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Dynamics 365 Business Central

Business Central expense management with the Expense Agent, Continia and card platforms priced per user

Microsoft now ships its own expense module and an AI agent that reads receipts. That changes the math for every add-on you were about to buy. Here is what each option costs a 25-person expense team, and which license each employee actually needs.

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Expense reports tell you after the month closes. Budget alerts on your cards start at $199 a month for the whole company.

Controller and analyst reviewing a per user expense software invoice against a usage report

Expense Agent

50

credits a receipt

Team Members

$8

per user a month

Continia

$6.75

per user, base module

Try it on your own numbers

Set a department budget and see the day it would have warned you

Every option below gets the expense into Business Central. None of them tells the budget owner it is happening while the month is still open. Pick a budget and thresholds, replay a month of card spend, and watch when the alert fires. Runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded.

Short answer

What is the best expense management for Business Central?

For a US company whose staff already hold Business Central licenses, the native Expense Management module is now the cheapest place to start, with the Expense Agent at about 50 cents a receipt. Continia, at $6.75 to $8.10 per user a month, is the proven add-on if you need it live and supported today. If your spend runs on a card platform, Ramp Plus, Brex and Airwallex all sync to Business Central directly.

Same team, every option

Business Central expense options priced at 25 expense users

Read from Microsoft Learn and each vendor's own pricing page on October 6, 2026. The fourth column assumes 25 people who file expenses and about eight receipts each a month.

Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.

Option How it reaches Business Central Published price 25 users a month Best for
Native Expense Management Built in since update 28.1. Public preview from May 8, 2026, general availability planned for October 2026. Included. Submitting inside BC needs Team Members at $8 a user; posting needs Essentials or Premium. $0 if staff are licensed, $200 for 25 Team Members Companies happy to type expenses in and wait for the module to mature.
Expense Agent Reads receipts sent from the web app, email, Teams or Copilot and drafts the report. Public preview, US first. 50 Copilot credits per receipt, about $0.40 to $0.50. $80 to $100 for 200 receipts Teams that want receipt capture without another vendor contract.
Continia Expense Management Business Central extension with its own mobile app and approval portal. $6.75 per named user, plus $1.35 per feature module such as cards. Minimum four users. $202.50 with the card module Finance teams that need a supported, mature tool now, with card feeds.
Zetadocs Expenses Equisys extension for Business Central. Express free up to 25 users. Essentials needs 10 active users on an annual plan, price not published. $0 on Express, quote above it Small teams with simple claims and no card program.
Ramp Native Business Central sync, on Plus only. Plus, $15 a user a month plus a platform fee based on team size. $375 plus the platform fee Companies moving their company cards to Ramp anyway.
Brex Native integration for journal entries, purchase invoices and dimensions. Plan not stated. Essentials $0, Premium $12 a user a month. $0 to $300 depending on plan Venture-backed companies that already qualify for the Brex card.
Airwallex Syncs bank feeds, expenses and bills on Grow and Accelerate. Grow, $12 per active spend user a month. $300 Companies paying suppliers and staff in several currencies.
Expensify No native connection. Partner connector on AppSource, Workato, or CSV import. Collect, $5 a member a month, as reported by third-party pricing reviews. $125 plus the connector Teams already on Expensify who do not want to retrain staff.

Copilot credit prices are as reported by licensing analysts ($0.01 each on pay-as-you-go, $200 per 25,000 in a prepaid pack); Microsoft publishes the 50-credit rate. Emburse Professional (formerly Certify) connects through a partner app from eFOQUS, and Medius (formerly Expensya) has its own connector; neither publishes a price.

The monthly bill, side by side

How much does the Business Central Expense Agent cost?

Microsoft bills the Expense Agent in Copilot credits, and each uploaded receipt consumes 50 of them. At the reported $0.01 a credit on pay-as-you-go that is about 50 cents a receipt, or 40 cents from a prepaid pack. A 25-person team sending 200 receipts a month pays roughly $80 to $100, which is less than half of what Continia charges for the same people.

The catch is that the meter follows volume, not headcount. A sales team that photographs every coffee and parking stub can send five or six times as many receipts as an office team. Pull last quarter's receipt count before you assume the agent is the cheap option.

Employees who only send receipts through the web app, email or Copilot chat do not need a Business Central license at all. That is the real saving for companies that would otherwise buy Team Members licenses just so people can file expenses.

Microsoft's own module

Does Business Central have expense management?

Yes, since update 28.1 in the 2026 release wave 1. The Expense Management module adds expense reports with itemized lines, participants, per diem, mileage, travel requests, rules and policies, manager approvals, VAT reclaim and reimbursement posting to the ledger. It went into public preview on May 8, 2026, and Microsoft plans general availability for October 2026.

Without the Expense Agent, entry is manual. Someone keys each line or the employee fills in a form. The agent is what makes the module comparable to Continia or a card platform, because it reads the receipt, checks it against policy, spots duplicates and drafts the report. The agent is also in preview and launched in the US and in English first.

So the honest read for a controller in October 2026 is this. If expenses are a handful of claims a month, the native module is good enough and costs nothing extra. If you run a card program with dozens of cardholders, or you need the thing fully supported at month end this quarter, a mature add-on is still the safer buy, and you can revisit at renewal once Microsoft's module has a year behind it.

