Dynamics 365 Business Central, the no. 1 ERP in 2024 by Forbes Advisor, is designed to help small and mid-sized businesses streamline their operations. If you are planning to purchase Business Central, Microsoft offers a way to evaluate the product. The Business Central IWs license acts as a demo or free trial license.
When you sign up for a Business Central trial through the self-service sign-up, 10,000 IWs licenses are added to your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). This enables multiple users to test the functionality of Business Central.
This way, you can explore the rich features of Business Central before making a purchasing decision.
In this blog, we’ll cover all the essential information related to Business Central for IWs.
Table of Contents
What is Dynamics 365 Business Central for IWs?
Business Central for IWs is the license Microsoft assigns to anyone using Business Central under an evaluation subscription rather than a purchased plan.
In other words, when your organization signs up for the free trial (called the "viral trial" internally at Microsoft), the system provisions 10,000 IW licenses into your Microsoft Entra ID tenant. Any of those licenses can be assigned to a colleague so they can sign in and explore Business Central using sample data with no cost and no CSP contract required at this stage.
How IWs differs from paid Business Central licensing?
| Basis | IW Trial License | Paid License (Essentials/Premium/Team Member) |
| Cost | Free | Priced per user, per month |
| Purchased through | Self-service sign-up | A Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) |
| Data | Sample data, or your own once you switch to the 30-day trial | Your live production data |
| Duration | Ongoing until inactive for 45 days, or up to ~90 days once you start the 30-day trial | Ongoing subscription, billed annually |
| Purpose | Evaluate the product | Run your business in production |
Note: An IW license is never something you buy on its own. It is Microsoft's mechanism for letting you kick the tires before you commit to Essentials, Premium, Team Member, External Accountant, or Device licensing.
Why Business Central Matters for Information Workers?
Let’s see what the reasons why Business Central matters for Information Workers are:
Centralized Data: All business data is stored in a single system, eliminating the need to switch between multiple platforms. Information workers can access customer data, financials, and project statuses all in one place.
Automated Reporting and Analytics: Business Central provides built-in reporting and Copilot-assisted insights that help IWs generate real-time insights. This reduces manual reporting efforts and provides more accurate data to help with decision-making.
Simplified Collaboration: Since Dynamics 365 Business Central is part of the Microsoft ecosystem, it integrates with tools like Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. This makes it easier for IWs to collaborate, share documents, and communicate across departments without switching apps.
Ease of Use: With its intuitive, user-friendly interface, Business Central allows IWs to quickly learn and navigate the system without extensive training. The dashboards are customizable, ensuring that workers can access the information most relevant to their roles.
Key Features That Benefit Information Workers
In this section, we will discuss the key features of Business Central for IWs:
Task Automation: Dynamics 365 Business Central automates repetitive tasks, such as invoice generation and approval workflows. This saves time and reduces the chances of errors, allowing IWs to focus on more strategic activities.
Real-Time Data Access: IWs can access real-time data on customer interactions, financials, and supply chain metrics, enabling them to make faster and more informed decisions. This instant access is crucial for ensuring smooth day-to-day operations.
Seamless Integration with Microsoft Office Suite: Business Central’s deep integration with Microsoft Excel and Word allows IWs to export reports, analyze data in Excel, or generate documents in Word without leaving the platform. This connectivity streamlines their workflow.
Security and Compliance: Information workers are often concerned with data integrity and compliance. Business Central is built with enterprise-grade security measures, ensuring that sensitive business data remains secure while complying with industry standards.
Futureproofing for Growth: As companies grow, their business management needs become more complex. Business Central is scalable, meaning that it can grow alongside the business. For information workers, this means no disruptions in operations or additional complexities as the system expands.
Dynamics Business Central for IWs Trial Journey
Start the IWs trial
Sign up through Microsoft's self-service flow using a work or school email including consumer addresses like Gmail, Outlook.com, and Hotmail are rejected. This is the "viral trial": 10,000 IW licenses get provisioned into your Microsoft Entra ID tenant automatically, no CSP contract involved at this point.
Explore the trial environment
You land in an evaluation version pre-loaded with sample data. This stage has no fixed expiration date; it runs for as long as it is used. The only thing that kills it is 45 days of total inactivity, at which point Microsoft treats it as expired and removes it.
Move into the 30-day evaluation
When you are ready to test with real data instead of samples, you switch into the full 30-day trial. This starts with a fixed clock, 30 days, not inactivity based.
Note that this switch alone does not unlock everything, by default, you are still on the Essentials-level "Experience."
