billed in Copilot Credits. Custom agents (designing and coding agents / AI development toolkit, still in preview) let partners and developers extend beyond the shipped agents; billing events for that toolkit are announced separately as they mature.
Language and country support is not uniform across the inventory. Analysis Assist, bank reconciliation assist, marketing text, and summarize ship with broad multi-language validation; chat, autofill, sales line suggestions, item substitutes, number series, and e-document mapping are English-validated first; the Expense Agent is limited to a shorter country list (including Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and US). Always check Microsoft's Copilot country/region and language availability matrix before promising a feature to a non-English or non-US team.
| Feature | Family | What it does | Billed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat with Copilot | Assistive | Natural-language pane that finds records and answers questions grounded in your BC data (optional Bing web grounding) | Included |
| Analysis Assist | Assistive | Turns a natural-language question about a list into an analysis tab with grouping, totals, and charts; works on many custom lists | Included |
| Autofill with Copilot | Assistive | Suggests values for fields on a record from surrounding context | Included |
| Summarize with Copilot | Assistive | Inline summaries of records and pages (customers, vendors, documents) | Included |
| Marketing text suggestions | Assistive | Generates product marketing descriptions for items based on attributes | Included |
| Item substitute suggestions | Assistive | Suggests substitute items when a requested item is unavailable | Included |
| Sales line suggestions | Assistive | Suggests lines to add to a sales order from prior history | Included |
| E-document matching | Assistive | Maps received e-documents to purchase order lines | Included |
| Number series suggestions | Assistive | Suggests number series during setup | Included |
| Bank Reconciliation Assist | Finance | Proposes matches after automatch; can suggest G/L accounts for unmatched residuals | Included |
| Sales Order Agent | Autonomous | Processes inbound sales quotes and orders from a shared mailbox end-to-end | Metered (credits) |
| Payables Agent | Autonomous | Processes purchase invoices from intake through draft ready for review | Metered (credits) |
| Expense Agent (preview) | Autonomous | Processes uploaded expense receipts into expense reports | Metered (credits) |
| Designing and coding agents (preview) | Autonomous / toolkit | Build custom Business Central agents beyond the out-of-the-box set | Metered (events TBD) |
Bank Reconciliation Assist: the highest-value Copilot feature for finance teams
Bank Reconciliation Assist is the Copilot experience that most accounting teams notice first, because bank rec is a recurring, detail-heavy task where matching transactions to ledger entries eats hours every month. Microsoft designs it to supplement — not replace — the existing automatch operation: automatch runs first on dates, amounts, and descriptions; Copilot then inspects the remaining unmatched statement lines and proposes additional matches, including lump-sum payments that clear multiple invoices. For residual lines that still cannot match any ledger entry, a second path can suggest the most likely G/L account to post the difference to (for example mapping a 'Fuel Stop 24' narrative to a Transportation account).
Nothing posts without a human. After Copilot generates proposals, the Reconcile with Copilot window shows auto-matched counts, Copilot-matched counts, and line-level proposals. Reviewers can delete individual proposals, discard the whole set, or Keep it — and can optionally turn on Post if fully applied so a 100% matched reconciliation posts when saved. Microsoft's responsible-AI FAQ is explicit that Copilot is not the only means of completing a bank reconciliation; the traditional manual and text-based matching paths remain fully available.
Operational limits matter for high-volume accounts. On 2025 release wave 1 and earlier, open bank account ledger entries in the statement date window cannot exceed roughly 1,000 (depending on description length). On 2025 release wave 2 and later, that ceiling rises to roughly 3,000. The feature is available in all Business Central countries/regions but still depends on Azure OpenAI geography and supported interaction languages — if your environment sits outside an Azure OpenAI region, the administrator must allow data movement across geographies. Like every Copilot output, suggestions can be wrong; a qualified reviewer still signs off before posting.
| Business Central version | Open ledger entry limit (approx.) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 release wave 1 and earlier | ~1,000 | Varies with description text length on ledger entries |
| 2025 release wave 2 and later | ~3,000 | Higher ceiling; still depends on description length |
Analysis Assist and Chat with Copilot: answering questions in Business Central
Analysis Assist turns a natural-language question about a list — customers, vendors, items, transactions — into an analysis tab on the fly. Instead of building a filtered view, exporting to Excel, and pivoting, a user types something like 'show me last quarter's sales by customer grouped by region' and Copilot generates an analysis view with the grouping, totals, and breakdown already applied. The user can then refine, drill in, or share the view. It is aimed at the analyst-and-owner workflow where the question changes faster than a saved report can keep up. Microsoft notes that Analysis Assist can work on many custom lists from installed apps, so it is one of the better entry points when your environment is heavily extended.
