A Dynamics GP to Business Central migration gives organizations an opportunity to rethink more than their ERP. It also raises an important question for Accounts Payable teams:
Should AP processes change before, during, or after the Business Central migration?
There is no single right answer. The best timing depends on the condition of the organization’s data, processes, financial controls, integrations, and ability to manage change.
For some companies, simplifying AP before migration can reduce complexity. Others may benefit from moving to Business Central first and improving AP once users are comfortable in the new ERP. In some cases, carefully selected AP improvements can happen alongside the migration.
The important part is making that decision deliberately rather than treating every existing AP process as something that automatically needs to move into Business Central.
Why does Accounts Payable need its own plan for a Dynamics GP to Business Central migration?
Accounts Payable is closely tied to an organization’s financial controls, cash management, vendor relationships, and daily operations.
Over years of using Dynamics GP, an AP team may have built processes around spreadsheets, email approvals, paper documents, customizations, and third-party applications. Those processes may work, but that does not necessarily mean they should all be recreated in Business Central.
At the same time, changing too much during an ERP migration can create its own risk.
That makes AP planning a balancing act. Organizations need to consider both the risk of changing a process and the risk of keeping it the same.
A useful AP migration plan answers three questions:
- What should stay the same?
- What should improve?
- When should each change happen?
Those decisions should come before detailed software comparisons.
When should AP processes change before a Business Central migration?
Improving an AP process before the ERP migration can make sense when the current process will create unnecessary complexity in the new environment. For example, an organization may discover duplicate vendor records, outdated banking information, unnecessary approval steps, or manual workarounds that no longer serve a clear business purpose.
Cleaning up those issues first can give the Business Central project a stronger starting point.
Start with vendor and payment data
Data quality is especially important during ERP migration. Before moving AP data from Dynamics GP to Business Central, organizations should review questions such as:
- Are vendor records accurate and complete?
- Are duplicate and inactive vendors identified?
- Are vendor banking details current and validated?
- Is there a plan for reconciling open transactions?
Migrating poor-quality data does not resolve the underlying problem. It moves that problem into the new ERP.
Look for processes that can be simplified
Organizations should also document the current invoice-to-payment process.
The goal is not necessarily to redesign everything before migration. Instead, look for complexity that exists primarily because of historical limitations.
A spreadsheet may have filled an important gap five years ago. An extra approval may have been created because an old workflow could not support the desired control. A manual handoff may simply be the way the team has always worked.
Understanding why those steps exist helps determine whether they still belong in the future process.
When should AP modernization happen during the ERP migration?
Some AP changes fit naturally into the Dynamics GP-to-Business Central migration itself.
This is often true when a process is closely connected to ERP configuration, financial controls, or the architecture being designed for the new environment.
For example, the migration team will already need to understand approval requirements, segregation of duties, data flows, and system dependencies. That creates a natural opportunity to decide how those requirements should be supported in Business Central.
The key is to keep the scope manageable.
An ERP migration already requires users to learn a new environment. Introducing an entirely new ERP, new AP processes, new approval expectations, and several new applications at the same time may make adoption harder.
Rather than asking, “Can we make this change during migration?”
A better question is, “Does making this change now reduce risk or add to it?”
When should AP improvements wait until after Business Central goes live?
Waiting can be the better choice when a proposed AP improvement is valuable but not necessary for the ERP migration itself.
This allows the organization to separate two major changes: adopting Business Central and redesigning how people work.
After go-live, users have time to become familiar with the new ERP. The organization can then revisit additional automation, process improvements, or architecture changes with a clearer understanding of how AP operates in Business Central.
Delaying an improvement does not have to mean ignoring it.
Organizations can create a process improvement roadmap alongside the technical ERP migration roadmap. The two plans can support the same long-term goals without following the same schedule.
What should an AP risk assessment include?
Before deciding when to modernize AP, organizations should evaluate five areas.
1. Data readiness: Review vendor records, banking information, approval structures, and open transactions. The goal is to understand whether the data is reliable enough to support the future AP process.
2. Process readiness: Document how invoices move from receipt through approval and payment. Look for manual work, spreadsheets, email-based processes, unnecessary handoffs, and inconsistent procedures. These areas may indicate opportunities for simplification.
