01Feature delta
What's introduced between your selected source and target. Sorted by migration impact, descending. High-impact items are things teams will feel in the first month after cutover.
02Add-on delta
Capabilities from the ISV add-on stack, kept out of the main list so they are never mistaken for standard Business Central. Each vendor is a separate block below — everything in a block requires that vendor's product licensed on top of BC.
03Migration risks & honest trade-offs
What gets lost, what gets harder, and what has to be planned around. Most NAV-to-BC pitches skip this section. It's the most useful one.
C/AL → AL conversion high
NAV customisations are in C/AL. BC extensions must be in AL. There is no automated lift-and-shift for non-trivial code; bespoke logic gets re-architected as an extension or replaced with native BC functionality.
RDLC report rebuilds medium
Custom NAV reports often need rework. Word and Excel layouts are now first-class in BC; some legacy RDLC reports are being phased out (deferral reports replaced with Word/Excel in BC27).
Monthly release cadence medium
SaaS BC updates monthly with two major waves a year (April, October). Major waves can be deferred up to 90 days but not skipped. Organisations need a regression-test pattern they typically don't have for NAV.
Loss of direct SQL access medium
SaaS BC has no direct SQL Server. Reports, integrations, and bespoke queries that hit SQL today must be refactored to use APIs, OData, or Power BI. It bites hardest wherever operational reporting was built straight onto the database rather than through the application.
Add-on compatibility medium
Every NAV add-on needs a verified BC SaaS equivalent on AppSource, or a contracted port. Audit before committing — a missing add-on can stall a migration.
ISV re-implementation, not a port high
Where an add-on has been re-platformed rather than upgraded, the migration is a second project running alongside the BC one. LS Nav → LS Central is the clearest example: despite branding continuity it is a re-implementation, and replication, POS configurations, and data offloading patterns may all need redesign. Check each ISV in your estate for which pattern applies before assuming any of them come across intact.
License model change low
Per-user subscription replaces concurrent-user licensing. Cost modelling needs redoing — Premium vs Essentials user mix matters, and team-member licences are cheaper for read/approval-only roles.
Data migration scope medium
Cloud Migration tool covers core ledgers and master data. Open documents, configurations, and posted history need explicit decisions about what travels and what stays in a NAV archive.
04Support timeline
When the cliffs are, for every release — not just the common ones. The hero line at the top of the page shows the runway for whichever source version you have selected.
NAV mainstream support
ENDED · ALL RELEASES
Every Dynamics NAV release has passed mainstream support. Past that point a release gets security patches only — no new features and no regulatory updates.
NAV extended support
FIXED LIFECYCLE POLICY
End dates by release: NAV 2009 R2 · 14 Jan 2020 — NAV 2013 · 10 Jan 2023 (R2 · 9 Jan 2024) — NAV 2015 · 14 Jan 2025 — NAV 2016 · 13 Jan 2026 — NAV 2017 · 12 Jan 2027 — NAV 2018 · 11 Jan 2028.
After a release's date, that system is unsupported entirely: no fixes, no compliance updates, no Microsoft escalation path.
BC SaaS
CONTINUOUS
Modern lifecycle policy — no end-of-support date to plan against. Two major waves a year (April, October), monthly minor updates. Currently on BC28.
BC on-premises
PER-VERSION
On-prem BC versions carry their own fixed support windows rather than rolling forward automatically. If you are staying on-prem, check the lifecycle page for the specific version you are targeting.
LS Nav add-on
DISCONTINUED · 2019
Only relevant if you license LS Retail's product. LS Nav was rebranded to LS Central in 2019; it remains on legacy support but gets no new development.
05Why migrate
Context for anyone who landed here without the framing. The structural argument, in short — it applies to any NAV release, and none of it is advice about your particular estate.
A NAV system that works today carries on working after its support date. The question is not whether it stops, but what accumulates in the gap between the support date and whenever you move — and whether moving while there is still time to plan costs less than moving when there isn't.
