D4: GP to BC Adventure Series: Overview License & Pricing in Business Central

 

Welcome to my Day4 blog! After learning about Environments and Companies in my previous blogs, it is also important to understand the licensing and pricing as we transition from GP to BC. What are the things to consider? 

Here's some tips on how many user license you need in Business Central:

1. Make a list of your existing Dynamics GP users.
2. Identify users that has full access and view only mode.
3. Ask those view only users how often they use Dynamics GP.
4. If view only users use Dynamics GP occasionally like once a week or twice a month, check to see if one license is enough per Team - that means one member will do the Inquiry for the team.

Your Partner will ask if you need Essential or Premium License in Business Central. The quick answer is if you don't need Manufacturing or Service Management, you only need Essential License. Please see below for more details.

Dynamics GP licensing has changed over the years, I honestly lost track when the changes happens. In my understanding those existing customers have been converted automatically to Perpetual model of licensing.  

There are two types of Licensing Models:

1. Perpetual Licensing - that means the customer owns the software perpetually. In other words, you license the software with permanent usage rights and can use the software for as long as you want.
2. Subscription Licensing - that means you never own the software license. In short, you can  use the software only while you maintain your monthly subscription payments.

There are 3 User Types:

1. Full Users - Full users have full read and write, can enter and post transactions, do inquiry and run reports.
2. Limited Users - this is view only users
3. Self Serve Users - designed for users that need to only enter their own information, specifically their timesheets, project expenses, timecards. No GP transaction inquiry. 

How to know how many Full, Limited, Self Serve Users you have in Dynamics GP license?

Please login to Microsoft Customer Source >> Products & Services Summary >> Registration Keys >> select 18.2 version and click on Display License Keys to see the total count.

In Dynamics GP, we can create unlimited "named users" (under Perpetual Licensing) as long as our concurrent users who can login to the system at the same time are within our license count.

In User Setup window, we select the User Type.

In Dynamics GP, you will find the registration keys in Setup >> System >> Registration. If you are upgrading to Dynamics GP 18.3 and above, you no longer need new sets of registration keys. For 3rd Party products, it may or may not require new registration keys as some of them has automatic validation.   

In Business Central, Microsoft offers several types of paid licenses such as Essential, Premium, Team Member, External Accountant, etc.

Please contact your partner to purchase or to get an assessment. Here's the link to Business Central Pricing and additional information about Licensing in Business Central.   Here's the link to Microsoft 365 Licenses FAQ.  You can also download the D365 Licensing Guide.

Previous Blogs:

D1: Understanding Database & Environments

D2: How to Create Environments

D3: How to Create Companies