What Business Central Really Costs: A UK Implementation Budget Planner
A four-layer budget model, a complexity scorecard and three worked company profiles in GBP, informed by Panorama, Gartner, IDC, S&P Global and Microsoft research.
- A four-layer budget model you can defend to a board
- A complexity scorecard that shows where your project sits
- Three worked company profiles with licence costs in GBP
- The questions that turn partner quotes into comparable numbers
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Microsoft UK list prices and research sources as cited in the white paper, checked 22 October 2026.
The licence is the smallest number in your budget
The numbers that decide whether your project lands on budget are the ones nobody publishes.
In a Business Central project, the licence is the smallest and most predictable line, as our Business Central pricing and licensing guide explains. Implementation services, integrations, data work and the time your own people spend on the project are what decide the total.
The planner shows how partners estimate effort, with six complexity drivers to score before you ask for a price, and maps each workstream to the Business Central implementation methodology.
It closes with the accounting treatment of SaaS configuration costs under IFRS. Pair that with our view of ERP ROI for CFOs, which covers the benefit side of the case.
Ten chapters, from research to comparable quotes
- 01What the research says about ERP budgetsp.4
- 02The four layers of a Business Central budgetp.6
- 03Layer 1: licences, storage and AI consumptionp.7
- 04Layer 2: implementation services and the complexity scorecardp.8
- 05Layers 3 and 4: the costs nobody quotesp.10
- 06Three worked company profilesp.11
- 07Accounting treatment: agree it before you budgetp.12
- 08Turning quotes into comparable numbersp.13
- 09Frequently asked questionsp.14
- 10Next step: a Business Central cost estimatep.15
Get the full Business Central budget planner
- Licences, services, internal time and run costs in one four-layer model
- A six-driver complexity scorecard to fill in before you ask for prices
- A hidden-cost checklist and the red flags to look for in quotes
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