Chat with Copilot is the companion experience: a chat pane where users ask questions in plain language and Copilot finds records, navigates to pages, or answers questions grounded in the Business Central data they have permission to see. A sales rep can ask 'show me all open sales orders for Contoso over $10,000' and get taken to the right filtered list; an operations manager can ask where a specific item is used. Because responses inherit the user's permissions, two people asking the same question can receive answers sized to what each is allowed to view. Chat can also find records in custom tables in many cases, though accuracy varies with the apps installed.
As of Business Central update 26.3, some Copilot features can search the public web for additional grounding when an administrator enables Bing Search on the Copilot & agent capabilities page. Web grounding is optional and designed for enterprise safety controls; it is most useful when users ask about add-on apps, documentation-style questions, or facts outside the ERP tables. Both Analysis Assist and Chat are included in the license and are low-risk because they primarily read and present data rather than post transactions — the gentlest on-ramp before anyone enables metered agents.
Item and document suggestions: marketing text, substitutes, and e-documents
The suggestions family covers the smaller, high-frequency Copilot assists that touch items and documents. Marketing text suggestions generate product descriptions for items from their attributes — useful for distributors and retailers who maintain large catalogs and struggle to write copy for every SKU. Item substitute suggestions propose alternatives when a requested item is out of stock, which directly protects revenue and customer experience in wholesale and distribution. Sales line suggestions recommend lines to add to a sales order based on a customer's history, shortening order entry.
E-document matching is the document-side equivalent: when an electronic invoice arrives, Copilot maps it to the corresponding purchase order lines, reducing manual data entry in accounts payable. Number series suggestions round out the family by recommending number series during setup, which speeds configuration for partners and admins standing up a new environment.
None of these are headline features on their own, but together they chip away at the repetitive manual work that fills a Business Central user's day. They are included in the license, they keep a human in the loop (every suggestion is reviewed before it is accepted), and they are easy to pilot because each one is scoped to a single, well-defined task. A good rollout enables the suggestions family alongside Analysis Assist and Chat as the 'safe to switch on broadly' set, then measures adoption before opening the autonomous-agent layer.
The autonomous agents: Sales Order, Payables, and Expense
The autonomous agents are where Copilot in Business Central moves from assisting a human to acting on its own, and they are the most consequential part of the surface. The Sales Order Agent connects to a shared mailbox and processes inbound sales quotes and orders end-to-end: it analyzes the incoming email, reads supported attachments (PDF, PNG, JPG), checks item availability, creates or updates a sales quote or order, and generates a response — all before a human reviews the result. The Payables Agent does the equivalent for vendor invoices (PDF attachments only), extracting data into a Purchase Document Draft for supervisor review. The Expense Agent (preview) processes uploaded expense receipts; some partner guidance notes shared-mailbox receipt capture patterns that can reduce the need for every spender to hold a full ERP seat, but agent and credit governance still apply.
What makes these different from the assistive features is autonomy plus consumption. An agent takes multi-step actions without a human pressing each button, and every mapped action is billed in Copilot Credits. That is a deliberate trade-off: you get far more work removed from humans, and in exchange you pay per action and you accept a higher governance burden because the agent is acting on your business data. Microsoft also ships designing and coding agents (preview) so partners and in-house developers can build custom agents — warehouse location alignment, salesperson auto-assignment, and similar scoped automations are common partner demos — for processes the out-of-the-box agents do not cover.
