If you're on Business Central cloud (version 28), your update arrives automatically within the rollout window. Administrators can schedule it to any date up to 31 August 2026 using the Business Central Admin Centre. If you're running version 24 or earlier on-premises, you'll need to upgrade to version 25 before moving to version 28, so it's worth checking where your environment sits now rather than closer to the deadline.

This post covers what matters most for UK and Irish organisations. We've put the local compliance and regulatory features first because those are the ones with external deadlines attached — then we move into the broader platform improvements that affect most businesses running Business Central day-to-day.

UK and Ireland: Compliance and Localisation

This is the section most worth reading carefully if you're based in the UK or Ireland. Several Wave 1 features are built specifically around regulatory requirements in our markets, and a couple of them have action points that need to happen well before the feature goes live.

United Kingdom

The standout UK feature in Wave 1 is built-in support for the Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance (Amendment) Regulations 2024. UK companies above the relevant size thresholds are legally required to report twice a year on their payment terms and actual payment performance to suppliers. Until now, most finance teams have been pulling data out of Business Central manually, running it through spreadsheets, and then submitting it — a process that takes time and introduces risk at every stage.

From June 2026, Business Central's UK localisation handles this natively. The update adds new data points to the existing Payment Practices page: the total value of payments made during the reporting period, the proportion that were late against agreed terms, and a specific breakdown of late payments attributable to disputes rather than poor payment performance. That last point matters — a dispute flag has been added to purchase invoices so that finance teams can link a delayed payment directly to a documented dispute. This is important for audit purposes and protects the business in situations where a late payment was held legitimately. The report exports in CSV format, ready for submission to the government portal.

Ireland

Ireland doesn't have a feature that switches on directly in Wave 1 the way the UK Payment Practices update does, but the regulatory landscape is shifting in ways that make 2026 an important planning year. Two things are converging: the EU's VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) Directive, and Revenue's own domestic e-invoicing rollout, which is moving ahead of the broader EU timeline.

In February 2026, Revenue confirmed which businesses fall within scope for Phase One of Ireland's VAT modernisation programme. Phase One requires mandatory domestic B2B e-invoicing for large corporates — specifically, VAT-registered businesses managed by Revenue's Large Corporates Division — from 1 November 2028. Phase Two then extends obligations to all VAT-registered businesses with zero-rated cross-border EU B2B transactions from November 2029. The full EU-wide ViDA requirement for intra-EU B2B e-invoicing follows on 1 July 2030.

Revenue has explicitly recommended that in-scope businesses begin preparations now, and has indicated that those within scope can expect correspondence from Revenue confirming their Phase One inclusion. If you're a large corporate in Ireland, an ERP readiness assessment should be on your agenda for 2026. Your Business Central environment needs to be capable of issuing structured e-invoices and transmitting specified data to Revenue's reporting infrastructure — and getting there from where most environments are today takes more time than organisations typically expect.

There's also a more immediate VAT change for Irish businesses in specific sectors. Ireland's Budget 2026 confirmed a reduction in the VAT rate for restaurant and catering services and hairdressing from 13.5% to 9%, effective 1 July 2026. This isn't a Business Central feature — it's a tax configuration task you need to complete in your environment before that date. If your Business Central setup handles VAT for these categories, update your tax codes ahead of 1 July or you'll be charging customers the wrong rate.

Electronic Documents — Building the Foundation

Wave 1 expands the e-document framework significantly. For UK businesses this is relevant in the context of trading with European partners; for Irish businesses it's a direct stepping stone towards the e-invoicing infrastructure Revenue will require by 2028. Either way, getting comfortable with this framework now makes sense.

For Irish businesses specifically: while Business Central does not yet carry a dedicated Irish e-invoicing format for Revenue's Phase One requirements (those technical specifications are still being finalised by Revenue), version 28's e-document framework is the architecture that any future Irish localisation will be built on. Ensuring your vendor and customer records are clean, and configuring e-document workflows before 2028, will make the transition considerably less disruptive than leaving it late.

AI Agents and Copilot — What's Changed in Practice

AI is the headline theme across the whole release. For UK and Irish finance teams dealing with high volumes of purchase invoices, the Payables Agent is the feature worth paying most attention to. It processes incoming invoices by reading your email inbox, matching them to purchase orders, and handling the routine parts of accounts payable without manual handling at every step.

What's new in Wave 1 is meaningful visibility into what the agent has been doing. A dedicated view shows which emails in your mailbox the Payables Agent has already processed, which addresses the understandable concern many finance managers have about losing oversight of what the AI has and hasn't touched. You can also stop all active agent tasks in one action — useful when you need to intervene quickly, for example around period-end or when an exception needs human review.

Finance and Reporting Improvements

Beyond the UK Payment Practices feature, there are several finance improvements in Wave 1 that are useful across UK and Irish organisations. Most of them are about reducing manual overhead and improving the accuracy of reporting without requiring significant changes to how teams already work.

• Posting Period DateFormula — Define posting From/To periods using date formulas rather than fixed dates. More flexible for businesses on monthly, quarterly, or custom financial periods, and removes a recurring friction point for period-end close routines.
• Match Purchase Invoices to Multiple Order Lines — A new "Get Order Lines" action allows a single purchase invoice to be matched against multiple purchase orders and receipt lines. Particularly useful for manufacturers and distributors who consolidate deliveries before invoicing, which is common in food and drink supply chains in both the UK and Ireland.
• Self-Billed Invoices — Supports self-billing arrangements where the customer issues the invoice on the supplier's behalf. This is used in parts of the UK and Irish agricultural supply chain, certain construction subcontracting arrangements, and some professional services sectors.
• Foreign Currency Revaluation on GL Accounts — More accurate revaluation of GL accounts in foreign currencies. Relevant for UK businesses holding EUR balances post-Brexit, and for Irish businesses with GBP or USD positions — a common scenario for companies trading across the UK-Ireland border.
• Accelerated Depreciation for Fixed Assets — A long-requested feature, useful for businesses claiming capital allowances or managing asset write-downs under UK tax rules (HMRC AIA and writing-down allowances) or Irish Revenue rules (Irish accelerated capital allowances, including the R&D equipment scheme).
• Financial Reporting Enhancements — Improved performance on Trial Balance-related Excel reports, updated formatting options, and a more reliable experience for finance teams producing board packs or statutory accounts.

