Why Organizations Are Migrating from Dynamics SL to Business Central—and What They’re Gaining

With Microsoft Dynamics SL end of life status and it no longer being maintained or updated, organizations that have relied on it for years are finding themselves at a crossroads. Staying on SL means facing growing limitations, increasing support challenges, and soon-to-be outdated infrastructure. Forward-thinking finance leaders are using this moment as a catalyst to move to cloud-based business software solutions and most are selecting Microsoft Business Central, but why? When there are so many cloud ERP options these days, why are companies using SL moving to Business Central so often?

From what we’ve seen, the return speaks for itself. In 2024, Forrester surveyed 160 companies that had transitioned from on-premises Dynamics ERP systems to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud. Even after accounting for hardware investments and years of technical debt, those companies saw an average return on investment (ROI) of 265% over three years. As we said, there are several cloud-based business software solutions that these companies could have moved to, but an average ROI of 265% means that there were companies with significantly higher ROIs too. Those other solutions can’t make that same claim.

So what brought such a high ROI after Microsoft Dynamics SL end of life? Here’s a closer look at the four key areas where companies are seeing major improvements after making the switch:

1. A Smarter Foundation: From Subaccounts to Dimensions
   One of the biggest shifts when moving from Dynamics SL to Business Central is the structure of the Chart of Accounts (COA). In SL, finance teams often work with long, rigid subaccount strings to segment data. Business Central takes a fundamentally different (and better) approach by using dimensions.Dimensions act as flexible tags you apply to transactions, such as department, region, customer, or project, without ballooning the size of your COA. This makes it dramatically easier to maintain the chart and enables real-time, slice-and-dice reporting across multiple business perspectives.

   During the migration, companies typically map their existing SL subaccounts to Business Central’s dimensions. What they get is cleaner data entry, simplified reporting, and better insight, without having to rebuild their accounting logic from scratch.

   Plus, because Business Central is a cloud-based business software solution, it eliminates the need for costly infrastructure while offering automatic updates, tighter security, and remote accessibility for teams.

2. Out-of-the-Box Financial Functionality (AKA: No Add-Ons)
   Companies migrating from SL to Business Central often discover that the functionality they once had to bolt on or work around is now included out of the box.
   Core financial modules in Business Central include:
   • General Ledger (GL)
   • Accounts Payable (AP)
   • Accounts Receivable (AR)
   • Bank Reconciliation, including ACH payments and positive pay
   • Multicurrency management
   • Support for multi-entity environments (in some cases, up to six or more companies)
   • The ability to export sales invoices as customized XML files for integration with customer or internal systems

   All of this is natively within Business Central’s cloud platform, creating a more seamless user experience. No more disconnected tools or complex workarounds. Just a modern, unified system built for today’s finance teams like yours. By relying on Business Central’s native functionality, many businesses avoid over $80,000 annually in third-party software fees.

3. Integration Without Barriers: Built for Modern Connectivity
   Today’s businesses rely on a mix of software tools, and ERP systems need to play nicely with them. Most cloud-based business software solutions are ok at this, but this is where Business Central truly shines.With powerful web services and APIs, Business Central makes it easy to connect with third-party platforms or custom in-house applications. For one organization, integrating their proprietary AR platform was critical to the success of their migration. Collaborating with internal developers, they used Business Central’s API framework to create a real-time data flow between the systems: no rekeying, no lag, just clean, connected information.

   Whether you need to integrate with a homegrown system, a CRM, or a payroll provider, Business Central gives you the flexibility to do so with minimal disruption to operations.

4. Small UX Improvements with Big Impact
   Functionality alone doesn’t drive adoption. User experience does. One often-overlooked strength of Business Central is how it allows users to personalize their experience in ways that actually improve productivity. For example:
   • Users can create personalized pages tailored to their roles
   • They can save views and filters in list screens to easily return to common queries
   • Navigation is intuitive, and tasks like pulling a P&L or reviewing payments are much faster

   These smaller usability features might seem minor at first, but they add up, reducing clicks, minimizing training time, and enabling users to work more independently.

   In one of our Business Central migrations, their finance team could now get answers without needing to go to IT for a custom report. Just apply a filter or adjust a view, and the information is right there. It’s not just about speed. That ease of use, combined with powerful reporting, has made it easier for the team to work independently, move faster, and make better-informed decisions without relying on IT.

   Tom Burbeck, the CFO of RQA, explains, “The nice thing about 365 as a user is that I can get any report my little heart desires by using filters and different ways to manipulate the data that’s already there. I don’t need to have a huge IT background or a coding programming background to get a P&L, so that’s what we liked about it – its flexibility, and it’s very easy to teach people how to use it. It’s very easy to get things done.” Business Central has empowered RQA’s finance team to take ownership of their data.

Our Takeaway

If your organization is still wondering how to handle the Microsoft Dynamics SL end of life, the question isn’t if you’ll need to upgrade… It’s when. The good news is that the move to Business Central doesn’t just solve an immediate support issue. It fundamentally changes the way finance teams operate. By providing its users with:

• A more flexible chart of accounts through dimensions
• Powerful financial features that are included in the base system
• Built-in integration capabilities with proprietary and third-party systems
• An experience designed to support how people actually work

As Burbeck puts it, “We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and so now we know what we know, and it’s way better.”

Need help navigating your path from SL to Business Central or evaluating cloud-based business software solutions? Let’s talk about what a smooth, strategic migration could look like for you.