Explainer
Business Central costs £61.50 per user per month for Essentials and £84.60 for Premium on Microsoft’s UK price list. Here is what each licence includes, what implementation typically adds, and how to keep the total under control.
By Christopher Fagan, Managing Partner, PEF Consulting Partners
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft’s ERP for small and mid sized businesses: finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, projects and, in the Premium edition, manufacturing and service management. It runs in Microsoft’s cloud, works closely with Microsoft 365, Teams and Power BI, and replaced Dynamics NAV as Microsoft’s product for this market.
| Licence | UK price per user per month, billed yearly, excluding VAT | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | £61.50 | Finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, warehousing, projects and Copilot features |
| Premium | £84.60 | Everything in Essentials, plus manufacturing and service management |
| Team Members | £6.20 | Light users who read data, approve and make limited updates |
These are Microsoft’s published UK list prices as of October 2026. The most recent Business Central price rise took effect on 1 November 2025, when the US list price of Essentials went from $70 to $80 and Premium from $100 to $110; Team Members did not change.
Licences are usually the smaller part of the first year. A straightforward, finance led Business Central implementation with a Microsoft partner typically costs in the tens of thousands of pounds, rising well into six figures for multi entity groups, manufacturing or heavy integration. The main drivers are the number of entities and processes in scope, data migration from the old system, integrations, reporting and how much the business is changing at the same time.
Business Central is sold and implemented by Microsoft partners, and partner quality varies widely. Choose on industry experience, the named team, the method and references, not just the day rate. Because we hold no reseller agreements, we can help you choose a partner, hold them to account, or lead the client side of the programme.
Business Central suits most businesses with standard processes and up to a few hundred users. Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management suit larger, more complex or multinational organisations, at a higher price and with a minimum licence commitment. See Dynamics 365 pricing in the UK.
Related reading: independent Dynamics 365 consultancy, Dynamics NAV end of support, ERP implementation costs in the UK, what ERP is.
On Microsoft’s UK price list, £61.50 per user per month for Essentials, £84.60 for Premium and £6.20 for Team Members, billed yearly and excluding VAT.
Premium includes everything in Essentials and adds manufacturing and service management. Most distribution, services and finance led businesses only need Essentials.
Business Central is the successor to Dynamics NAV, built on the same heritage but delivered as a modern cloud service with a different extension model. Moving from NAV is usually an upgrade or a reimplementation.
Typically three to nine months, depending on entities, processes, data migration and integrations.
If you are comparing Business Central quotes, an independent read of the scope, assumptions and team will tell you more than the day rate. We take no commission from Microsoft or any partner.