1.1 Creating Companies & Assisted Setup Wizards
Key Takeaways
- Business Central provides three primary company creation types: Evaluation - Sample Data (CRONUS demonstration), Production - Essential/Standard Data (baseline setup without transactions), and Create New - No Data (completely blank database container).
- Copying an existing company duplicates all setup, master, and transactional data while automatically setting all Job Queue Entries to On Hold to safeguard external integrations.
- The Company Information card establishes critical legal identity and tax metadata, including visual Company Badges with custom colors and labels to differentiate production from sandbox environments.
- User permissions can be scoped to individual companies by populating the Company Name column in the User Permission Sets table, or left blank for tenant-wide global access.
- The Assisted Setup framework organizes initialization wizards by operational category, tracking real-time status across Not Started, In Progress, and Completed states.
1.1 Creating Companies & Assisted Setup Wizards
Quick Summary: In Dynamics 365 Business Central, a single tenant can host multiple isolated business entities known as companies. Administrators create companies via the Companies page using the Create New Company wizard, choosing between Evaluation - Sample Data (CRONUS demo records), Production - Essential/Standard Data (baseline setup and Chart of Accounts without ledger entries), and Create New - No Data (empty container). Existing companies can be copied for testing, which automatically sets all Job Queue Entries to On Hold. Security permissions can be applied tenant-wide or scoped to specific companies using the Company Name field on User Permission Sets.
Multi-Company Architecture in Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central operates on a multi-company architecture hosted within an environment (tenant). An environment represents a single Azure SQL database instance. Within that single database instance, organizations can partition operations into multiple discrete legal entities called companies.
Each company maintains its own independent data set:
- Independent Ledgers: General Ledger, Customer Ledger, Vendor Ledger, Item Ledger, and Bank Account Ledger entries are strictly segregated by company.
- Independent Master Data: Customers, vendors, items, fixed assets, and charts of accounts reside inside individual company boundaries unless explicitly synchronized via master data management extensions or consolidation tools.
- Shared Platform Infrastructure: All companies within an environment share the same base application code, installed AL extensions, database schema, user licenses, and tenant-level configuration settings.
Understanding how to provision, configure, and isolate these companies is a core competency evaluated in the MB-800 certification exam.
Company Creation Types & The Setup Wizard
To provision a new company, a functional consultant navigates to the Companies page (Alt+Q -> type Companies) and selects New -> Create New Company. This action launches the Set Up Company assisted setup wizard.
UI Navigation Path:
Tell Me (Alt+Q) -> Companies -> Action Bar: New -> Create New Company Wizard
The wizard prompts the user to enter a Company Name (up to 30 characters), an optional Display Name, and to select one of three standard company creation types:
| Company Creation Option | Pre-Populated Data | Transaction Ledger Entries | Optimal Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evaluation - Sample Data (CRONUS) | Complete demo configuration, Chart of Accounts, customers, vendors, items, and posting matrices | Pre-posted historical invoices, journals, payments, and ledger entries | Proof-of-concept demonstrations, user training, and functional testing in non-production environments. |
| Production - Essential/Standard Data | Standard number series, general and specific posting groups, payment terms, units of measure, and country-specific Chart of Accounts | None (zero transactions, zero ledger entries) | Standard production implementations adopting out-of-the-box accounting templates without legacy baggage. |
| Create New - No Data | None (completely blank database container; no accounts, no groups, no tables) | None (zero transactions, zero ledger entries) | Advanced enterprise rollouts requiring proprietary Charts of Accounts and RapidStart data packages without default template conflicts. |
[!NOTE] Selecting Production - Essential/Standard Data deploys standard posting groups (General Business, General Product, Customer, Vendor, and Inventory Posting Groups) tailored to the localization of the tenant (such as US standard or standard UK). This dramatically accelerates initial setup, but requires the consultant to adapt or map legacy accounts into the pre-seeded structure.
Copying Existing Companies: Mechanics & Operational Safeguards
Beyond creating blank or templated companies, administrators frequently duplicate existing companies. On the Companies page, selecting an existing record and clicking Copy creates an exact structural and transactional clone of the source company.
Core Use Cases for Company Copying
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Duplicating live production data into a sandbox or test company within the same environment to validate customizations, test cumulative updates, or train staff on actual historical transactions.
- Golden Template Rollouts: Developing a pristine "Golden Configuration Company" that contains fully configured posting groups, dimensions, number series, workflows, and report layouts, but no transactional data. When onboarding a new subsidiary, consultants simply copy the golden template, change the legal entity metadata, and begin master data import.
- Troubleshooting & Issue Replication: Duplicating a company to isolate and reproduce complex posting errors, reconciliation discrepancies, or foreign exchange revaluation issues without risking production ledger integrity.
Critical Safeguards: Job Queue Suspension
When Business Central copies a company, it implements a vital automated safety measure:
[!WARNING] Job Queue Safety Mechanism: All Job Queue Entries in the newly copied company are automatically assigned a status of On Hold.
This automatic suspension prevents severe operational hazards, including:
- Background tasks attempting to transmit electronic invoices or EDI files to live external customer endpoints.
- Automated bank feed synchronizations duplicating statement imports or payment reconciliations.
- Scheduled recurring journal batches executing duplicate general ledger postings.
- Automated OCR document processing queues consuming production invoice feeds.
Consultants must manually review, reconfigure, or delete Job Queue Entries in the copied company before setting their status back to Ready.