Compliance drift is invisible until it isn't. Digital tax and e-invoicing mandates — MTD in the UK, the e-invoicing rollouts across the EU, SAF-T expansions elsewhere — are delivered by Microsoft to BC, not back-ported to NAV. Which of these apply depends entirely on where you trade, but the pattern doesn't: each missed update becomes a custom build, a manual workaround, or a gap.
Customisations are getting more expensive, not less. C/AL is a labour market that shrinks every year. BC's AL extension model is what every new partner, contractor, and ISV is building for. The longer the wait, the smaller and dearer the support pool for whatever bespoke code you hold.
Add-ons age with the platform, sometimes faster. If your estate depends on ISV products, check where each vendor's investment is actually going — a product still on a supported list is not necessarily a product still being developed. LS Nav is the clearest example: retired and rebranded to LS Central in 2019, with LS Retail's investment since going almost entirely into the BC-based product.
Being current on cumulative updates does not change this. CUs deliver security patches and regulatory hotfixes within the extended-support envelope; they do not deliver new features, and they stop when that envelope expires.
06How to use this
Pick your source version (where you are now) and target version (where you're considering moving to). The feature list updates to show only features introduced between those versions, filtered by your chosen deployment model.
Open filter by tag to narrow the list — multi-select with AND logic, so adding "Finance" then "Tax" shows only features tagged both. Click a tag again to deselect it. Tag counts update to show how many features in the current delta carry each tag, and the panel opens automatically when you follow a link that already has tags applied.
The list is grouped as you sort it: sorting by impact bands the entries high / medium / low, sorting by version bands them by wave.
Each entry cites the Microsoft, LS Retail, or Continia release note where the feature was introduced, gives the migration impact in plain language, and includes an honest take on whether it actually matters versus whether it's vendor noise.
An asterisk (*) on a version badge means the wave is approximate. Entries marked ○ unverified draft have not been verified against primary sources — they're best-effort drafts pending review. Entries marked ✓ verified have been checked against the cited Microsoft Learn, LS Retail, or Continia page.
Add-on capabilities (LS Central and Continia Document Capture today) are kept in their own section, grouped per vendor and badged — nothing in the main feature list requires anything beyond standard Business Central, so if you don't license an add-on its section is simply ignorable.
Comparisons are shareable: the URL tracks everything — versions, deployment, tags, filters, sort, and search — so copy link reproduces exactly what you're looking at. Each expanded entry also has a copy link to entry that opens the page with that entry expanded.
The Detail control sets how much of each entry you see. brief shows just what changed — the fastest read-through for a non-technical audience. standard (default) adds the honest take and the sources. deep opens the practitioner tier: what you do on NAV today, prerequisites, adoption effort, what to watch out for, whether the feature switches itself on or needs an administrator, its preview and GA dates, and a link to the product documentation as distinct from the release-note announcement. Not every entry has the deep tier yet — those that don't say so plainly rather than showing an empty shell.
Use export csv or export md to download the current filtered delta — handy for pasting into a migration assessment. In deep mode the Markdown export and the print briefing both carry the practitioner detail through, so the download is a working document rather than a summary. Print briefing generates a circulate-ready document for the selected comparison: every high-impact change with its honest take, the medium-impact list, the risks grid, and the support timeline — print it or save as PDF. Press / to jump to the search box. Sort by impact (default) or by version to read the delta chronologically.
07Sources & further reading
Primary sources only. Vendor blog posts deliberately excluded.
Microsoft release plans, by wave: learn.microsoft.com/dynamics365/release-plans
BC documentation hub: learn.microsoft.com/business-central
BC product lifecycle: learn.microsoft.com/lifecycle
NAV 2018 lifecycle: learn.microsoft.com/lifecycle/microsoft-dynamics-nav-2018
LS Central documentation: help.lscentral.lsretail.com
LS Central release notes, by version: help.lscentral.lsretail.com/…/Release-Notes-LS-Central
Microsoft deprecated features (what gets removed): learn.microsoft.com/…/deprecated-features-w1