---
title: "Dynamics NAV to Business Central Upgrade: What Changes and How to Do It Right"
id: "19963"
type: "post"
slug: "dynamics-nav-to-business-central-upgrade"
published_at: "2026-06-11T11:34:01+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-06-11T12:14:23+00:00"
url: "https://volt-technologies.com/post/dynamics-nav-to-business-central-upgrade/"
markdown_url: "https://volt-technologies.com/post/dynamics-nav-to-business-central-upgrade.md"
excerpt: "Modernize manufacturing AR with Microsoft Copilot. Improve cash visibility reduce manual work and apply payments faster."
taxonomy_category:
  - "Business Central"
  - "Post"
  - "Supply Chain Management"
---

# Dynamics NAV to Business Central Upgrade: What Changes and How to Do It Right

## Introduction

If you’re planning a Dynamics NAV to Business Central upgrade, or still deciding whether to start, here is the situation as it stands: Microsoft ended support for Dynamics NAV in January 2023. No security patches. No compliance updates. No bug fixes. Every organization still running Navision is carrying security exposure that grows every month, compounding the problem with every dollar invested in a platform Microsoft has officially walked away from.

In a recent video, Zach Karahalios, Director of Business Development at Volt Technologies, walks through the Navision to Business Central migration process end to end: what the discovery looks like, how customizations are handled, why the version of NAV you’re running matters less than you’d expect, and what happens if you keep waiting. This post expands on that video and goes deeper on the specifics you need to assess your situation and plan your next move.

Volt Technologies has been implementing Microsoft ERP systems for over 30 years and holds 10x Microsoft Inner Circle status, placing the firm in the top 1% of Microsoft Business Applications partners worldwide. The guidance below reflects that depth of experience across hundreds of NAV environments, from clean standard installs to the most heavily extended Navision implementations in production.

Table of Contents

## What Is a Dynamics NAV to Business Central Upgrade?

A Dynamics NAV to Business Central upgrade is the migration of an organization's ERP from Microsoft Dynamics NAV (any version of Navision) to Microsoft [Dynamics 365](https://volt-technologies.com/dynamics-365-business-central/)
[Business Central](https://volt-technologies.com/dynamics-365-business-central/)
, Microsoft's current, cloud-native ERP platform. The project covers functional process redesign, data migration, integration remapping, customization evaluation, and go-live. It is not a software update; it is a platform migration, and it requires a structured methodology to deliver business value rather than just a working system.

## How the Migration Works: From Discovery to Go-Live

| Stage | What Happens |
| --- | --- |
| Discovery | Full audit of your NAV environment, functional scope, integrations, reports, extensions, and data |
| Technical scoping | Four workstreams: integrations, reports, extensions/ISVs, and data migration |
| Design and build | Business Central configured with process improvements, not a replica of NAV |
| Testing and training | Role-specific UAT and training; business runs on NAV until go-live cutover |
| Go-live | Clean switch with documented cutover plan and hypercare support post-launch |

**What changes:** Deployment model (on-premise to cloud), user interface, integration architecture, customization approach, and update cadence.

**What stays:** Your core business processes, historical financial data, open transactions, and the logic behind workflows that are specific to how your business operates.

## **Why Organizations Still on Navision Need to Act Now**

There are three compounding reasons why the decision to upgrade from Navision to Dynamics 365 Business Central costs less the sooner you make it.

### **Microsoft ended NAV support in January 2023**

Every day on Navision after that date is a day without vendor security coverage. Microsoft is not issuing patches for vulnerabilities discovered in NAV and those vulnerabilities are being discovered. The risk is real and quantifiable: an unsupported ERP sits at the center of your financial data, customer records, and supply chain operations.

### **Technical debt doubles your future investment**

Every report built in NAV, every extension added, every new customer record created, all of it becomes additional scope in your Business Central migration. As Zach explains directly in the video, you are double-dipping: spending on maintenance today and adding cost to the migration you will eventually have to do anyway. The math does not improve with time.

### **Business Central is diverging from NAV with every release**

Business Central ships updates every six weeks and two major releases per year. The gap between where NAV sits frozen and where Business Central is heading widens continuously. Migrating from NAV 2015 to Business Central is a known, well-worn path. Migrating from NAV 2015 to Business Central three years from now, after three years of Business Central evolution, is a harder problem. The migration window is not infinite.

## **What Business Central Gives You That NAV Cannot**

The case for upgrading goes beyond risk avoidance. Business Central is a substantively better platform, and the capabilities gap is specific:

- **[Microsoft Copilot](https://volt-technologies.com/microsoft-copilot/) in Business Central:**Copilot is embedded directly in Business Central, not as an add-on but as a core feature. The Bank Reconciliation Copilot matches transactions and suggests postings. The Sales Order Agent can process inbound orders from email and documents autonomously. The Cash Flow Forecast uses machine learning against your actuals, not just formulas.