Model defaults are shifting in 2026. Microsoft is rolling GPT-5.3-chat as the default language model for agents on Business Central version 28 and later (initial rollout May–June 2026, with UK, India, and Australia receiving the change later). Admins get model visibility and selection in the agent design experience; developers get SDK methods for coded agents. Re-evaluate agent accuracy after a model change. Separately, starting 1 July 2026, some version 28+ environments may process Copilot and agent requests in a different Azure geography — manage that preference on the Copilot & agent capabilities page if EU or other residency constraints apply.
The right way to think about these agents is as scoped automation projects, not as features you switch on and forget. Each one should be piloted with a narrow scope (one mailbox, one vendor set, one receipt channel), reviewed by a human before anything posts during the pilot, and only broadened once the team trusts the output and the credit spend is predictable. Treating them like the included assistive features — leave them org-wide on day one without a budget model — is the fastest route to a surprise consumption bill and a loss of confidence in the output.
Copilot Credits: what the license covers and what bills consumption
The single most useful thing to understand about Copilot in Business Central is the line between what the license includes and what consumption bills. The included feature set — Chat, Analysis Assist, Autofill, Summaries, Bank Reconciliation Assist, marketing text, item and document suggestions, e-document matching — is covered by the Business Central license, subject to fair-use quotas Microsoft may adjust later. Crossing into the autonomous agents is what switches on consumption billing, and that switch is silent unless you model it first.
Microsoft bills the autonomous agents in Copilot Credits, mapped to Copilot Studio event scenarios: a Generative answer is typically 2 credits and an Agent action is typically 5 credits. Published Sales Order Agent rates: analyzing an incoming email is 2 credits; processing an attachment without sales data is 2; processing an attachment with sales data is 5; checking item availability is 5; creating or updating a sales quote or order is 5; generating a response email is 2. Microsoft's example flow (analyze + availability + create + reply, with 50% of emails carrying a usable attachment) averages about 16.5 credits per request — so 100 requests/month is about 1,650 credits. The Payables Agent costs 50 credits per invoice (ten agent actions) plus 5 credits per invoice line; 100 invoices with three lines each is 6,500 credits/month. The Expense Agent is 50 credits per uploaded receipt regardless of line count. Emails without a valid invoice attachment do not incur Payables cost.
Each Copilot Credit is priced at US$0.01 on Azure pay-as-you-go. Prepaid Microsoft Copilot Studio capacity packs provide 25,000 credits per month per pack at US$200 per pack/month (about US$0.008 per credit if fully used). Prepaid capacity on the tenant is consumed first when available; pay-as-you-go covers overage. Capacity is shared across Business Central environments and other Microsoft services on the tenant unless you allocate packs to specific linked Power Platform environments. When the quota is depleted, the AI capability becomes unavailable until capacity is added — users see in-app notifications. Do not confuse this with the 30 minutes of Azure AI time included with Business Central licenses for non-Copilot machine-learning features such as sales and inventory forecasting; that quota does not affect Copilot Credit consumption.
Budget before you enable any agent: estimate monthly volume (orders, invoices, receipts), multiply by the published rate, compare prepaid pack vs PAYG math, and add the line to your license cost so nothing is a surprise at month-end. Microsoft also points to the Agent usage estimator in Copilot Studio for forecasting.
| Agent action | Credits | Indicative cost (US$ PAYG) |
|---|---|---|
| Sales Order Agent — analyze incoming email | 2 | ~$0.02 |
| Sales Order Agent — process attachment (no sales data) | 2 | ~$0.02 |
| Sales Order Agent — process attachment (with sales data) | 5 | ~$0.05 |
| Sales Order Agent — check item availability | 5 | ~$0.05 |
| Sales Order Agent — create/update sales quote or order | 5 | ~$0.05 |
| Sales Order Agent — generate response email | 2 | ~$0.02 |
| Sales Order Agent — typical full request (MS example avg.) | ~16.5 | ~$0.17 |
| Sales Order Agent — 100 requests/month (MS example) | ~1,650 | ~$16.50 |
| Payables Agent — per invoice | 50 | ~$0.50 |
| Payables Agent — per invoice line | 5 | ~$0.05 |
| Payables Agent — 100 invoices × 3 lines (MS example) | 6,500 | ~$65.00 |
| Expense Agent — per uploaded receipt | 50 | ~$0.50 |
| Capacity pack (25,000 credits/month) | 25,000 | $200 prepaid (~$0.008/credit) |
How to enable and roll out Copilot in Business Central
Copilot is a system feature of Business Central online — you cannot turn the product category off globally — but administrators retain fine control: deactivate individual capabilities, grant or deny per-user access through permission sets, and govern data movement. Starting with update 25.0, Microsoft enables cross-geography data movement by default and activates available features by default, so many environments already have Copilot ready without a special project. The work is less 'switch it on' and more 'decide what stays on, who can use it, and which agents get mailboxes and credit budgets.'
