Business Central data reaches Microsoft Fabric in three ways: Microsoft’s own Business Central mirroring, which Microsoft’s roadmap plans as a preview in November 2026 and general availability in April 2027; partner and community tools that work today, most of them writing to an open mirrored database; and the Business Central APIs, read by Dataflow Gen2 or your own pipeline. Link to Fabric, the route for D365 Finance and Operations, does not apply. Whichever route you choose, Fabric gives you Business Central tables, not a reporting model: dimension sets, FlowFields, closing dates, companies, and currencies still have to be modeled before finance can trust a report. For the F&O side, see Microsoft Fabric for D365 F&O.
Why Link to Fabric does not apply to Business Central
Link to Fabric copies Dataverse tables that have change tracking enabled, and F&O tables can be selected through the same link. Business Central keeps its data in its own database and connects to Dataverse in four ways: data synchronization, virtual tables, webhooks, and business events. Its standard synchronization maps five tables: salespeople to users, customers and vendors to accounts, contacts, and currencies. Ledger entries and posted documents are not part of it. Business Central’s virtual tables keep the data in Business Central, and Microsoft says virtual tables do not support change tracking, so Link to Fabric cannot carry them. Microsoft’s Link to Fabric overview says it links data from all Dynamics 365 apps, including Finance and Operations apps. In practice that covers Dataverse tables and the tables of an F&O environment linked to Dataverse, and Business Central is neither.
Microsoft’s Business Central mirroring: where it stands
Microsoft announced Business Central mirroring at FabCon Barcelona in September 2026, and its own sources disagree on timing:
| Source | What it says |
|---|---|
| Fabric Updates blog, September 28, 2026 | Mirroring for Business Central is coming soon, for selected tables and companies |
| Microsoft Learn setup pages, October 2026 | Prerelease documentation; a production-ready preview is planned for October 2026; requires Business Central version 29.0 or later |
| Microsoft roadmap item 574126, October 20, 2026 | In development; preview November 2026; general availability April 2027 |
| Microsoft Marketplace listing | Business Central Mirroring to Fabric, free, for Business Central version 29.1 or higher |
Microsoft stopped publishing Business Central release plans in September 2026, so there is no 2026 release wave 2 plan to check; new capabilities go to Microsoft’s AI at Work roadmap instead. Update 29.0, released in October 2026, does not list mirroring among its features. Plan on the roadmap’s dates and confirm the version requirement when the preview opens.
How it works. In Fabric you create an open mirrored database. In Business Central, the Connect to Microsoft Fabric assisted setup takes the app registration, the workspace, and the database, and you choose the companies, the tables, and the interval between synchronization runs. Business Central sends an initial snapshot and then incremental changes, which land in OneLake as Delta tables.
What it needs. Business Central online, the mirroring extension from Microsoft Marketplace, data encryption turned on, the MS Fabric Mirroring – Admin permission set, and, for the preview, a Microsoft Entra app registration with the Power BI Workspace.ReadWrite.All permission. On the Fabric side you need an active capacity, the Member or Admin role on the workspace, and the workspace in the same Entra tenant as Business Central.
What it covers. Several companies, and up to 1,000 selected tables. The extension ships a configuration package, MS-STD, with 256 standard tables for analytics. Tables that store data per company are synchronized for each enabled company; shared tables are synchronized once. A details page shows each run’s inserted, updated, and deleted records, and the same log is written to a separate namespace in Fabric. Microsoft also plans single-company and multicompany versions of the standard Business Central Power BI apps that read from Fabric.
What it costs. For open mirroring, the replication compute does not consume Fabric capacity and storage is free up to 1 TB per capacity unit; queries on the mirrored data consume capacity at normal rates, and replication needs a running capacity. Mirroring costs across ERPs are covered in SAP and Oracle data in Microsoft Fabric. To size the Fabric capacity itself, see Fabric capacity sizing for Dynamics 365 analytics.
Every route from Business Central to Fabric, compared
| Route | Status, November 2026 | Maintained by | What lands in Fabric | Limits to know |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business Central mirroring | Preview planned November 2026; general availability April 2027 (roadmap) | Microsoft | Delta tables in an open mirrored database for the selected companies and tables; Microsoft has not yet documented how the company is identified in them | Business Central online, version 29.0 or 29.1 and later; up to 1,000 tables |
| BC2Fab workload | Generally available (Fabric blog, March 2026) | Navida, an independent software vendor | Tables read through Business Central APIs on the read-only replica and written to an open mirrored database, plus generated semantic models | A free Lite plan with daily refresh and paid Plus and Premium plans, with refresh under 15 minutes only on Premium, per Navida’s published plans; the vendor quotes more than 250 tables out of the box; subject to the API limits below |
| bc2adls | Microsoft’s repository archived in 2023; maintained in a community fork | Open-source community (MIT license) | Azure Data Lake Storage, a Fabric lakehouse, or an open mirrored database | Cannot export FlowFields, BLOB fields, or non-public fields; shared tables export once per company and need deduplication |
| Dataflow Gen2 with the Business Central connector | Generally available | Microsoft | Whatever the dataflow writes to a lakehouse or warehouse | In Fabric the connector works in Dataflow Gen2 only, not in pipeline copy activities; subject to the API limits below |
| Your own API pipeline | Supported: APIs are the only supported way to read Business Central online | You | Your own design | The API limits below; incremental loads on SystemModifiedAt |
Microsoft Learn still links the archived bc2adls repository from its data extraction guidance, so start from the maintained fork.