- **Native warehouse management:**Business Central’s warehouse module supports directed put-away and pick, bin management, zone configuration, and RF scanning, all without an ISV. For distribution and manufacturing operations still on NAV with bolt-on WMS solutions, this alone justifies the migration cost.

- **[Power Platform](https://volt-technologies.com/microsoft-power-platform/) integration:**Business Central connects natively to Power BI, Power Automate, and Power Apps. Your operations team can build approval flows, dashboards, and lightweight apps without writing AL code.

- **[Microsoft 365](https://volt-technologies.com/microsoft-365/) connectivity:**Teams integration means finance and operations conversations happen with Business Central records in context. Outlook add-in surfaces customer and vendor data directly in email. Excel add-in writes back to Business Central from a spreadsheet.

- **Automatic updates on SaaS:**The SaaS deployment model means you are always on a supported version. No upgrade projects. No version gap accumulation. The two annual major releases require testing, but Microsoft manages the infrastructure entirely.

## **The Upgrade Process: How Volt Approaches a NAV to Business Central Migration**

The lift-and-shift approach, taking what exists in NAV and moving it into Business Central with minimal change, produces a working system but wastes the opportunity. Volt does not recommend it for a Dynamics NAV to Business Central upgrade. The migration is the intervention point: the moment to clean your data, retire unused customizations, improve your processes, and build the Business Central environment your business actually needs going forward. Here is how that structured approach works.

### **Phase 1: Discovery and Functional Scoping**

Volt treats the discovery phase like a clinical assessment. The goal is to understand precisely what your NAV environment is doing, not what the documentation says it does. That means walking through every active functional area: finance, purchasing, sales, warehousing, manufacturing, service management. It means mapping every integration to a peripheral system, every scheduled report, and every data entity that needs to migrate.

The discovery output is a documented functional scope that removes ambiguity before a single line of Business Central configuration is written. Organizations that skip this step spend the back half of their implementation fixing assumptions made in the front half.

### **Phase 2: Technical Scoping: Integrations, Reports, Extensions, and Data**

Volt’s technical scope runs four parallel workstreams:

1. **Integrations:**Every system connected to NAV gets mapped, 3PL platforms, CRMs, payroll systems, e-commerce connectors, EDI configurations. Each one needs a defined Business Central equivalent before go-live.
2. **Reports:**Critical reports don’t migrate automatically. Volt catalogs every report run on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis and determines whether it rebuilds in Business Central natively, in Power BI, or through custom RDLC development.
3. **Extensions and ISVs:**Every customization in the NAV environment gets evaluated against four options: replace with out-of-the-box Business Central functionality, eliminate because the requirement no longer exists, replace with an AppSource ISV, or rebuild as a Business Central extension. Unused customizations are retired rather than carried forward.
4. **Data migration:**Volt’s standard approach migrates all open transactions (outstanding invoices, purchase orders, inventory balances) plus three years of financial summary history. That figure is a starting point, not a rule, organizations with audit or regulatory requirements that demand more history get a scoping conversation, not a fixed answer.

### **Phase 3: Design, Build, and Configuration**

With scope locked, Volt builds the Business Central environment. This phase is where process improvements happen, not as a nice-to-have but as an explicit deliverable. If a NAV process was extended because the base software couldn’t handle it, and Business Central handles it natively, the process gets rebuilt to match Business Central’s standard rather than replicating the workaround.

### **Phase 4: Testing, Training, and Go-Live**

Volt runs user acceptance testing with the actual teams who will operate Business Central post-go-live, not just IT. Training is role-specific: finance runs through the chart of accounts and period close, purchasing works through purchase orders and three-way match, warehouse staff runs through receipt, pick, and ship. The business runs on NAV until the go-live cutover, at which point the switch is clean and documented.

## **Heavily Customized NAV Environments: What Actually Happens**

A customized NAV environment is not a warning sign in a Navision to Business Central migration. Volt has upgraded NAV environments with hundreds of custom tables and modified base objects. The process is the same, the decision tree just has more entries.

The first question for every customization is whether Business Central handles the underlying requirement out of the box. Business Central’s base functionality has expanded substantially since the versions of NAV most organizations are running, and a large share of NAV extensions turn out to be solving problems Business Central now solves natively. Those customizations get retired.

Where Business Central’s native functionality has a ceiling, for example, advanced lot traceability requirements in food and beverage, or complex royalty calculations in apparel, Volt evaluates AppSource ISVs before recommending custom development. For requirements with no off-the-shelf solution, Volt’s development team builds and certifies the extension for Business Central.

Older NAV versions – 2009, 2013, 2015 – do not automatically mean a harder migration. The version determines the technical upgrade path; the scope of customizations determines the project complexity. Volt has established upgrade pathways for every supported NAV version. The version you’re on is a factor in planning, not a disqualifier.