The configuration surface is the Copilot & agent capabilities page. Only a Business Central administrator can change it (SUPER, delegated partner admin, internal admin, Internal BC Administrator, or Dynamics 365 Administrator — Business Central does not yet offer object-level permissions limited to Copilot config). If the Allow data movement toggle appears, your environment's data residency geography differs from the Azure OpenAI geography Copilot uses; leaving it off deactivates Copilot. When an in-region Azure OpenAI endpoint becomes available, the toggle disappears and the environment connects automatically.
Activate or deactivate individual features (preview and generally available sections), then grant access with the right permission sets: Copilot Sys Features (or the specific system objects for Chat, Analysis Assist, Autofill, Summarize), page-level permissions for bank rec AI proposals, marketing text, e-document mapping, and substitutes, and the dedicated Manage … Agent permission flows for Sales Order, Payables, and Expense agents. Optional steps: enable Bing Search for web-grounded answers, and turn off AI-content feedback (Like/Dislike) from the Power Platform admin center if policy requires it. Because some AI settings are picked up at sign-in, enforce environment-wide changes by asking users to sign out and back in or by canceling sessions from the Business Central administration center.
Roll out in phases. Phase 1: leave or enable the included assistive set (Chat, Analysis Assist, bank rec, suggestions) for a pilot department; train on review habits. Phase 2: measure time saved on bank rec and list analysis; tighten permission sets. Phase 3: pilot one autonomous agent on one mailbox with a modeled credit budget and a human approval gate; only then widen volume. Never start with org-wide agents on day one.
- Prerequisite: Business Central online plus an administrator role that can open Copilot & agent capabilities
- Default from update 25.0: features active and data movement allowed unless you deactivate them
- If the Allow data movement toggle is shown, decide residency explicitly before relying on Azure OpenAI-powered features
- Deactivate any preview or high-risk feature you are not ready to support; grant permission sets per capability
- Configure each autonomous agent individually (mailbox, permissions, supervisors) with its own credit budget
- Optional: enable Bing Search for web grounding; control AI feedback toggles in Power Platform admin center
- Enforce rollout by session cancel or re-sign-in so users pick up new settings
- Phase agents only after assistive adoption and a written credit forecast
| Phase | Enable | Hold back | Success signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Foundation | Chat, Analysis Assist, Summarize, Autofill, suggestions family | All autonomous agents | Users ask real questions; no permission errors |
| 2 · Finance assist | Bank Reconciliation Assist for trained accountants | Auto-post without review; unsupported languages in production | Faster month-end; rejected bad matches documented |
| 3 · Agent pilot | One Sales Order or Payables agent, one mailbox, supervisors assigned | Org-wide agent enablement; custom agents in production without eval | Predictable monthly credits; quality gate pass rate |
| 4 · Scale | Additional agents, prepaid capacity packs, telemetry in App Insights | Regulated journals and audit-only processes | Credit budget vs actual; process KPIs improve |
Governance, AI safety, and what to keep manual
Microsoft grounds Copilot in Business Central in your organization's data while respecting user permissions, and it does not use your Business Central data to train the foundation models that power Copilot without explicit permission. For customers inside the EU Data Boundary, Microsoft states that data does not move outside that boundary under the documented boundary rules. Azure OpenAI-powered features are governed by Microsoft's published terms for those features, and each major feature carries a responsible-AI FAQ describing intended use, evaluation, and limitations. For most SMEs, the practical governance pattern is straightforward: use Copilot for drafting, summarization, reconciliation triage, and exploratory analysis, and put a qualified human review step on anything that posts to the ledger, resolves a customer commitment, or supports an audit.
