Dynamics 365 Business Central Trials and Subscriptions

Business Central is available in an increasing number of countries across the world. If you want to learn about Business Central, you can sign up for a free trial. Then, when you are ready, you can talk to a reselling partner about getting a subscription.

If you are not already working with a partner, see How do I find a reselling partner?.

Getting Started with a Trial

You can sign up for a free trial here. We recommend that you work with a reselling partner to help your organization get started with Business Central.

Depending on your country or region, the trial includes the languages and functionality that your country or region requires. For more information, see Changing Language and Locale.

In Business Central, some things will be familiar to you, and other things might be unfamiliar. When you first sign in to the demonstration company, you get access to a Getting Started page with links to videos that can help you get started. For more information, see Getting Started with Dynamics 365 Business Central.

If you encounter difficulties, the Frequently Asked Questions page can help you answer some of your questions. If you are unable to sign up for the trial, the Troubleshooting Self-Service Sign-Up page can help. You can also contact a partner and ask them to create a free trial or a different type of preview of Business Central for you.

Try Out Your Own Company

If you want to try out Business Central with your own data, you can switch to a free 30 day trial with an empty company. The Set up my company assisted setup guide can help you specify basic information about your business. Optionally, you can import data from your existing business management solution so that you can evaluate Business Central with your own data. However, we recommend that you do not use a free trial to help run your business. Contact a reselling partner to learn more about how to get started with Business Central.

If 30 days are not enough for you to decide, you can extend your trial. For more information, see Need More Time to Decide Whether to Subscribe?.

Setting Up Your Company in Business Central

To help you set up your company, the Assisted Setup page lists the assisted setup guides that can help you. Depending on your role and country or region, the page shows different assistant setup guides as illustrated in the following table:

Assisted Setup	Description
Set Up My Company	Creates a new trial company for you to enter data and try out Business Central.
Set Up Approval Workflows	Sets up the ability to automatically notify an approver when a user tries to create or change certain values on documents, journal lines, or cards. For example, you can set up approval of amounts above a specified limit.
Set Up Email	Gets you ready for sending email messages directly from, for example, sales orders or contacts in Business Central.
Set Up Your Business Inbox in Outlook	Gets you ready to manage business interactions with your customers and vendors, directly in Microsoft Outlook.
Migrate Business Data	Lets you import your existing company data such as vendors, customers, and items from Excel or Quickbooks.
Set Up Email Logging	Sets up the capability to log email correspondence in Business Central to follow up on interactions.
Set Up an Item Approval Workflow	Sets up the ability to send a notification to an approver when a user changes or creates an item.
Set Up a Customer Approval Workflow	Sets up the ability to automatically notify an approver when a user tries to create or change a customer card.
Set Up a Payment Approval Workflow	Sets up the ability to send a notification to an approver when a user sends payment journal lines for approval.
Set Up Dynamics 365 Sales Connection	Sets up a connection to Dynamics 365 Sales, which allows you to synchronize data such as contacts and sales order information.
Set Up Cash Flow Forecast	Sets up the Cash Flow Forecast chart, so you can view the predicted movement of cash in and out of your business. The chart is available on the Accountant Role Center.
Set Up Reporting Data	Sets up data sets that you can use to build powerful reports using Excel or Power BI, for example.
Invite External Accountant	If you use an external accountant to manage your books and financial reporting, you can invite them to your Business Central so they can work with you on your fiscal data.

The Assisted Setup page may contain other entries. When you go through a setup, the setup will be marked as Completed. You can set up additional areas of the company by using manual setup. For more information, see Setting Up Business Central.

Resetting your Business Central trial experience

If you have added data to your Business Central free trial, and you want to start over with a fresh experience, you can create a new evaluation company and then delete the first company. Open the Companies page and choose New to start the Create New Company assisted setup guide. The guide can help you set up a fresh evaluation company with sample data. You can also create a copy of your current company, sign out, and then sign into your new company.

Important

When you share Business Central with other people from your organization, you must make sure other people are not logged in when you delete a company.

Getting Started with a Subscription

Each time you sign in during the trial period, a notification in a blue bar at the top displays the time remaining. If you decide to subscribe, find a Business Central partner. For more information, see How do I find a reselling partner?. The reselling partner can help you set up Business Central to fit your business, including importing your data from your previous system. You can also customize Business Central by adding apps from Microsoft AppSource.

Business Central online uses Office 365. If your company uses a different type of email setup, the reselling partner can help you decided how to migrate, or if you should use Business Central on-premises.

You can also contact the Business Central Sales team.

Getting Started with Sandboxes

Sandbox environments can be a way for you to practice with Business Central. Think of a sandbox as a non-production environment that you can use on top of your production instance of Business Central. For example, if you want to take the free online training from Microsoft Learn, your administrator can create a sandbox environment so that you and your colleagues can practice there rather than in your production environment.

If you are a developer, a sandbox lets you safely build and test extensions and develop new functionality to customize the service without affecting the data and settings of your production environment.

Right now, all customers can use a sandbox, including organizations who have signed up for a trial. For more information about how to get started with a sandbox, see Creating a Sandbox Environment.

Note

Sandboxes created this way contain demonstration data for the fictitious CRONUS company. No data is copied or otherwise transferred from the production environment.

The administrator of your Business Central and your reselling partner can create additional environments in the administration center. For more information, see The Business Central Administration Center.