Issue:
We have a customer who currently uses Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) on-premises and is planning to migrate to Dynamics 365 BC Online. In the on-premises environment, it has always been possible to include companies in the solution where you have at least 50.1% ownership, as explicitly specified in the licensing terms. The customer has several such companies in their solution and has asked me to investigate whether there are any changes in this area related to BC Online.
The Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide (February 2024) does not specifically address this (at least not with a concrete ownership threshold). The closest I come to relevant information is on page 42: “Neither internal nor external user access extends to use of your Dynamics 365 environment to provide outsourced business services (i.e., day-to-day managing of unaffiliated third party sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, payments, payroll, human resources, telemarketing, data recording, or social media marketing). In this sense, you may not use Dynamics 365 to provide outsourced business services. However, as internal users, your employees, agents, contractors, and vendors may use your Dynamics 365 environment to prepare periodic financial statements for your clients or customers (such usage is not considered an outsourced business service).”
While it specifies that “Outsourced Business Services” are not allowed (e.g., handling the accounting for a company you don’t own at all), it does not clarify when this definition applies. What if you own 10%, 50%, or 80%? How is an “unaffiliated third party” defined?