3. Integration complexity: AP rarely operates entirely within one system. Banking platforms, procurement applications, expense systems, document management tools, reporting solutions, and other applications may exchange information with the ERP.
Each integration creates requirements for testing, maintenance, and support. Migration planning should identify which connections are essential and whether any complexity can be removed.
4. Financial controls: ERP modernization should preserve or strengthen financial governance. Organizations should document approval policies, segregation of duties, audit requirements, vendor change procedures, and payment controls before deciding how the future AP environment will operate.
5. Organizational readiness: A technically sound project can still struggle if users are not prepared for the change. Consider project ownership, executive sponsorship, communication, training, and how much change employees are being asked to absorb at once. Change management should be part of migration planning from the beginning rather than something added shortly before go-live.
What are the AP software options for Business Central?
Once the organization understands its requirements and risks, it can evaluate the appropriate AP architecture.
There are generally three approaches.
Native Business Central functionality
Organizations with straightforward AP requirements may be able to rely on capabilities available within Business Central.
This approach can be appropriate when invoice volume, approval requirements, payment processes, and organizational complexity are relatively limited.
The advantage is a simpler technology environment. The tradeoff is that organizations should consider whether their requirements may become more complex as the business grows.
Embedded AP solutions for Business Central
Embedded AP solutions extend Business Central while allowing the ERP to remain central to the finance team’s work. Embedded solutions may include AP automation for invoice capture and processing and/or for managing and executing vendor payments more efficiently
The embedded approach can suit organizations that need more automation or control than native functionality provides but do not require a separate enterprise-wide procure-to-pay platform.
An embedded approach may also reduce some of the integration and administration considerations associated with maintaining a separate AP system.
External AP or procure-to-pay platforms
Larger or more complex organizations may require a dedicated platform that supports processes extending beyond Accounts Payable.
These systems can address broad procurement and finance requirements, but they may also introduce additional integration, governance, implementation, and administration considerations.
The best choice depends on business requirements rather than the number of features available in a product.
How can companies reduce AP risk during a GP-to-Business Central migration?
The most effective approach is to assess AP before selecting the future technology.
Organizations should understand their current data, workflows, controls, integrations, and capacity for change. They can then decide which processes belong in the future state and build a realistic sequence for making those changes.
That sequence might look different for every organization.
One company may clean vendor data and simplify approvals before migration, preserve the rest of its AP process through go-live, and introduce more automation later.
Another may already have mature processes and be ready to modernize AP alongside Business Central.
Both can be sound strategies when the decisions reflect the organization’s actual risk and readiness.
A practical AP migration checklist
Before finalizing an AP strategy for a Dynamics GP-to-Business Central migration, ask:
- Have we defined the business outcomes we want from the migration?
- Have we documented our current AP workflows?
- Have we reviewed vendor data for accuracy and completeness?
- Do we know which AP processes are manual or dependent on workarounds?
- Have we identified required integrations and data flows?
- Have we documented approval policies and financial controls?
- Do we know which AP changes are necessary for go-live?
- Have we identified improvements that can safely happen later?
- Do users have the training and support needed for the amount of change planned?
- Have we defined how we will measure success after implementation?
A “no” does not automatically mean the ERP migration should stop. It identifies an area that may need more discovery before a decision is made.
A successful Dynamics GP-to-Business Central migration does not require an organization to redesign every AP process at go-live. It requires knowing what needs to change, what should stay stable, and what can wait.
By assessing AP data, processes, integrations, financial controls, and organizational readiness early, companies can make those choices with greater confidence. The result is a migration strategy that treats Business Central as more than a new destination for old processes—and gives the organization room to improve AP at a pace it can successfully manage.
Build the AP plan around your organization
A Dynamics GP-to-Business Central migration creates a natural opportunity to look at Accounts Payable with fresh eyes. But modernization does not have to mean changing every process at once.
The stronger approach is to understand where AP risk exists today, decide which changes will have the most value, and determine when your organization is ready to make them.
That may mean cleaning up data or simplifying processes before migration. It may mean making targeted improvements alongside the move to Business Central. Or it may mean getting users comfortable in the new ERP before introducing the next phase of AP modernization.
What matters is that the technical roadmap and the AP roadmap work together. When organizations plan for both, they can reduce unnecessary disruption while building an Accounts Payable process that supports where the business is going next.