Quick Tip: What’s in Business Central Update 28.1

Update 28.1 for Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1 is available.

Expense Agent and Expense Management

The headline addition in 28.1 is the Expense Agent, entering public preview alongside a new Expense Management module. These two pieces go together: the module provides the data structure (expense reports, categories, subcategories, posting groups, approval workflow), and the agent provides the automation layer on top of it.

Employees submit receipts through a dedicated web app at app.expenses.dynamics.com or by forwarding them to a monitored shared mailbox. Neither route requires a Business Central license for the submitter. The agent then handles the full cycle:

• Extracts merchant, date, amount, currency, and payment method from each receipt
• Categorizes and itemizes expenses based on configured categories and rules
• Calculates per diem from uploaded itinerary documents
• For mileage expenses: the user provides start and end points, the agent calculates available routes, and a screenshot of the chosen route is attached to the expense record
• Groups expenses into a monthly report and submits for approval automatically when no policy violations are detected

All financial data, audit trails, and posting logic remain in Business Central. The agent interacts with Business Central the same way a user would, using page metadata to determine each processing step.

Before enabling this for any customer, two prerequisites are worth flagging:

• The Expense Agent uses Anthropic models. You must explicitly enable Anthropic as an AI subprocessor in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center before the agent will function.
• Processing is billed on a consumption basis: 50 Copilot Credits per receipt, covering the full cycle from extraction through posting. That cost needs to be factored into any customer conversation before going live.

One geographic constraint: the public preview is English only and limited to the US. Australia, New Zealand, and the UK are added in July 2026. Other regions follow later. Outside those markets this is worth understanding but not yet deployable for customers.

Expense management has historically been a gap in standard Business Central, addressed either by customization or third-party apps. A built-in agent-driven module with Outlook integration changes that calculation for straightforward use cases. The more complex scenarios, multi-currency with non-standard exchange rate policies, project-specific per diem rules, and elaborate approval chains, will still push toward partner solutions for now.

Agent Designer Expands Availability

The Agent Designer, which lets administrators and power users design custom AI agents without writing AL code, was already in public preview. Update 28.1 makes it available on production environments and adds an evaluation tool. That is a meaningful shift: it was previously restricted to sandbox environments, which limited how seriously anyone could assess it for real use cases.

The feature is documented under the Envision and design AI agents in Business Central release plan entry. It remains in public preview; general availability is listed as May 2026, so that transition is either imminent or already underway.

Reporting: Layout Lifecycle Control

Report layout administrators can now assign a status to each layout: Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, or Retired. Only layouts with Approved status are visible to end users. Retired layouts are no longer available without being deleted.

This is a small feature with real governance value, particularly in environments where multiple layouts exist for the same report and controlling which one users see has previously required workarounds. It reaches general availability in 28.1.

Documentation is at Control the lifecycle of report layouts on Microsoft Learn.

Other Features Reaching General Availability

Several features complete their transition from public preview to general availability in this update:

• Excise tax calculation is now generally available, covering the setup and calculation of excise duties on relevant transactions.
• Investment Boost for fixed assets reaches general availability, supporting country-specific tax incentive schemes for capital investment.
• Audit user and group permissions across apps gives administrators a consolidated view of permissions assigned across all installed extensions, not just the base application.
• Enhanced reports for deferrals and trial balances are generally available, replacing older RDLC-based reports with faster, more flexible alternatives. Note that this applies to these specific base application reports, not to RDLC as a layout format for partner-built extensions.
• New APIs for approval workflow analysis and permission analysis are generally available, targeting auditors and IT staff who need structured access to this data outside the standard UI.
• E-invoice formats for service invoices in Germany reach general availability as part of the continued e-invoicing rollout across European markets.
• Validate Dynamics GP data migration reaches general availability for customers running cloud migration from GP environments.
• Troubleshooting MCP Server for AL is now generally available, providing AL developers with a Model Context Protocol server for debugging and troubleshooting tooling integration.

Hotfixes Worth Knowing About

Over 100 application fixes and 13 platform fixes are included. Selected highlights:

• Deferral amount miscalculations in Subscription Billing when contracts start mid-month (625237)
• Non-Deductible VAT calculated incorrectly on negative lines in purchase credit memos (629410)
• Inventory posting infinite loop caused by incorrect negative entry number handling (630351)
• Duplicate item tracking reservations when registering a partial warehouse pick with an existing lot reservation (629756)
• Regenerative planning skipping components when SKUs are configured with a calculated low level code (631384)
• Production orders using routing numbers from the item card instead of the location SKU (625657)
• Cross-origin frame error when printing PDFs in Chrome 144 and later (630544)
• Fluent UI click interception in Edge 147 and later (630506)
• SMTP connector silently dropping attachments when AddAttachment fails (630911)
• Belgian Financial Journal using the first CODA statement instead of the last booked bank statement for Balance Last Statement and Statement Ending Balance (631250)

The full fix list is at Microsoft Support KB5093780.

Upgrade Notes

Online customers on BC28 will receive 28.1 automatically or can schedule it through the Admin Center. Customers still on version 27 or earlier need to go through the full upgrade path to version 28 first. On-premises customers can find the upgrade documentation at Install a Business Central 2026 release wave 1 update.

The full feature table for 28.1 is at Update 28.1 for Business Central 2026 release wave 1 on Microsoft Learn.