Migrate Dynamics GP to Business Central

Don’t Just Upgrade Your Software. Upgrade Your Business Future.

Move from Microsoft Dynamics GP to Business Central with confidence. No junior consultants, no “learning on the job”, just senior experts ensuring your data lands safely.

*Expert assessment of your current GP environment.

Great Plains to the cloud: It’s not a question of if, but when.

Learn how to navigate the migration timeline, protect your data, and leverage industry accelerators to speed up your move.

Why staying on Great Plains is costing you more than you think.

The Security Gap

With mainstream support for GP versions fading, your financial data is becoming vulnerable to modern threats.

The Remote Reality

Stop fighting with VPNs. Business Central is cloud-native, allowing your team to work securely from anywhere, on any device.

The Data Silo

Break free from “Excel Hell.” Business Central integrates natively with Office, eliminating manual exports and disjointed workflows.

Why migrate with Simply BC?

Migration is complex. That’s why we don’t assign it to juniors. At Simply BC, you only deal with senior professionals who have 10+ years of experience.

We Fix, We Don’t Just Install
Data Integrity First: We clean your ‘dirty’ GP data before it ever touches the new system.
Senior-Level Support: Direct access to experts, no call centers.

Your Roadmap to the Cloud

360° Assessment

We review your current GP setup and customizations.

The Clean-Up

We help you map and scrub your data (Accounts, Segments to Dimensions).

The Sandbox

You test the new system with your real data, risk-free.

Go-Live & Hypercare

We stand by you during the cutover and beyond.

The Definitive Guide to Dynamics GP to Business Central Migration

FAQ

Because the clock is officially ticking. Microsoft has established a definitive end-of-life timeline for Dynamics GP. Waiting until the last minute puts your business in a precarious position.
Key Dates to Watch:

April 1, 2025: No new perpetual licenses sold.
April 1, 2026: No new subscription licenses sold.
September 30, 2029: End of Mainstream Support. (No more tax updates, regulatory fixes, or features).
April 30, 2031: End of Security Updates.

The Cost of Staying Put: Beyond the timeline, staying on legacy infrastructure exposes you to three growing risks:

Security Liability: Protecting on-premise servers is becoming prohibitively expensive. Without modern cloud security, you are a sitting duck for ransomware and breaches.
The “Data Silo” Trap: Modern businesses need connected systems. Forcing GP to talk to your CRM, e-commerce, or payroll tools often requires fragile, expensive custom coding.
Workforce Friction: In a hybrid world, requiring a VPN just to approve an invoice is an outdated bottleneck that frustrates employees and slows down cash flow.

Technically, yes; but it is not a viable long-term strategy. With Microsoft channelling all innovation into Business Central, staying on GP means accepting a degrading experience. You will face growing security vulnerabilities, infrastructure incompatibility (such as issues with newer SQL Server updates), and a lack of future product enhancements.

Broadly speaking, yes. Business Central covers all the core financial and operational capabilities you rely on in GP, often with greater flexibility. However, because Business Central is a modern cloud ERP, it solves problems differently than the legacy architecture of GP.
There are three main functional shifts to be aware of:

Chart of Accounts (Dimensions vs Segments): GP relies on a rigid, segmented account structure (creating thousands of account codes). Business Central uses ‘Dimensions’. You create one natural account (e.g., Travel Expense) and ‘tag’ transactions with Department, Region, or Project. This drastically tidies your accounts and simplifies reporting.
Payroll Functionality: Unlike GP, which has a built-in payroll module, Business Central relies on the Microsoft AppSource ecosystem. You will likely use a dedicated payroll extension (app) that integrates seamlessly, or connect to an external provider.
Database Access: In the cloud environment, you no longer have direct access to the SQL tables as you did with on-premise GP. Instead, data extraction and reporting are handled through APIs, OData, or modern reporting tools like Power BI.
Manufacturing Planning (MRP): This is a significant upgrade. Whilst GP often relies on ‘bucketed’ planning (grouping demand into weekly or monthly buckets), Business Central utilises ‘bucketless’ planning. It calculates requirements down to the specific date and time. This offers greater precision for Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing but requires cleaner data to run effectively.

Not exactly. Business Central uses “Views” and keeps tight integration with Excel. We will show you how to recreate your favorite queries using modern tools that are even faster than SmartLists.

GP uses a segmented Chart of Accounts (e.g., 000-1100-00). Business Central uses “Dimensions.” This is actually an upgrade, it allows for much richer reporting without creating thousands of GL accounts. We guide you through this mapping.

We review every customization during the Simply 360° Review. Often, features you paid to customise in GP are now standard “out of the box” features in Business Central. If not, we can rebuild them using BC Extensions.

This is one of the most common concerns during a migration. The short answer is that your history is safe, but we do not recommend simply “dumping” decades of closed transactions into Business Central. Instead, Simply BC guides you through a strategic data migration process to ensure your new system is clean, fast, and accurate.

Master Records & Open Balances: We migrate all active data, including Customers, Vendors, Items, and the Chart of Accounts. We also bring over all “open” transactions (unpaid invoices, open purchase orders, and inventory levels) so you can continue operations immediately.
The “Mapping” Process: This is where Simply BC adds the most value. We help you map your legacy data to the new structure. For example, we work with you to convert your old GP account segments into Business Central “Dimensions”, giving you far better reporting power from day one.
Historical Transactions: For closed history (e.g., sales from ten years ago), we typically recommend migrating summary-level data (GL net changes) for year-over-year comparisons.
Accessing the Archives: For granular historical detail, we help you determine the best archiving strategy—whether that is keeping a read-only version of GP or moving data to a secure data lake for easy querying.

The cost of migration varies significantly based on the complexity of your data and how much you wish to “modernise” versus simply “move.”
At Simply BC, we believe in avoiding surprise costs. That is why we begin with a 360° Migration Assessment.
Your final quote will depend on three main levers:

Data Volume: How many years of history do you need? (Migrating 20 years of data costs more than migrating opening balances).
Customisation: Do you have custom GP code? We often find that Business Central’s native features can replace expensive custom work, actually lowering your long-term costs.
Complexity: A single entity is faster to migrate than a multi-company setup with inter-company consolidations.

The Good News: Microsoft offers substantial discounts (up to 40%) on Business Central licences for existing GP customers who switch before 2026.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer, but most projects fall into one of three categories.
At Simply BC, we scope your project based on complexity:

Complex / Manufacturing: 6 – 9+ Months If you use Manufacturing, heavily customised modules, or require complex third-party integrations (like EDI or 3PL connections), we take the extra time to re-engineer your processes so they work natively in the cloud.
Financials Only (Fast-Track): 2 – 3 Months Ideal for businesses that only need core General Ledger, AP, and AR functionality with minimal historical data. This is often a “lift and shift” of your current process.
Standard Commercial (Operations): 4 – 6 Months This is the most common timeline. It involves migrating Supply Chain, Inventory, and Sales, along with setting up new “Dimensions” for better reporting and training your team on the new workflows.

Microsoft’s tool handles raw data replication, but it cannot interpret business context. It cannot fix “dirty data,” re-architect your Chart of Accounts, or handle complex customisations.

A partner-led migration with Simply BC adds the strategic layer the tool lacks. We validate your data to ensure you aren’t importing errors, map your legacy customisations to modern workflows, and, crucially, train your staff. The automated tool might get your data to the cloud, but it won’t teach your team how to use it.