Operations, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain

Target Integration works extensively with manufacturing, food and drink, and distribution businesses across the UK and Ireland, and there are several Wave 1 updates in this area worth flagging. None of them are sweeping transformations, but they address genuine day-to-day friction that operational teams deal with regularly.

• Improved Manufacturing Usability — Refined navigation and layout consistency across production order workflows. For businesses running high transaction volumes on the shop floor — processing lines, batch manufacturing, work orders — this kind of usability improvement compounds over time and reduces training burden for new staff.
• Reverse Drop Shipments — Businesses can now reverse drop shipments when the associated sales and purchase documents haven't yet been invoiced. This has been a workaround-heavy area for companies managing returns or cancellations on drop-shipped goods. It's particularly relevant for UK businesses dealing with cross-border logistics where post-Brexit customs complexity already adds friction to returns processes.
• Item Insights with Advanced KPIs — AI-assisted KPI views and summaries on item records, making it easier for procurement and inventory teams to assess stock performance without pulling separate reports. Useful for businesses managing large SKU ranges across multiple warehouses or fulfilment locations.
• Enhanced Fixed Asset Analytics — Updated Power BI analytics for fixed asset management, building on the embedded reporting introduced in recent waves. Relevant for capital-intensive businesses in food and drink processing, manufacturing, and engineering.

Shopify Connector Updates

For UK and Irish businesses selling through Shopify alongside Business Central — common in food, retail, consumer goods, and gifting — Wave 1 includes four connector improvements, all available from April 2026. The checkout currency change is the one most worth flagging for businesses operating across the UK-Ireland border or selling into the EU.

Governance and Administration

For IT administrators and those responsible for Business Central governance in larger or multi-entity organisations, Wave 1 includes several changes that improve control over environments, data, and partner access. These are less visible day-to-day but reduce operational and compliance risk.

• Partner Access per Environment — Assign your Microsoft Partner's access at the individual environment level rather than across the whole tenant. Particularly relevant for organisations with multiple legal entities — UK head offices with Irish subsidiaries, or businesses with separate production and shared services environments — where you need to control which environments a partner can access and when.
• Customer-Managed Encryption Keys — Take control of your own encryption keys for Business Central data. This directly supports compliance with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and with Ireland's Data Protection Act 2018 (which transposes the EU GDPR). For organisations with specific data residency or sovereignty requirements — financial services, healthcare, public sector — this is worth reviewing with your compliance team.
• Extended Update Windows — More flexibility to schedule when Business Central updates are applied, reducing the risk of updates landing during month-end close, peak trading periods, or other operationally sensitive windows.
• Unified PTE and AppSource Management — A single interface for managing both per-tenant extensions and AppSource apps across environments, reducing deployment overhead for organisations running multiple Business Central environments.

What's Being Removed in Version 28

Version 28 removes some legacy functionality, and the main item to be aware of is the removal of older Excel report layouts. These were partially replaced during the 2024 Wave 1 release and moved to a "Legacy" tab in version 27. In version 28 they are removed entirely. Microsoft has provided replacement layouts for all of them, but it's worth running a quick audit of which report layouts are actively in use in your environment — particularly anything feeding management packs, board reports, or statutory accounts — and verifying that the updated versions produce the outputs you need before the upgrade arrives.

Some standard reports are also being deprecated in this wave. Again, this is manageable in most cases, but is best identified and tested rather than discovered after the update has been applied to your production environment.

What to Do Now

Wave 1 is a wide release and not every feature will be immediately relevant to every business. For UK and Irish organisations, the clearest near-term priorities break down like this.

UK businesses subject to Payment Practices reporting should treat June 2026 as a deadline to plan back from, not a notification to act on when it arrives. Confirm whether you're in scope, check your next reporting deadline, and engage your Business Central partner early so the configuration — particularly the purchase invoice dispute flag — is in place before the feature goes live.

Irish large corporates should confirm whether you've received or are expecting correspondence from Revenue about Phase One scope. If you're in scope, a readiness assessment of your Business Central environment against the e-invoicing requirements should be on the agenda for 2026. November 2028 sounds distant but an ERP implementation or significant configuration project to meet those requirements needs to be planned and resourced well in advance.

Irish businesses in hospitality, catering, or hairdressing need to update their VAT codes before 1 July 2026. This is a straightforward configuration task but has a fixed external deadline.

All businesses on version 24 or earlier should check their upgrade path now. The requirement to step through version 25 before upgrading to version 28 means the path to Wave 1 may take longer than a single upgrade cycle, and planning time matters if you want to take advantage of features with summer or autumn availability dates.

For the broader platform improvements — the AI agents, the finance workflow changes, the Shopify connector updates — the most useful thing to do with Wave 1 is to test the relevant features in a sandbox environment before they go live in production. That applies particularly to the Payables Agent (where data quality will determine how well it performs), the reverse drop shipment change (where existing returns workflows need verifying), and any legacy Excel report layouts currently in use.