The API limits every API-based route runs into
- Per user, including service principals: 5 concurrent OData requests, 100 connections, a queue of 95, and 6,000 requests in a sliding 5-minute window. Microsoft suggests spreading work across several users or service principals.
- Per environment: pages of up to 20,000 entities, batches of up to 100 operations, request bodies up to 350 MB, and an 8-minute operation timeout (an older Microsoft page gives 10 minutes).
- Throughput: Microsoft says about 2 MB per second per API call is common, so a single sequential pipeline loads a 100 GB database in up to a day. With the online parallelism of 5 calls, the ceiling is about 35 GB an hour, if no other process is calling Business Central web services. For the first load, Microsoft recommends a database export from the admin center.
- Incremental loads: read from the read-only replica and filter on SystemModifiedAt, which APIs expose as lastModifiedDateTime. Delta links were deprecated; Microsoft recommends webhooks.
- The standard G/L entry API returns posting date, document number, account, amounts, and additional-currency amounts, but not document date, global dimension codes, or the dimension set ID. Dimensions come through a separate dimension set lines navigation.
What Business Central’s own Power BI apps cover, and where they stop
Microsoft ships nine Power BI apps for Business Central: Finance, Inventory, Inventory Valuation, Manufacturing, Projects, Purchasing, Sales, Subscription Billing, and Sustainability. Current versions need Business Central 27.0 or later, run online only, and read data through Business Central APIs. The Finance app has 15 report pages, including the income statement, balance sheet, budget comparison, EBITDA, and aged receivables and payables with back-dating, and it slices general ledger entries by all eight shortcut dimensions.
- One company per app. Microsoft’s FAQ says the apps work per company, so a group installs and sets up one app per company, each in its own workspace.
- Licensing. The person who installs the template app needs Power BI Pro. The person who refreshes it and every viewer need Pro too, unless the workspace runs on Power BI Premium or Fabric capacity; in Fabric, viewers with a free license need F64 or larger. Viewers also need a paid Business Central license.
- A dimension job to schedule. The semantic models read dimensions from a flattened table, PowerBI Flat Dim. Set Entry (table 36954), filled by the Update Dim. Set Entries job. Microsoft recommends running it weekly or nightly, and again after dimension values change.
- Setup first. G/L account categories must be set up and mapped before the Finance reports are right.
- A reference design. The .pbix source files can be downloaded, and Microsoft documents the Finance semantic model, a star schema with G/L entry, budget, and customer and vendor ledger facts. It is a useful starting point for a model on Fabric.
Tables are not a model: the Business Central work after any route
- Dimensions. Business Central stores two global dimensions on each entry and supports up to eight shortcut dimensions. On the G/L Entry table, shortcut dimensions 3 to 8 are FlowFields resolved through the Dimension Set ID, so a reporting model has to decode dimension set entries (table 480) into columns.
- FlowFields are not stored. Microsoft describes FlowFields as calculations, not physical fields, so balances such as a G/L account balance or a customer balance are not in a table copy. They have to be rebuilt from ledger entries.
- Dates. G/L entries carry a posting date, a document date, and a VAT reporting date. The Close Income Statement batch job creates journal lines dated on a closing date, a fictitious date between the last day of the old fiscal year and the first day of the new one, which you then post. A calendar that folds closing-date entries into the last period reverses the year’s income statement there, so closing entries need their own period or a flag, as Microsoft’s Finance app does.
- Currencies. Each G/L entry holds the amount in local currency, the source currency amount and code, and, if set up, an additional reporting currency. Microsoft says the additional currency cannot translate foreign subsidiaries for consolidation. Business Central’s own consolidation translates business units at consolidation exchange rates, so a model that combines subsidiary companies directly has to apply its own translation rates.
- Companies. An environment can hold up to 300 companies. Most tables store data per company and some are shared, so every fact needs a company key, and each shared table is loaded once and joined to every company.
- Consolidation. Business Central consolidates subsidiaries as business units into a consolidated company, which Microsoft calls a container for the consolidated data. Eliminations are a manual process.
- Sub-ledgers and history. Aging by document date, due date, or posting date as of a past month needs the detailed customer and vendor ledger entries, not only the current open balance.
A build order for Business Central on Fabric
- Land the tables: Business Central mirroring once it is available, or a partner or community tool now. Keep this layer as delivered.