To see manufacturing and service management, someone with an Evaluation or Premium license needs to go into Company Information and set the Experience field to Premium.
Test Business Central with your team
Additional colleagues can be brought in during this stage using IW licenses from your 10,000-seat pool, how that's configured is covered in the next section.
Evaluate your business scenarios
Work through real workflows such as sales orders, purchase approvals, financial reporting, inventory movement, using the onboarding checklist and guided tours to keep things moving without a steep learning curve.
Extend the trial if needed
Thirty days can run short. You can self-extend once for another 30 days (60 total). Past that, only a Microsoft partner can push it a second time, up to roughly 90 days from when the 30-day trial started.
Decide what happens next
You have two paths:
Convert to production: Purchase an actual license (Essentials, Premium, Team Member, etc.) through a CSP partner like Dynamics Square. The trial officially ends once a user with the newly assigned paid license, not an admin, is the first to sign in.
Walk away: If the trial (in its viral form) sits unused for 45 days, Microsoft treats it as expired and the environment is removed.
How to Set Up and Manage Business Central IWs
Run the Set Up My Company assisted with setup guide to build a working trial company rather than an empty one, you can optionally import data from your current system. Nevertheless, Microsoft is explicit that a free trial is for evaluation.
Then, assign IW licenses to colleagues from your 10,000-seat pool through the Microsoft 365 admin center. This does not require a CSP relationship, that only matters once you are buying, but it does require someone with admin rights in your tenant.
As for Business Central version 25.0, the older "user groups" model is deprecated in favor of composable permission sets and security groups. If you are working with an older guide that references user groups, it is out of date.
The Effective Permissions page on a user's record shows exactly what they can see and do once license entitlements and permission sets are combined, useful for confirming access to matches intent before your team starts testing.
Next, turn on the onboarding checklist and in-app guided tours so non-technical users can work through sales, purchasing, and finance scenarios without handholding.
Partners can help with a tailored demo environment, push a second trial extension once your self-service extension is used up, or map what you tested to the right licensing tier when you are ready to buy.
What Can I Actually Test with an IW License?
An IW trial (once you are in the full 30-day experience) gives you hands-on access to essentially the full Business Central feature set, so you can evaluate real business scenarios rather than a striped-down demo:
| Business Area | What You Can Test |
| Finance & Accounting | General ledger, chart of accounts, bank reconciliation, budgeting, VAT/tax setup, financial reporting |
| Sales & Customer Management | Customer cards, quotes, sales orders, invoicing |
| Purchasing & Vendors | Purchase orders, vendor invoices, approval workflows |
| Inventory & Warehousing | Item cards, stock tracking, basic warehouse operations, inventory valuation |
| Project/Job Costing | Job setup, time tracking, basic project accounting |
| Manufacturing (Premium-tier) | Bills of materials, routings, production orders, capacity planning |
| Service Management (Premium-tier) | Service contracts, service items, service orders |
| Reporting & Analytics | Power BI–embedded dashboards, built-in reports, Copilot-assisted insights |
| Microsoft 365 Integration | Excel data analysis, Word document generation, Teams collaboration |
Note: Dynamics 365 Business Central for IWS trials are useful as you are testing the same functional areas you have run in production.
Dynamics 365 Business Central for IWs Price
An IW license itself has no price; Microsoft does not sell it. It is a free evaluation mechanism, not a licensing tier you can purchase or negotiate.
Nevertheless, what does have a price is Business Central itself, once you move from evaluating to running it in production. Licenses are sold per user, per month, through a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) like Dynamics Square, you cannot buy directly from Microsoft.
In addition, as of Microsoft's most recent US list pricing:
Essentials: Around $80/user/month including finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, and project accounting
Premium: around $110/user/month includes everything in Essentials plus manufacturing and service management
Team Member: around $8/user/month, provide read access plus a limited set of writing actions (approvals, time entry) for occasional users
Device license: a shared, per-device option for shop floor or warehouse terminals rather than named users
Dynamics Square: A Leading Partner for Business Central Implementation
Business Central for IWs is the best way to evaluate Dynamics 365 BC. If you are considering deploying Business Central, then Dynamics Square is here for you. We are a certified Dynamics 365 Implementation partner helping businesses streamline their operations by leveraging Microsoft products, like Business Central, as per their needs. With 14+ years of experience, we helped businesses from diverse industries.
In case of any query, please do not hesitate to contact us by phone at +1 281 899 0865 or by sending an email to arish.siddiqui@dynamicssquare.com.
