The most expensive AI is the kind you are already paying for and have never switched on.
Here is a fact most Business Central customers do not know: Copilot is not an add-on you buy. It is a built-in part of Business Central, and since update 25.0 it is on by default. Microsoft's own documentation puts it plainly: "Copilot is a system feature and an integral part of Business Central. Like most system features, you can't turn Copilot on or off." Data movement is enabled and the features are activated out of the box, so Copilot is ready to use without any setup unless an admin has deliberately switched something off. That on-by-default behaviour applies to South Africa too.
So the question is not whether you have AI in your Business Central. You almost certainly do. The question is which features are switched on, who can use them, and whether anyone has actually tried them.
What is actually in the box
These Copilot capabilities ship inside current Business Central licences and are usable by any role:
- Chat with Copilot. Ask questions in plain language and get answers grounded in your data and the product.
- Summarise. One-paragraph summaries of records so you pick up where things stand in seconds.
- Analysis assist. Build ad-hoc analysis on a data set without exporting to a spreadsheet.
- Autofill. Copilot suggests values for fields as you create records.
And these sit inside the functional areas your team already works in:
- Finance: bank account reconciliation assist, and e-document matching.
- Supply chain: item substitution suggestions, and greenhouse-gas emissions suggestions.
- Sales and marketing: sales line suggestions, and marketing text suggestions.
- Company setup: number series suggestions.
A note on status, because honesty matters more than hype: several of these (Autofill, Analysis assist, Summarise, e-document matching) carry a "production-ready preview" label in Microsoft's documentation. They are broadly usable, but Microsoft still flags them as preview, so treat them as ready to pilot rather than set-and-forget.
How to switch them on (the part nobody explains)
There are two layers, and people confuse them. Getting both right is the difference between "we tried Copilot and nothing happened" and a team that actually uses it.
Layer one: activate the feature. An admin opens the "Copilot & agent capabilities" page in Business Central. Features are listed in two sections, preview and generally available. To turn one on, select it and choose Activate. To turn one off, select it and choose Deactivate. This is an all-users switch for that capability.
Layer two: grant the user. Activation does not by itself give a person access. That is controlled by permission sets. Chat, Summarise, Autofill and Analysis assist are governed by the "Copilot Sys Features" permission set (or execute permission on the underlying system objects: 9690 Allow Copilot Chat, 9680 Allow Copilot Summary, 9700 Allow Copilot Autofill, 9710 Allow Copilot Analysis Assist). The Sales Order Agent and the Payables Agent each have their own dedicated permission setup. So the checklist is: activate the feature on the admin page, then make sure the right people hold the permission.
The audit worth doing this month
Before anyone buys a single new AI licence, do this:
- Open the Copilot & agent capabilities page. See exactly what is active and what is off. Most teams have never looked.
- Pick one high-impact feature. Bank account reconciliation assist and e-document matching are common first wins because they take a slow, daily, manual job and turn it into a review.
- Check the permissions. Confirm the people who would use it actually hold the permission set.
- Tidy the data underneath it. Copilot is only as good as the records it reads. Accurate vendors, consistent items and sensible defaults make the difference between output you trust and output you ignore.
The bottom line
There is a real, ongoing cost to leaving paid capability switched off: the hours your team spends doing by hand what Business Central is ready to do for them. The first move is not a purchase. It is an audit of what you already own.
If you would like a hand running that audit on your Business Central environment, our team does this every week. Chat to a Braintree consultant and we will show you what is already on, what is off, and what to switch on first.
Specialists in Business Applications, Modern Workplace and Azure. Let’s grow.
Sources: Microsoft Learn, "Enable AI features in Business Central" (enable-ai) and "AI functionality in Business Central" (ai-in-bc), both updated May 2026. Feature availability is accurate as of June 2026 and may change as the 2026 release wave rolls out.