What license do I need to submit expenses in Business Central?

It depends on where the employee submits. Through the web app, by email or in Copilot chat, no Business Central license is needed and the work is billed in Copilot credits. Inside Business Central, submitting or approving needs at least Team Members at $8 a user a month. Posting and paying reimbursements needs Essentials ($80) or Premium ($110).

Is this the same as Dynamics 365 expense management?

No. Dynamics 365 Finance, the Finance and Operations product for larger companies, has had its own Expense management module for years, with different licensing. Everything on this page is about Business Central, the product most US companies under a few hundred people run.

Pick by the problem you have

Best expense management for Business Central in each situation

A ranked list hides that these tools solve different problems. Start from the one costing you time today.

01

A few claims a month, everyone licensed

The native module. Turn it on, set two or three policies, and add the Expense Agent if typing receipts is the bottleneck.

02

Field staff without BC licenses

The Expense Agent through email or Teams, so nobody needs a Team Members seat just to send a receipt.

03

A card program and a hard close date

Continia. The card module matches statement lines to receipts, and it has years of Business Central customers behind it.

04

Ready to switch company cards

Ramp Plus or Brex. Card, receipts and coding live in one place and post straight to Business Central.

05

Staff and suppliers in several currencies

Airwallex Grow, which syncs bank feeds, expenses and bills to Business Central at $12 per active spend user.

06

The ledger is fine, the budget is not

You may not need a new expense tool. An alert on the card spend you already have warns the budget owner mid-month, as the next section explains.

Before you buy

What expense software in Business Central does not do

Every option on this page has the same job: get a coded, approved expense into the general ledger. They are judged at month end, when the report posts. By then a department that spent its quarter in seven weeks has already done it, and Business Central's budget comparison shows the overrun after the fact.

That gap is about timing, not about which add-on you pick. A card charge lands on Tuesday. The receipt arrives Friday. The report is approved two weeks later and posts at the close. The budget owner hears about the trend from a variance report, if anyone runs one.

For that problem the cheaper fix is watching the spend when it happens. That is what SpendNotify does, alongside whichever tool posts to your ledger. The month-end side, matching the bank to the books, is a separate step covered on our credit card reconciliation software page.

Where SpendNotify fits, and where it does not

SpendNotify is not an expense report tool and does not post to Business Central. It reads the charges from the cards and bank accounts you already use (forwarded bank transaction emails, an iPhone Shortcut for Apple Pay, or a CSV, OFX or QFX statement) and alerts the budget owner by email, Slack or webhook when a department budget is on pace to overshoot or a new recurring vendor appears.

The Team plan covers up to 25 monitored employees and cards with unlimited budgets for $199 a month, or $1,908 billed yearly. How the alerts work is on budget alerts.

A one-week shortlist

How to choose Business Central expense software in four steps

01

Count licenses, not staff

List who already has Essentials, Premium or Team Members. Unlicensed submitters change the cheapest answer.

02

Count receipts

Pull last quarter's receipt volume. At 50 credits each, it decides whether the Expense Agent beats a per-user add-on.

03

Test one posting

In the trial, post one card expense with a department dimension and check the G/L account and dimension arrive intact.

04

Decide who hears first

Name the person who should know a budget is slipping before the close, and how they will find out.

Questions buyers ask

Business Central expense management questions and answers

How much does Continia Expense Management cost?

Continia publishes a USD price sheet. The Essential module is $6.75 per named expense user a month for 1 to 50 users and $3.38 for 51 to 200. Each feature module, such as card transactions, mileage or per diem, adds $1.35 per user up to 50 users. The minimum invoice is four named or two active users, and there is a 30-day trial.

Does Ramp integrate with Business Central?

Yes, but only on Ramp Plus, which costs $15 a user a month plus a platform fee based on team size. The free Ramp plan does not include the Business Central sync. Brex and Airwallex also sync with Business Central; Airwallex puts it on its Grow plan at $12 per active spend user.

Does Expensify integrate with Business Central?

Not natively. Expensify has no built-in Business Central connection. Companies connect it through a partner connector on Microsoft AppSource, an integration platform such as Workato, or a CSV export imported into Business Central. Count that connector's cost and upkeep when you compare it with tools that sync directly.

Is the Business Central Expense Agent generally available?

Not yet. The Expense Agent has been in public preview since May 8, 2026, starting with US companies working in English. Microsoft had not published a general availability date when we checked on October 6, 2026. The Expense Management module it works with is planned for general availability in October 2026.

Can Business Central import corporate card transactions for expenses?

Through an add-on or a card platform, yes. Continia's card module imports statement lines and matches them to receipts, and Ramp, Brex and Airwallex push card transactions into Business Central from their own side. Check in your trial how card lines arrive in the native module before relying on it for a card program.

Is SpendNotify an expense management app for Business Central?

No. SpendNotify does not collect receipts, build expense reports or post to Business Central. It reads the card and bank charges a company already has and alerts the budget owner when a department is on pace to overshoot or a new recurring vendor appears. It runs next to whichever expense tool posts to your ledger.

Keep reading

Related pages

Let Business Central post the expense. Let the budget owner hear about it while the month is still open.

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