What's New in Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1 (V28): AI Agents, Expense Management, and More

Microsoft just shipped one of the most consequential Business Central releases in recent memory. Release Wave 1 of 2026 — version 28 — isn’t a cosmetic update. It’s the moment where AI agents stop being a demo and start being something your finance team actually depends on.

Across more than 50 new and updated features, three themes dominate:

1. AI agents move from preview to production — Expense Agent, Payables Agent maturity, and an agent builder for custom workflows
2. Core ERP gaps finally close — drop shipment independence, quality management improvements, multi-line invoice matching
3. Governance and developer tooling matures — audit APIs, permission analysis, AL debugging improvements, Copilot extensibility

Here’s what actually matters for your Business Central environment.

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The Headline: AI Agents Go to Work

The 27.x releases introduced the concept of autonomous agents. Version 28 makes them real.

Expense Agent — The Big New Module

This is the standout feature of V28. Business Central now has a fully integrated, AI-powered expense management module. It covers:

• Receipt capture and upload via browser or mobile app (mobile capture hits public preview in July)
• AI categorization and itemization — Copilot reads the receipt, extracts line items, and maps them to G/L accounts
• Mileage and per diem tracking built in
• Approval workflows with configurable rules
• Automated reimbursement posting directly in BC — no external expense tool, no double entry

For mid-market companies that have been limping along with manual expense reports (or paying for Concur on top of BC), this is a genuine cost saver. One less integration. One less monthly SaaS bill.

The Expense Agent also gains travel requisition management in August, making it a full travel-and-expense module over the course of this wave.

Payables Agent — Now Production-Ready

The Payables Agent, previewed in earlier waves, reaches general availability with meaningful upgrades:

• Multi-language support — works across English, German, Danish, French, and Spanish
• 3-way matching — purchase order, receipt, and invoice cross-referenced automatically
• Automatic email categorization — the agent now detects and skips signature logos, tracking pixels, and embedded images, focusing only on real invoice documents
• Supervisor visibility — you can now see which emails have been processed by the agent, with a consolidated task pane for agents
• Inline agent reasoning — reviewers can see why the agent coded a line to a specific account, directly on the relevant page

Agent Builder — Build Your Own

For organizations with genuinely unique workflows, V28 introduces AI resources for Copilot extensions in public preview. Instead of provisioning and maintaining your own Azure OpenAI deployment, you can now define custom agents using Microsoft-managed AI infrastructure.

Practical use cases: bank reconciliation edge cases, contract invoice coding, vendor onboarding automation.

Other Copilot Improvements

• Item insights with advanced KPIs and summaries — Copilot generates natural-language summaries of inventory performance, turnover, and margin, no Power BI report required
• Avatars for record creators and modifiers — at a glance, you can see if a record was created by a human or an agent (small change, significant audit implications)
• Multi-model flexibility — agents can now run on different AI models, and you can choose which model each agent uses
• Kill switch — stop all active tasks for a selected agent with one action

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Core ERP: The Gaps That Finally Closed

Not everything in V28 is about AI. Some of the most impactful changes are long-overdue fixes to core ERP workflows.

Drop Shipment Independence

This is the kind of change that doesn’t make headlines but makes finance teams cheer. Previously, you couldn’t invoice a vendor for a drop shipment until you’d invoiced your customer — forcing awkward cash-flow-damaging sequencing. That constraint is gone.

• Create purchase orders from drop shipments — integrated with the Order Planning page
• Post purchase invoices for drop shipments independently of related sales invoices
• Reverse drop shipments when neither document is invoiced — a much-needed correction mechanism

Multi-Line Invoice Matching

The Get Order Lines action lets you pull lines from multiple orders and receipts into a single invoice, with the system tracking matched quantities at line level via new Matched Invoice Lines and Matched Order Lines fields.

Quality Management

Quality Management gets Word report layouts as the default for Certificate of Analysis, Non-Conformance, and General Purpose Inspection reports. Plus demo data (Contoso Coffee) and a role-specific checklist for quality managers.

Electronic Documents

• E-invoicing in France — now in public preview
• Australian Payment Times Reporting compliance built in
• UK Payment Practices supported
• E-Document framework now supports payments

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Financial Management Improvements

Several financial capabilities land in V28:

• Excise tax calculations for applicable jurisdictions
• Investment Boost support for fixed assets — accelerated depreciation methods in public preview
• Self-billed invoices — now generally available
• Withholding tax calculations for vendors
• Fixed asset accelerated depreciation in public preview

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Reporting and Analytics

Financial Reporting Overhaul

Financial report management gets a significant upgrade:

• Automated report scheduling and distribution — reports run automatically, delivered via email, Excel, or PDF
• Global and report-level formatting — negative number display, logo placement, export settings
• Audit logs for report usage — who ran what, when, and where it went
• Lifecycle management — reports can be set as draft, approved, or archived, with access controlled by status

Analysis Mode Expands

• Deeper analysis directly in list pages — slice, pivot, and analyze without exporting to Excel
• More prebuilt analysis views across sales, finance, and inventory modules
• Word and Excel layout improvements — easier data mapping and filtering for business users

New APIs

• Approval workflow analysis APIs — for auditors and IT
• Permission analysis APIs — compliance assessments
• Document report PDF API — programmatic access to generated reports

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Developer and Admin Improvements

For partners and developers, V28 delivers:

• Enhanced MCP server for agentic experiences — agents get better access to Business Central functionality with improved telemetry and audit logs
• AI resources for Copilot extensions — partners build custom agents on Microsoft-managed AI infrastructure
• Data analysis definitions in apps — developers can define analysis views in their extensions
• More secure outgoing HTTP calls by default — security hardening
• ALTool features — improved testing, debugging (including agent session debugging), and Copilot extensibility
• Evaluation framework for Copilot and agents — test and validate agent behavior before production deployment

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What This Means for Your Business

If you’re a mid-market company running Business Central (or evaluating it), V28 should shift your thinking on a few things:

1. AI agents are no longer optional research. The Expense Agent and Payables Agent solve real problems — manual data entry, invoice processing, expense reporting — that cost your team hours every week. If you’re not at least evaluating them, a competitor is.

2. The expense management module eliminates a third-party SaaS cost. If you’re currently paying for Concur, Expensify, or similar, run the numbers. For a 50-person company, the savings could be thousands per year.

3. Drop shipment and multi-line matching matter for procurement-heavy businesses. If your supply chain involves drop shipping or consolidated invoicing, these aren’t “nice to haves” — they’re workflow correctness issues.

4. Developer tooling is catching up. If you’ve been hesitant about custom extensions, the improved debugging, testing, and agent-building capabilities lower the barrier.

5. Partner readiness still matters. V28 is feature-rich, but getting value from Expense Agent configuration, Payables Agent setup, and Copilot extensibility requires expertise. This is where your BC partner earns their keep — configuring the agents for your workflows, not the generic demo ones.

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Getting Started with V28

V28 (version 28.2) is now generally available. New Business Central customers signing up today are deployed directly on V28. Existing customers on SaaS receive the update automatically over the coming weeks.

If you’re on-premises or running an older version, the upgrade path is through your partner — and yes, it’s worth it for this release.

Want to understand what V28 means for your specific environment — agents, expense management, or the financial reporting overhaul? Learn about our Business Central implementation service or book a free discovery call and we’ll walk through it.

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Vanguard 360 Solutions is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner and LS Retail Gold Partner based in Sibiu, Romania, serving clients across Europe, the UK, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. We’ve completed over 50 end-to-end implementations and support 70+ active customers.