Business Central is available for both internal and external users.
Licensing requirements for internal users
Business Central functionality is delivered through the Business Central Essentials or Premium User. The primary licensing is by named user subscription.
With Business Central, you must license at least one Business Central Essentials or Business Central Premium user. Additional access to the service functionality by other users is licensed with Dynamics 365 Business Central Team Members.
Named user
User Subscription Licensing, or SLs, are assigned on a “named user” basis, meaning that each user requires a separate User SL. User SLs cannot be shared, but an individual with a User SL may access the service through multiple devices.
Non-perpetual
The User SL grants users with non-perpetual rights (with no buy-out rights) for use of the Dynamics 365 Business Central service. Providing that you are current on your subscription payments and adhere to the product terms and the online service terms, you will have access to the most up-to-date version of Business Central.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Subscription License types
Microsoft Dynamics 365 simplifies licensing of business applications. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 user subscriptions classify users into two types: full users and additional users.
Full users
Full users are those whose work requires use of the feature-rich business applications functionality. Examples of full users are salespeople, customer service representatives, finance employees, controllers, and supply chain managers. These users have also been referred to in the past as Pro Users or Power Users. These full users are licensed with a Dynamics 365 Business Central subscription.
Additional users
Additional users often represent a significant percentage of users in an organization who might consume data or reports from line-of-business systems or complete light tasks such as time or expense entry and HR record updates. Alternatively, additional users might be heavier users of the system who don’t require full user capabilities. These additional users are licensed with Dynamics 365 Business Central Team Members.
Dynamics 365 Business Central Team Members requires that at least one other user is licensed with Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials or Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium.
Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials
Functionality that is delivered with Essentials includes:
- Financial Management
- Customer Relationship Management
- Project Management
- Supply Chain Management
- Human Resources Management
- Warehouse Management
Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium
Functionality that is delivered with Premium includes:
- Everything in Essentials
- Service Management
- Manufacturing
Team Members
Dynamics 365 Business Central Team Members use rights are as follows:
- Read anything within Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- Update existing data and entries in Dynamics 365 Business Central – Existing data is defined as records, such as customer, vendor, or item records, that are already created. Entries denote those entries on which it is allowed from an accounting perspective to update specific information (for example, a due date on customer ledger entries).
- Approve or reject tasks in all workflows that are assigned to a user.
- Create, edit, or delete a quote.
- Create, edit, or delete personal information.
- Enter a time sheet for Jobs.
- Use Power Apps for Dynamics 365.
- A Team Members application module might not be customized with more than 15 custom entities that are available to the Dynamics 365 Team license.
Licensing Requirements for external users
External users are end customers and third-party users of the organization or its affiliates and do not require SLs to access Dynamics 365. External user access is included with the organization’s internal user SLs.
External users cannot use any clients that are provided by the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Application Programming Interface (API), such as the Web client, the iPad or iPhone app, or the Android application.
Additionally, external users include off-site vendors who do not have an employee-like relationship with the organization or its affiliates (for example, IT help desk support vendors who are serving multiple customer organizations). However, external user access does not extend to the customer or the customer’s affiliate’s contractors, vendors, or agents who are providing business processes on the customer’s behalf or using Microsoft Dynamics 365 to manage any portions of their business.
In this sense, a customer may not use Microsoft Dynamics 365 to provide business process outsourcing services to its clients.