## **Dynamics NAV vs. Dynamics 365 Business Central**

| Announcement | Dynamics NAV | Dynamics 365 Business Central |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Microsoft support | Ended January 2023 | Active, updates every 6 weeks |
| Security patching | None since 2023 | Continuous via Microsoft Azure |
| AI and Copilot | Not available | Copilot embedded: Bank Reconciliation, Sales Order Agent, Cash Flow Forecast |
| Deployment | On-premise only | On-premise only |
| Updates | Manual upgrade projects | Automatic on SaaS; two major releases per year |
| Power Platform integration | Not native | Native, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps |
| Mobile access | Limited, version-dependent | Full responsive web client; iOS and Android apps |
| AppSource ecosystem | C/SIDE modifications only | 800+ certified AppSource extensions |

## **What to Look for in a NAV Upgrade Partner and What Volt Brings**

A Dynamics NAV to Business Central migration is a multi-year ERP decision, not a project. The partner you engage will be configuring the system your finance, operations, and supply chain teams run on for the next decade. That context changes what matters in a partner selection.

Volt Technologies is built around four differentiators that matter specifically for this type of engagement:

- **Vertical expertise:**Volt serves apparel and fashion, distribution, manufacturing, CPG, and retail, industries where ERP requirements are specific and where generic implementations break down. For apparel brands, Volt’s proprietary Volt 365® Apparel solution extends Business Central with purpose-built modules for style/color/size matrices, vendor allocation, landed cost, and wholesale order management. Clients including Rag & Bone, Marc Jacobs, Vera Bradley, and 5.11 Tactical run on Volt implementations.

- **Hands-on engagement model:**Volt’s consultants own the implementation from discovery through hypercare, not a discovery team that hands off to a delivery team that hands off to a support team. The people who assess your NAV environment are the people who build your Business Central environment.

- **Enterprise methodology applied to mid-market:**With 30+ years in Microsoft ERP and 10x Microsoft Inner Circle recognition, Volt brings the rigor of large-scale ERP delivery without the overhead structure that makes enterprise SI engagements impractical for mid-market organizations.

- **Ongoing partnership:**Volt’s client relationships run in years, not months. Business Central evolves with two major releases per year. Having a partner who understands your implementation history is the difference between a release wave being a routine update and a destabilizing event.

## **The Case for Moving Now**

The Dynamics NAV to Business Central upgrade is one of the few ERP decisions where waiting has a clear, calculable cost. Microsoft ended NAV support in January 2023. Security exposure grows every month. Every dollar spent maintaining NAV adds scope to the migration. And Business Central’s feature set, including Copilot, native warehousing, and Power Platform integration, gets further from NAV’s capabilities with every release wave.

Zach Karahalios walks through this entire process in detail, from the first discovery conversation to go-live, in Volt’s latest video. If you want to see how Volt approaches a NAV migration before you pick up the phone, start there.

## Frequently Asked Questions

Is Microsoft still supporting Dynamics NAV?

No. Microsoft ended mainstream support for all versions of Dynamics NAV in January 2023. There are no security patches, no compliance updates, and no bug fixes being issued. Organizations on NAV are running on an unpatched platform with no vendor remediation path for new vulnerabilities.

How long does a NAV to Business Central upgrade take?

Project duration is determined by functional scope, integration count, customization complexity, and data volume, not by version number. A standard mid-market NAV environment with limited customizations and two or three integrations can go live in four to six months. Complex environments with deep customizations, multiple integrations, and large data volumes run twelve to eighteen months. Volt scopes each project individually during discovery, with a defined timeline delivered before any commitment.

What data comes over from NAV to Business Central?

All open transactions migrate: outstanding sales orders, purchase orders, open invoices, and current inventory balances. For financial history, Volt's standard recommendation is three years of summary-level data. Organizations with audit requirements, long-tail receivables, or regulatory obligations that require more history get a scoping conversation, the three-year figure is a planning baseline, not a hard limit.

What happens to customizations built in NAV?

Every customization gets evaluated against four options: replace with native Business Central functionality, retire because the business requirement no longer applies, replace with an AppSource ISV, or rebuild as a certified Business Central extension. Nothing is ported automatically. The evaluation is one of the most valuable outputs of the discovery phase because it forces a current-state assessment of what the business actually needs, not what it needed when the NAV customization was written.

Does the version of NAV I'm running affect the project?

Version affects the technical upgrade path, not the project viability. Volt has established upgrade pathways for every supported NAV version including NAV 2009, NAV 2013, NAV 2015, NAV 2016, NAV 2017, and NAV 2018. The complexity driver is what the system does and how it's been extended, not the version number on the about screen.

How do I start a NAV to Business Central upgrade with Volt?

Volt offers a free consultation that covers a discovery review of your NAV environment and returns a defined picture of scope, timeline, resources, and budget. There is no obligation. Reach out to Volt Technologies directly to schedule it.

## Ready to Upgrade from Dynamics NAV?

Get a free consultation with Volt Technologies to assess your current NAV environment and receive a tailored upgrade roadmap, including scope, timeline, and budget, completely obligation-free.

[Contact Us](https://volt-technologies.com/contact/)

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[Mason Whitaker](https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonwhitaker/)
Microsoft Dynamics 365 | Simplify your IT footprint and make decisions faster.