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Checklist

Is your Business Central ready for an AI agent?

Fourteen checks, each with what it changes when it fails. Five of them block the agent entirely. Seven only change the answers you get. Two are decisions, not settings.

Last updated: September 2026. Every item matches what the Zentriq Agent actually does in Business Central.

An AI agent does not fail loudly in an ERP. It installs, it answers, and the answers quietly say N/A because a field nobody maintains was never filled in. This checklist separates the three cases: what stops the agent before it starts, what leaves it running with holes in the answers, and what you have to decide yourself.

1. Access and install, the blocking items

If one of these five is missing, the agent does not run at all. They are one-time steps for an administrator.

1. A Business Central cloud environment on version 22 or later

Zentriq supports Business Central online (SaaS) from version 22, Sandbox and Production alike. Business Central on-premises is not supported today, so an on-prem installation is a stop, not a delay.

2. The extension installed in every environment you want to use

Business Central installs extensions per environment. Installing in a Sandbox does not put the agent in Production, and each environment is a separate install from AppSource.

3. An administrator available to run the install

Deploying an extension needs the Global Admin or Dynamics 365 Business Central Administrator role on the tenant. Without one of them the install stops at the first step, whatever else is ready.

4. The Zentriq - Full Access permission set assigned to each user

Business Central never grants an app's permissions automatically. A user without the set opens the agent and gets a permissions error, even though the extension is installed. In Business Central, search Zentriq User Access and use Grant access to all users, or assign the set to a Microsoft Entra security group.

5. A decision on Entra ID consent before the first user signs in

If your tenant restricts third-party applications, every user sees a Needs admin approval prompt. An administrator grants tenant-wide consent once and the prompt disappears for everyone.

2. Master data, the items that change your answers

None of these seven stops the agent. They decide whether a figure comes back as a number or as N/A. A field nobody maintains is reported as unknown, never as zero: a missing unit cost shows up as N/A rather than a stock value of nil. That behavior is deliberate, an invented zero in a finance answer is worse than a gap.

6. Unit costs maintained on item cards

Stock value, the capital tied up in unsold stock, dead stock value, gross margin and the estimated spend of a reorder are all derived from unit cost. If no item carries one, every one of those figures is N/A.

7. Reorder points, plus a reorder quantity or a maximum inventory

Without a reorder point the agent cannot tell you which items are below it. Without a reorder quantity or a maximum inventory it cannot suggest how much to order, and the estimated spend that follows is unknown too.

8. Bank account balances kept in Business Central

Cash on hand, projected cash and liquidity alerts come from bank account balances. If no account carries one, or one account is missing its local currency balance, the total is unknown rather than zero, because a partial sum would be wrong.

9. An account category on every G/L account carrying a balance

Assets and liabilities cannot be totaled when the category is missing on an account that holds a balance. The per account figures stay correct, only the totals drop out.

10. A clear view of which documents are booked in a foreign currency

Receivables, payables, outstanding order value and projected cash cannot be added up when documents mix currencies and the API exposes no local currency amount. The agent says so rather than adding francs to euros.

11. Unit prices and line discounts, if you want pricing answers

The price and discount columns on posted sales invoice lines are shown as N/A when they are not maintained. Nothing else in the answer changes.

12. Estimated value and win probability on opportunities, if you want a pipeline

Pipeline value, value per stage and weighted pipeline are derived from those two fields on the opportunity. Without them the stages are still listed, with no value against them.

3. Two decisions to make before you switch it on

Neither of these is a setting in Business Central. Both are worth settling before the first user asks a question.

13. Name the person who approves writes

The agent posts nothing on its own. Every create or change is a draft you review and confirm inside Business Central, and it acts under the signed-in user's own Business Central permissions, so it can never do more than that user could. Decide who reviews those drafts before the first one appears.

14. Check where the processing happens against your own policy

The application, the database, file storage and the AI inference run in the EU (Frankfurt), under a zero retention agreement with the AI provider, and your data is not used to train any model. Your Business Central tenant stays wherever Microsoft provisioned it. A Data Processing Agreement is available on request.

How to read your result

Items 1 to 5 are blocking. Any one of them missing and there is nothing to test.

Items 6 to 12 are not blocking, and they are the reason a pilot disappoints. The agent runs, the answers arrive, and half the numbers say N/A because the data behind them was never maintained. That is the agent staying honest, not the agent failing, but it is better known before the demo than during it.

Items 13 and 14 have no technical answer. They are the two questions your finance lead and your IT lead will ask, in that order.

What this checklist does not tell you

It does not measure the quality of your data field by field, and no checklist can. The real test is simpler: install into a Sandbox, ask three questions you already know the answer to, and see which of the three come back with numbers. That takes less time than filling this in.

The Business Central AI readiness checklist

Fourteen checks to run before an AI agent touches your Business Central data, with what each one changes when it fails. Enter your address and we send it as one email you can forward to whoever runs your ERP.

We store your address to send you this checklist, and to send you guides only if you ticked the box. Privacy policy.

Frequently asked questions

What do I need before connecting an AI agent to Business Central?

Five things block the connection: a Business Central online environment on version 22 or later, the extension installed in that specific environment, an administrator with the Global Admin or Dynamics 365 Business Central Administrator role to run the install, the Zentriq - Full Access permission set assigned to each user, and a decision on tenant-wide consent in Entra ID. Everything else on this page changes the quality of the answers, not whether the agent runs.

Which Business Central versions work with an AI agent?

Zentriq supports Business Central online (SaaS) from version 22, in Sandbox and in Production. Business Central on-premises is not supported today. Separately, Microsoft retires each version on its own date, so check where yours stands before you build anything on top of it.

Does an AI agent need its own permissions in Business Central?

Yes. Business Central never grants an app's permissions automatically, so each user who opens the agent needs the Zentriq - Full Access permission set. In Business Central, search Zentriq User Access and use Grant access to all users, or assign the set to a Microsoft Entra security group. Beyond that set, the agent acts under the signed-in user's own Business Central permissions and can never read or write more than that user could.

What happens when master data is missing?

The figure comes back as N/A, not as zero. If no item carries a unit cost, stock value is unknown rather than nil; if no bank account carries a balance, total cash is unknown rather than empty. The agent states which figures it could not establish and why, so a gap in your master data never turns into a confident wrong number.

Related pages

Ready to test it against your own data?

Installing into a Sandbox takes a few minutes and costs nothing. The free plan includes 15 agent messages a month, enough to ask the three questions that matter.

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