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Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
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Upgrading from Essential to Premium licence in Business Central

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Posted on by 49
Hi everyone,
We activated an Essential licence for a company in BC.
the company already has posted accounting entries and data.
 
now we would like to upgrade to a Premium licence.
 
Is it possible to upgrade the licence without losing any data, or would the existing accountig data be affected?
 
thanks in advance for your help.
I have the same question (0)
  • Martin Dráb Profile Picture
    239,747 Most Valuable Professional on at
    Moved from Integration, Dataverse, and general topics forum to Small and medium business | Business Central, NAV, RMS forum.
  • Suggested answer
    Dhiren Nagar Profile Picture
    2,890 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    Hi,
     
    You can subscribe/Buy new license i.e. Premium plan and it will in no way affect your data. However please make sure following.
     
    1 - Make sure you buy all the premium licenses for all the user who currently have Essential licenses.
    2 - All the users who now has Essential licenses now needs to be assigned premium licenses.
    Also this changes needs to be synced to BC. (It happens auto if you do not do manually).
    3 - If you get any issue/error during login make sure you change the Experience tier in the Company information as Premium from current value of essential once the licenses are upgraded.
     
    I do not know about licensing if existing subscription can be upgraded or you need to buy new. That you can check with your existing licensing partner.
     
    Regards,
    Dhiren.
  • Suggested answer
    Ben Baxter Profile Picture
    7,117 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    As stated, there will be no loss of data.  You do need to know once the Company has been converted from "User Experience" of Essentials to Premium, no Users with Essentials license will be able to access that company.  Only Premium licensed Users will have access.
     
    Unless something new has changed, there is no conversion of Essentials licenses to Premium licenses.  To minimize financial impact, it would be suggested to make the change close to your renewal date on the licenses.  You will discontinue the Essentials licenses and add Premium licenses.
     
    Once you have the licenses available on your M365 tenant, you will need to manually swap the licenses on the Users.  It is recommended to wait 10 minutes then run the Get Users from M365 function within Business Central to update the User records in BC.
     
    Best Regards,
    Ben Baxter
    Accent Software Inc
  • Suggested answer
    OussamaSabbouh Profile Picture
    17,681 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    Hello ,
    Yes you can upgrade from Essentials to Premium without losing any data. Licensing in Business Central does not affect existing companies, posted entries, or historical data; it only controls which features users are allowed to access. When you switch to Premium, all accounting data remains untouched, and you simply unlock Premium functionality (Manufacturing, Service Management, etc.). No reinstallation, data migration, or reposting is required — it’s a license change only, applied at the tenant/user level.
    Regards,
    Oussama 
  • Suggested answer
    YUN ZHU Profile Picture
    101,995 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    As other experts have mentioned, there will be no impact on the data.
    PS: Dynamics 365 Business Central: Changing from Essential to Premium (Change which features are displayed)
     
    Thanks.
    ZHU

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