The honest limits are the ones Microsoft states itself. Copilot can give an incorrect response — a wrong bank rec match, a misread attachment, a substituted item that is not actually equivalent. The mitigation is always human review before the action is committed, and never treating the output as a final source of truth for regulated or audit-critical work. Period-close journals, regulated calculations, and anything that must be reproducible to the cent should stay manual or deterministic, with Copilot used only to support the human doing them. Practitioner chatter in 2026 still stresses the same theme Microsoft partners see in the field: seat-plus-usage economics only pay off when process redesign and review queues exist; leaving agents on without ownership is how credit budgets and trust both erode.
Geography, language, deployment type, and Embed packaging also bound what you can switch on. Feature quality is validated only for listed languages; unsupported languages may still respond but without quality guarantees — keep production critical paths on supported languages. On-premises and private cloud get none of the new Copilot agent features until migration to Business Central online. ISV Embed applications currently cannot offer Copilot to their customers because of technical limitations. Check the Copilot country/region and language availability page before you promise a feature to a multi-country rollout.
Is Copilot in Business Central worth switching on?
For an SME already running Business Central online, the included Copilot features are genuinely upside: there is no extra license to buy, no minimum user count to satisfy, and the high-frequency low-risk work — chat, Analysis Assist, Bank Reconciliation Assist, the suggestions family — delivers measurable time savings on tasks a team already does every month. A phased rollout that enables the assistive features and bank reconciliation assist first, trains the broad user base on them, and measures the time saved is a low-risk way to capture that value. If you are still on NAV or on-prem BC, the Copilot story is one more reason the SaaS migration conversation keeps resurfacing in 2026 — not marketing fluff, a hard capability gate.
The autonomous agents are the higher-value, higher-overhead layer. They are worth piloting — a Sales Order Agent that clears the inbound-orders inbox, or a Payables Agent that pre-processes invoices into drafts, can remove real repetitive work — but only as scoped projects with a modeled credit budget (Microsoft's own examples put ~1,650 credits/month on 100 sales requests and ~6,500 credits/month on 100 three-line invoices) and a human approval step during the pilot. The mistake to avoid is treating the agents like the included features and leaving them org-wide before anyone has estimated spend or defined who reviews the output.
Where Copilot in Business Central is not the answer is for work that demands audit-grade reproducibility and deterministic accuracy. There, the right scope is drafting and triage support, with humans owning anything regulated. For teams evaluating platforms from scratch, the Copilot story is one factor among several: included Microsoft-stack AI versus leaner ERPs that may require bolt-on tools. The decision is fit for your stack, budget, residency rules, and team — not a capability hierarchy. Pair this guide with a sober ROI model and an implementation plan before you expand beyond the free tier of assistive features.
Frequently asked questions
Is Copilot included in Business Central?
Yes. Microsoft confirms that Copilot in Business Central is included with the Business Central license at no extra cost, that no minimum number of users is required to start, and that it is exclusive to Business Central online — it is not available for on-premises or private cloud deployments. The included feature set covers Chat with Copilot, Analysis Assist, Autofill, Summaries, Bank Reconciliation Assist, marketing text suggestions, item and document suggestions, and e-document matching. Microsoft notes that fair-use policies, quotas, or pricing might be introduced later. The autonomous agents (Sales Order, Payables, Expense) bill separately on Copilot Credits.
Is Copilot in Business Central the same as Microsoft 365 Copilot?
No. Copilot in Business Central is embedded inside the Business Central web client, is grounded in your Business Central data, and is governed by Business Central permissions — and it is included in the BC license. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a separate per-user add-on: Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is commonly listed around US$18–$21 per user/month (promotional pricing has applied in mid-2026) for organizations on qualifying Microsoft 365 Business plans, and Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise is commonly listed at US$30 per user/month on eligible enterprise plans — always confirm current list prices with Microsoft. M365 Copilot brings AI into Outlook, Excel, and Teams and can connect to Business Central data through products such as Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance. You can use Copilot in Business Central without buying Microsoft 365 Copilot; there is currently no direct link the other way from in-ERP Copilot into your Microsoft 365 Graph data.
