Microsoft's Expense Agent handles employee expenses in Business Central. Compare it with one AI agent that also does AP, purchasing, reporting and capture.
Microsoft's Expense Agent, introduced in the 2026 release wave 1, automates a specific job inside Business Central: capturing employee expense receipts and booking them for you. It is native, deeply integrated, and builds on the Copilot already included in your BC license, part of Microsoft's growing family of task-specific agents, and it improves with every release. Because it is new, it is rolling out gradually, runs online only, and its autonomous runs are billed on consumption on top of your license. Zentriq takes a different shape: one conversational agent that captures expense receipts and invoices, then covers accounts payable, purchasing, reporting and cart capture in the same chat, on one simple subscription.
Expense receipts, invoices, accounts payable, purchasing, reporting and cart capture in one chat, where Microsoft ships a separate agent per task. You cover all of it in one place.
Pay per message or per document, with a free tier of 15 messages a month and no consumption meter running on autonomous jobs. One subscription, easy to budget.
A single AppSource install gets you started right away, with no phased rollout to wait for, and the agent already works in English, French and German.
Zentriq acts within your own BC permissions and prepares drafts for your approval before anything is posted, so you stay in control of what changes.
| Feature | Business Central Expense Agent | Zentriq |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of tasks | Employee expenses only | Expenses, AP, purchasing, reporting, capture |
| One agent vs one per task | One agent per task | One agent for every task |
| Availability | Rolling out (2026 wave 1) | Available today on AppSource |
| Expense receipt capture | Yes (its focus) | Yes, plus invoices and documents |
| Pricing model | Consumption billing on autonomous runs | Per-message / per-document |
| Control before posting | Autonomous runs | Drafts for your approval |
| Charts, reports & cart capture | Not included | Included |
| Free tier | No | Yes, 15 messages/month |
Microsoft's Expense Agent is a native, well-integrated way to automate one job: employee expenses. If that single task is all you need and consumption billing suits you, it is a solid first-party choice that will keep improving. But Microsoft ships a separate agent for each process, and expenses are only one of many. Zentriq puts expense receipts, invoices, accounts payable, purchasing, reporting and cart capture in one conversational agent, on one simple subscription with a free tier, working within your own BC permissions. Many teams will use both: Microsoft's agent for its niche, Zentriq for everything in one place.
The best way to decide is to try it. Zentriq is free to start, 15 Agent messages per month, plus 8 PunchOut captures to try, no credit card required.
The Business Central Payables Agent is a native Microsoft agent that automates one part of accounts payable: invoice ...
Microsoft AIMicrosoft's Sales Order Agent, introduced in the 2024 Wave 2 release, is an autonomous agent that watches a shared em...
Microsoft AIBank account reconciliation assist is a Copilot feature built into Business Central's bank reconciliation page. It re...
Microsoft AIAnalysis Assist is a Copilot feature built into Business Central that helps you make sense of a list page without lea...
Invoice ProcessingContinia Document Capture is one of the most established invoice processing solutions for Business Central. It uses O...
Procurement IntegrationEDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and PunchOut catalogs (cXML/OCI) are the traditional ways to connect supplier catal...