Microsoft Copilot in Business Central is generally available. If you're already on BC Premium or BC Essentials with M365 Copilot licenses, you can switch it on in 30 minutes. Here's how.
Licence prerequisites
To add Microsoft Copilot in Business Central, you need three licences:
- Business Central Essentials or Premium per user
- Microsoft 365 Copilot at USD 30/user/month (or equivalent in your currency)
- For some scenarios, a Power Automate or Power Platform per-app licence
Copilot in BC is included in the M365 Copilot subscription — no separate BC Copilot licence required.
Step 1 — Enable in the BC admin centre
From the BC environment admin:
- Open Tenant Admin → Copilot & AI Capabilities
- Toggle on the features you want active (sales line suggestions, marketing text, bank reconciliation assist, etc.)
- Confirm your data residency: choose 'Don't move my data outside my region' for UAE / KSA tenants
- Accept the AI services data-processing agreement
- Wait 5–10 minutes for the feature flag to propagate
Step 2 — Test the first scenario
The fastest 'wow' moment is bank reconciliation:
- Open a bank account in BC
- Click 'Reconcile' on a recent statement period
- Click the Copilot suggestion button — Copilot proposes matches
- Approve or correct
A 30-minute manual reconciliation drops to 5 minutes. That's the conversation that sells Copilot to your finance team.
Step 3 — Roll out by user role
Don't enable for all users on day one. Roll out by role:
- Finance: bank rec, narrative generation, GL anomaly detection
- Sales: marketing text suggestions, item description drafting
- Procurement: PO suggestion (or use Purchase Co-Pilot for deeper agent behaviour)
- Operations: forecast review, variance commentary
Step 4 — Train the team (60 minutes)
Most Copilot productivity gain comes from learning what to ask. A 60-minute team session with these 6 prompts gets people productive:
- 'Summarise this sales order in 3 sentences'
- 'Reconcile this bank statement against open invoices'
- 'Write a 50-word product description for this item'
- 'What does this purchase order pattern tell you?'
- 'Generate a variance commentary for last month's revenue'
- 'Suggest a follow-up email to a customer with 60-day overdue invoices'
Step 5 — Monitor and measure
BC admin centre shows Copilot usage per user. Track:
- Adoption rate (% of licensed users using Copilot weekly)
- Time-saved (self-reported in user surveys)
- Error rate (Copilot suggestions accepted vs corrected)
Most teams hit 70%+ weekly adoption within 6 weeks if the rollout is well-introduced.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need Azure OpenAI for Copilot in BC?
No. Copilot in BC is a fully managed Microsoft service. Azure OpenAI is for custom agents you build yourself.
Is our data used to train Microsoft's AI models?
No. Microsoft's commercial Copilot terms explicitly state tenant data is not used to train foundational models.
Can we restrict Copilot to certain departments?
Yes. M365 Copilot licences are per user; assign only to relevant teams.
Does Copilot support Arabic?
Yes. Arabic input and output is supported, including financial narrative generation in Arabic.
What about industry-specific Copilots like Purchase Co-Pilot?
Purchase Co-Pilot and Retail Co-Pilot are Novasoft AI add-ons that extend Copilot beyond the Microsoft defaults.
How long does adoption typically take?
70%+ weekly adoption within 6 weeks if rolled out with role-based prompts and a 60-minute team session.
Where to go next
Read the full overview of AI in Business Central. For a deeper dive into related capability, see Purchase Co-Pilot for BC. When you're ready to talk specifics, book a 30-minute call with a Novasoft consultant.