Does Copilot in Business Central work on-premises?
No. Microsoft states that Copilot in Business Central is exclusive to Business Central online and is not available for on-premises or private cloud (IBC) deployments. Partner and practitioner reporting in 2026 continues to treat SaaS migration as the hard gate for Copilot agents. If your organization runs Business Central on-premises, Copilot becomes available when you migrate to Business Central online. ISV Embed apps also cannot currently offer Copilot to end customers.
How much do the autonomous agents in Business Central cost?
The autonomous agents bill consumption in Copilot Credits. Pay-as-you-go is US$0.01 per credit via Azure. Prepaid Copilot Studio capacity packs are 25,000 credits per month per pack at US$200 per pack/month. The Sales Order Agent averages about 16.5 credits per request in Microsoft's example (100 requests ≈ 1,650 credits/month). The Payables Agent costs 50 credits per invoice plus 5 credits per invoice line (100 invoices × 3 lines ≈ 6,500 credits/month). The Expense Agent costs 50 credits per uploaded receipt. Prepaid capacity is consumed first when allocated; when quota is depleted, the AI capability is unavailable until you add capacity.
Can I trust Copilot output for bank reconciliation and finance work?
Use it as a proposal, not a final answer. Microsoft's responsible-AI FAQ for bank reconciliation assist states that Copilot is not the only means of completing a bank reconciliation and that the traditional manual and text-based matching paths remain available. Automatch runs first; Copilot proposes additional matches and optional G/L account suggestions that a qualified accountant reviews and accepts or rejects before anything posts. Operational limits apply (~1,000 open ledger entries on 2025 wave 1 and earlier; ~3,000 on 2025 wave 2 and later). Microsoft also warns generally that Copilot can give incorrect responses, so anything regulated, audit-supporting, or requiring reproducibility to the cent should keep a human owner and deterministic controls.
Do I need a minimum number of users to get Copilot in Business Central?
No. Microsoft confirms that no minimum number of users is required to start using Copilot in Business Central. A single-user Essentials or Premium environment on Business Central online can enable the included Copilot features. The only per-user cost arises if you separately license Microsoft 365 Copilot for use outside the ERP, or if you consume Copilot Credits through the autonomous agents.
Is Copilot on by default in Business Central?
From update 25.0, Microsoft activates available Copilot and agent capabilities by default and enables cross-geography data movement by default, so many online environments already have Copilot ready without a special project. Administrators can still deactivate individual features, deny permission sets, and disallow data movement (which turns Copilot off when Azure OpenAI is outside your geography). Agent mailboxes, supervisors, and credit billing still require deliberate setup before autonomous agents do useful work.
Does the Azure AI time included with Business Central licenses cover Copilot?
No. Business Central licenses include 30 minutes of Azure AI time for non-Copilot machine-learning features such as sales and inventory forecasting. Microsoft states that this quota is unrelated to Copilot and that consuming Azure AI time has no effect on Copilot in Business Central. Copilot agents that use consumption billing are charged in Copilot Credits instead.
Can I build my own Copilot features for Business Central?
Yes. Microsoft ships developer tools for Copilot in Business Central, including the designing and coding agents capability (AI development toolkit, preview) that lets partners and in-house developers build custom agents for processes the out-of-the-box agents do not cover. You can also extend via standard AL developer tools for Copilot, Copilot Studio connections, and stand-alone AI apps that call Business Central. Billing events for the AI development toolkit are announced as the preview matures; shipped autonomous agents already consume Copilot Credits.
How do I roll Copilot out to all users in my Business Central environment?
An administrator uses the Copilot & agent capabilities page to confirm data-movement consent (if shown), activate or deactivate features, enable Bing Search if desired, and grant user access through permission sets. Configure each autonomous agent individually with mailboxes and supervisors. Because some settings are picked up at sign-in, rolling a change out to every user means asking for re-sign-in or canceling active sessions in the Business Central administration center. Prefer a phased rollout: assistive features first, then bank rec, then one piloted agent with a credit budget.
