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Sign up for a free Dynamics 365 Business Central trial

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Business Central offers a free trial that you can find it on the Dynamics 365 Business Central product page. After a quick sign-up, you'll have access to many of the app's key features. The trial allows you to test the app with sample data. If you want to try out things with your own data, you'll switch to a free 30-day trial. Learn more about Business Central features.

The trial takes a few moments to load, then you can start using the app. The Get Started checklist takes you through the steps to make you ready for business. The steps vary depending on your country/region and any industry-specific functionality that you've added to your Business Central.

In Business Central, some things will be familiar to you, and other things might be unfamiliar. When you first sign in to the demonstration company, you get access to a Get Started card with a link to show demo tours. For more information, see Get Ready for Doing Business and the quick starts articles.

Tip

Business Central includes tooltips for fields and actions that can help guide you through the various business processes. Some pages also have teaching tips and tours to help you. On each tooltip and teaching tip, choose the Show help link to open the Help pane where you find information about the current page and related tasks. If the chat with Copilot feature is turned on, instead of the Show help link on tooltips, you have an Ask Copilot link. When you select this link, the chat pane opens and a prompt asking for an explanation of the field is automatically entered, like "Explain field name "Invoice Discount %". On all pages, use Ctrl+F1 on your keyboard to open the Help pane. On any device, use the question mark in the upper right corner to get to the Help.

If you decide not to use Business Central, you can let the trial expire.

Note

If a Business Central trial is left unused for 45 days, Microsoft considers the trial as expired, and the Business Central tenant is deleted.

If the trial is converted to a paid subscription before the trial expires, the countdown to 45 days of non-usage does not apply.

Should you run into problems, check the Trial FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions articles to find answers to some of your questions. If you're unable to sign up for the trial, check the Troubleshooting Self-Service Sign-Up article for tips. You can also contact a partner and ask them to create a free trial or a different type of preview of Business Central for you.

What to try

Your trial environment includes the same features as the paid version. The links below guide you through some of the key features.

Get started with a subscription

Each time you sign in during the trial period, a notification in a blue bar at the top displays the time remaining. If you decide to subscribe, find a Business Central partner. For more information, see How do I find a reselling partner?. The reselling partner can help you set up Business Central to fit your business, including importing your data from your previous system. You can also customize Business Central by adding apps from the Microsoft commercial marketplace.

Business Central online uses Microsoft 365. If your company uses a different type of email setup, the reselling partner can help you decided how to migrate, or if you should use Business Central on-premises.

You can also contact the Business Central Sales team.

Tip

If you want to start using Business Central to run your business, you must buy a license. Your administrator can then assign the license to users. However, if you want to convert a 30-day trial company into your actual production company, we encourage all users to sign out of Business Central. Then, once an administrator has assigned the license to your account, the first user who signs into Business Central must be a user with this license assigned. This way, the 30-day trial ends, and any trial-related notifications disappear so that users can use Business Central to do work.

For more information about what you can do with Business Central, see Getting Ready for Doing Business and Business Functionality.

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