Licensing guidance from a partner, not a price list
Team Member, Essentials, Premium and Device licensing explained in plain terms, mapped to what each role in your business actually needs to do.
Four licensing paths, one right answer for your team
Business Central pricing is per named user, per month. The right mix of licences almost always blends more than one tier.
Team Member
- View records across all modules
- Approve workflows (POs, expenses)
- Edit a limited set of light tasks
- Time and expense entry
Use case: Shop floor supervisors, warehouse staff and approvers who need visibility without full transaction rights.
Recommended for: Manufacturing, distribution
Discuss This PlanEssentials
- Financial management
- Sales and purchase order processing
- Inventory management
- Project management
Use case: Finance, sales and operations users who create and process transactions daily.
Recommended for: Trading, distribution, services
Discuss This PlanPremium
- Everything in Essentials
- Production orders & capacity planning
- Service order management
- Advanced costing
Use case: Manufacturers running production planning and service teams inside the same system.
Recommended for: Manufacturing, steel, automotive
Discuss This PlanDevice License
- Assigned to a device, not a person
- Suited to shift-based shared terminals
- Full Essentials or Premium access on device
- Reduces per-head licence count
Use case: Multi-shift shop floors where several employees share a terminal for data entry.
Recommended for: Manufacturing, warehousing
Discuss This PlanWe model licensing against your actual org chart
Before recommending a mix, we map every role that will touch Business Central — finance, sales, shop floor, warehouse, management — against what each one actually needs to do in the system. That avoids two common, expensive mistakes: over-licensing the whole company on Premium, or under-licensing shop-floor roles that then can't complete their workflow.
- Free licence-mix assessment before you commit
- Guidance on when to convert Device to named licences
- Annual review as headcount and roles shift
Typical blended mix
For a 60-person manufacturer, a typical licence mix looks like:
- 8 Premium (finance, planning, management)
- 14 Essentials (sales, purchase, warehouse leads)
- 30 Team Member (approvals, shop-floor visibility)
- 8 Device (shared shift terminals)
Common questions
Yes. Most implementations blend tiers by role — Premium for manufacturing and planning users, premium for finance and sales, Team Member for approvers and light users.
You can upgrade an individual user's licence at any time; there's no need to re-platform or re-negotiate the whole contract.
It depends on shift patterns. Device licensing pays off when multiple employees share one terminal across shifts; for desk-based roles, named-user licensing is usually the better fit.
We advise on the right licence mix and can support procurement conversations, working alongside your Microsoft licensing agreement of choice.