Which languages and countries support Copilot features in Business Central?
Availability depends on four factors: interaction language, environment country/region localization, Business Central data residency Azure region, and Azure OpenAI geography. Many assistive features are available in all Business Central countries/regions, but language validation differs — for example Chat and several suggestion features are English-validated first, while Analysis Assist, bank rec, marketing text, and summarize have broader language lists. The Expense Agent is limited to a shorter country set. Production-critical use should stay on Microsoft's officially supported languages for each feature; unsupported languages may respond but without quality guarantees.
Sources & methodology
14 citedEvery pricing figure and statistic on this page is traced to a primary or vendor source with a verification date. Where partner pages are cited, their platform bias is disclosed in-line.
- 01Microsoft confirms Copilot in Business Central is included with the Business Central license at no extra cost, requires no minimum number of users, and is exclusive to Business Central online (not on-premises or private cloud); fair-use policies, quotas, or pricing might be introduced later. FAQ also clarifies difference from Microsoft 365 Copilot, web search from update 26.3, customizations/chat on custom tables, Azure AI time quota separation, and Embed limitation.↗learn.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 02Configure Copilot and agent capabilities: from update 25.0 data movement and features are active by default; admin can deactivate features; permission sets per capability; Bing Search toggle; feedback controls; session cancel for rollout; GPT-5.3-chat default model for agents on version 28+ (May–June 2026 rollout, UK/India/Australia later) with model selection UI.↗learn.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 03Bank reconciliation assist supplements automatch first, then Copilot matching and G/L account suggestions for residuals; human Keep it / Discard it review; operational limits ~1000 open ledger entries (2025 wave 1 and earlier) and ~3000 (2025 wave 2 and later).↗learn.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 04Responsible AI FAQ for bank account reconciliation assist: capabilities, limitations, geographies/languages, user expectations, Copilot not the only means of completing bank reconciliation.↗learn.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 05Consumption billing for agents in Copilot Credits: Sales Order Agent action rates (2 or 5 credits; ~16.5 avg; 100 requests ≈ 1,650 credits), Payables Agent 50 per invoice + 5 per line (100×3-line example = 6,500 credits), Expense Agent 50 per receipt; prepaid capacity first then PAYG; depleted quota disables AI; link BC to Power Platform environments for allocation.↗learn.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 06Copilot Studio prepaid capacity packs provide 25,000 Copilot Credits per month per pack; packs and PAYG can be combined; prepaid consumed first.↗learn.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 07Microsoft lists Copilot Studio capacity packs at US$200 per pack per month for 25,000 Copilot Credits; PAYG also available.↗microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 08Azure Copilot Studio pay-as-you-go price is US$0.01 per Copilot Credit.↗azure.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 09Feature-by-feature country/region and supported language matrix for Copilot and agents in Business Central, including narrower Expense Agent country list and English-first features such as Chat.↗learn.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 10Microsoft 365 Copilot Business and enterprise list/promotional pricing context for distinguishing the separate M365 Copilot add-on from included Business Central Copilot (confirm current prices with Microsoft).↗microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
- 11Practitioner note (Jul 2026): on-premises and partner-hosted Business Central installs do not receive new Copilot agent features until SaaS migration.↗x.com · verified secondary
- 12Practitioner note (Jul 2026): from 1 July 2026 some BC version 28+ environments may process Copilot/agent requests in a different Azure geography; manage on Copilot & agent capabilities page.↗x.com · verified secondary
- 13Microsoft Copilot Credits Guide updated July 2026 (partner/MVP distribution pointer).↗x.com · verified secondary
- 14Dynamics 365 Azure OpenAI-powered feature terms governing Copilot experiences including Business Central.↗go.microsoft.com · verified vendor-primary
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Plan your Business Central Copilot rollout
Get a partner-led readiness assessment for Copilot in Business Central: which included features to enable first, how to model the autonomous-agent credit budget before you switch anything on, and where Copilot is not ready for your regulated or audit-critical work. We scope the enablement playbook to your environment and your team.