- Decode in a second layer: apply the dimension, company, and shared-table steps above, and turn option values into labels.
- Model a star schema: G/L entry, budget, and customer, vendor, and item ledger facts, with a fiscal calendar that treats closing dates as their own period.
- Tie out to Business Central: the trial balance per company and period, and receivables and payables aging, before anyone uses the reports.
- Secure by company with row-level security, and set the refresh cadence the close needs. For what fresher data does and does not change in a D365 F&O close, see what fresher F&O data changes for month-end close.
F&O teams face the same work in a different shape; see Link to Fabric for D365 F&O: what you still have to build. Teams moving from Dynamics NAV can start from the NAV reporting guide.
Where Metrixs fits
Metrixs reports on Business Central data, and consolidation works for Business Central groups with several companies. Its connectors are built to each customer’s need: today D365 F&O, Dynamics AX, Business Central, and NAV, plus SAP and Oracle through Microsoft Fabric. See Business Central analytics, or request a demo and see if you qualify for a free 6-month trial.
FAQs
1. Is Business Central mirroring to Microsoft Fabric available yet?
Not generally available. Microsoft’s roadmap, last updated October 20, 2026, lists the feature as in development, with a preview planned for November 2026 and general availability for April 2027. Microsoft already lists the extension on Microsoft Marketplace for Business Central version 29.1 or higher, and the Microsoft Learn setup pages, marked as prerelease documentation, still say a production-ready preview is planned for October 2026.
2. Can I use Link to Fabric or Dataverse to get Business Central data into Fabric?
Not for reporting. Link to Fabric copies Dataverse tables that have change tracking enabled. Business Central keeps its data in its own database: its standard Dataverse synchronization covers five tables (salespeople, customers, vendors, contacts, and currencies), the Dynamics 365 Sales integration adds sales documents such as posted sales invoices but no ledger entries, and its Dataverse virtual tables keep the data in Business Central and do not support change tracking.
3. What does Business Central mirroring cost?
Microsoft lists the mirroring extension as free. On the Fabric side, the background compute that replicates data into OneLake does not consume capacity, and mirroring storage is free up to 1 TB per capacity unit you buy. Querying the mirrored data with SQL, Power BI, or Spark consumes capacity at normal rates, and replication stops if the capacity is paused.
4. Is bc2adls still supported, and does it work with a Fabric lakehouse?
Microsoft’s original bc2adls repository was archived in 2023, and Microsoft Learn calls it an unsupported code sample. Development continues in a community fork, which can export to Azure Data Lake Storage, to a Fabric lakehouse, or into a Fabric open mirrored database. It cannot export FlowFields or BLOB fields.
5. Can Business Central’s Power BI apps report across multiple companies?
Not today. Microsoft’s FAQ says the apps work per company, so a group installs one app per company, each in its own workspace. Microsoft plans single-company and multicompany versions of the apps that read data from Fabric.
Sources
All pages below were checked on November 2, 2026.
- Business Central data mirroring to Microsoft Fabric (prerelease)
- Set up Business Central mirroring to Fabric
- Manage Business Central mirroring to Fabric
- Monitor Business Central mirroring to Fabric
- AI at Work roadmap: Business Central data mirroring to Microsoft Fabric (574126)
- Microsoft Marketplace: Business Central Mirroring to Fabric
- Business Central update rollout timeline
- What’s new in Business Central update 29.0
- Fabric Updates blog: FabCon and SQLCon Barcelona 2026, what’s new in Data Factory
- Open mirroring in Microsoft Fabric
- Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric overview
- Fabric blog: Business Central and Fabric using open mirroring with the BC2Fab workload
- Fabric blog: ISVs building natively on Microsoft Fabric
- Microsoft Marketplace: BC2Fab (vendor listing)
- Navida: BC2Fab plans (vendor page)
- bc2adls, Microsoft’s archived repository
- bc2adls, maintained community fork
- Extract data from Business Central
- Business Central online operational limits
- Working with API limits in Business Central
- generalLedgerEntry resource, API v2.0
- Dynamics 365 Business Central Power Query connector
- Fabric Data Factory connector overview
- Install the Business Central Power BI apps
- Business Central Power BI apps FAQ
- Power BI Finance app semantic model
- Business Central Power BI apps by functional area
- Power BI Finance app
- Microsoft Fabric concepts and licenses
- Business Central and Dataverse integration overview
- Synchronizing Business Central and Dataverse
- Create and edit virtual tables in Dataverse
- Microsoft Fabric link FAQ
- View Dataverse data in Microsoft Fabric
- Link your Dataverse environment to Microsoft Fabric
- Working with dimensions in Business Central
- G/L Entry table reference
- FlowFields
- Close income statement
- Set up an additional reporting currency
- Consolidating financial data from multiple companies
Operations head with 20 years of experience delivering business intelligence, ERP, and AI programs across healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. Focus areas include Power Platform adoption and governance, delivery models, and managed services.