The Assisted Setup Framework & Company Setup Checklist
The Assisted Setup page (Alt+Q -> type Assisted Setup) serves as the administrative orchestration hub in Business Central. It aggregates multi-step guided wizards designed to standardize initial configuration across various functional modules.
UI Navigation Path:
Tell Me (Alt+Q) -> Assisted Setup -> Category Groups -> Set Up Company Wizard
Wizards are categorized into logical operational groupings:
- Set Up Company: Core identity, fiscal year, experience tier, and bank accounts.
- System: Email accounts, data migration packages, users, and security groups.
- Reporting: Financial reporting layouts, Excel report configurations, and Power BI integrations.
- Services / Integrations: Exchange synchronization, Shopify connectors, and document approvals.
Each assisted setup wizard displays a real-time Status indicator:
- Not Started: The wizard has never been launched in the current company.
- In Progress: The wizard was initiated and partially filled out, but the consultant exited before completing all mandatory steps. Values entered are staged but may not be fully committed.
- Completed: The wizard successfully executed all validation scripts and committed setup records to the underlying tables.
The Set Up Company Wizard Flow
When launched, the Set Up Company wizard navigates through five sequential configuration gates:
- Company Name & Branding: Entering legal entity naming conventions and uploading the official company logo.
- Experience Tier Selection: Selecting between Essential (core financials, sales, purchasing, inventory, and project management) and Premium (adds full Manufacturing / Work Centers and Service Management). This selection sets the tenant-wide or company-level application feature exposure.
- Fiscal Year Definition: Specifying the opening accounting period starting date and period lengths (typically 12 monthly periods).
- Communication & Address Information: Defining physical address lines, post codes, communication endpoints, and country codes.
- Bank Account Initialization: Entering primary operating bank details (routing numbers, account numbers, and currency designations) to automatically generate the primary Bank Account Card.
Company Information Configuration & Visual System Indicators
Once the initial wizard completes, consultants perform detailed parameter maintenance on the Company Information card (Alt+Q -> type Company Information).
| FastTab | Critical Fields | Operational / Exam Significance |
|---|---|---|
| General | Name, Address, Picture (Logo), Industrial Classification | The Picture field stores the corporate bitmap/PNG logo rendered on external customer-facing documents (Sales Invoices, Order Confirmations). |
| Communication | Phone No., E-Mail, Home Page | Defines the default sender metadata for system-generated emails and customer notification dispatches. |
| Payments | Bank Name, Bank Branch No., Bank Account No., SWIFT Code, IBAN | Establishes remittance payment coordinates printed directly in document footers on outgoing sales invoices. |
| Tax / Shipping | VAT Registration No. / Tax Registration No., Federal Employer ID | Determines federal employer tax identification and sales tax calculation parameters required for 1099 or VAT reporting. |
| System Indicator | System Indicator, Company Badge Style, Company Badge Text | Renders a persistent visual color-coded badge in the top web client banner to prevent catastrophic operational confusion. |
The Company Badge (System Indicator)
To prevent users from mistakenly entering live financial transactions into a testing, training, or sandbox company, administrators configure the Company Badge under the System Indicator FastTab:
- System Indicator: Set to
CustomorCompany Information. - Company Badge Style: Selects an accent color (e.g., Dark Blue, Light Blue, Dark Green, Orange, Red, Purple).
- Company Badge Text: A customized 4-character alphanumeric label (e.g.,
PROD,TEST,UAT,TRAIN,SBX).
When enabled, this badge appears persistently in the upper right-hand corner of the Business Central browser client, providing an unmistakable visual indicator of the active environment and company.
User Access Permissions & Company-Level Scoping
Security in Dynamics 365 Business Central is established through Permission Sets assigned to individual user accounts or mapped through Security Groups (linked to Microsoft Entra ID groups).
A critical administrative responsibility on multi-company tenants is restricting user access to designated legal entities.
User Security Scoping Architecture:
User Card
└── User Permission Sets Subpage
├── Permission Set: D365 BASIC | Company Name: [BLANK] -> Global across all companies
├── Permission Set: D365 JOURNALS, POST | Company Name: CRONUS USA -> Isolated strictly to CRONUS USA
└── Permission Set: D365 SALES, EDIT | Company Name: CRONUS UK -> Isolated strictly to CRONUS UK
The Company Name Scoping Rule
In the User Card under the User Permission Sets FastTab, each assigned permission set includes a Company Name field:
- Blank Company Name (Tenant-Wide): If the
Company Namecolumn is left blank, the user possesses those permissions across every company that currently exists or is created in the future within that environment. - Explicit Company Name (Company-Specific): If a specific company is selected in the
Company Namecolumn, the user's permissions for that set apply strictly and exclusively within that company.
[!TIP] Security Best Practice: Base system navigation permission sets—such as
D365 BASICorLOCAL—should be assigned with a blank Company Name so users can authenticate and open the web client. Operational and posting permission sets (such asD365 JOURNALS, POST,D365 SALES, EDIT, orD365 PURCH, EDIT) should be explicitly scoped to specific companies to enforce strict segregation of duties across operating entities.
A functional consultant needs to create a new company in Dynamics 365 Business Central that includes standard setup data, a Chart of Accounts, and posting groups, but must not contain any sample or historical transaction ledger entries. Which company creation option in the Create New Company assisted setup wizard should be selected?
A system administrator wants to restrict a junior accountant's permissions so that they can only post sales journals in Company A, without having any access to post journals in Company B within the same Business Central tenant. How should this security restriction be configured?
When copying an existing production company to create a test environment for user acceptance testing (UAT), which configuration change occurs automatically to prevent unintended background processing?