Every organization—regardless of size—incurs employee expenses for travel, meals, office supplies, mileage, per diem, and more. When these expenses are managed without a structured, automated process, companies may face higher administrative overhead and compliance challenges, compliance risks, while employees can experience delayed reimbursements, limited transparency, and additional friction.
To address this challenge, we’re excited to introduce Expense Agent, a brand‑new AI‑powered experience coming to Dynamics 365 Business Central.
What is Expense Agent?
Expense Agent in Dynamics 365 Business Central is an AI-powered agent designed to simplify how employees capture, submit, and manage expenses, while ensuring organizations maintain control, compliance, and auditability.
Our north‑star vision is simple: make expense management feel effortless for employees.
Expense Agent helps by automatically collecting, categorizing, and preparing expenses and expense reports, so employees typically only need to review and confirm the results. In many scenarios, the agent significantly reduces manual effort by preparing expenses in advance for user review. Paper receipts may still need to be scanned, but digital receipts, mileage, and allowances can be captured automatically.
Importantly, autonomy is configurable. Organizations decide how much they trust the agent and can tune its level of independence to match internal policies and comfort levels.
A new agent model for a new audience
Expense Agent follows a different design philosophy than existing Business Central agents.
Existing Business Central agents are optimized for users working inside ERP. Expense Agent, however, is built for people who are not ERP users at all—field workers, drivers, technicians, travelers, or occasional office staff. These users shouldn’t need to understand financial systems to submit expenses correctly.
As a result, Expense Agent meets users where they already work:
- A dedicated web app for non‑Business Central users
- Outlook
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (coming next)
- But also, in Business Central
Business Central licenses are not required for expense submission if working outside of Business Central. Instead, usage is metered through Copilot Credits, providing flexibility and cost alignment based on actual usage.
Built AI‑first—from day one
Expense Agent is not just an agent layered on top of existing functionality. In fact, we didn’t previously have native expense management in Business Central.
This solution was designed with AI as a core component ground up, using:
- Model‑driven and eval‑driven development
- Continuous learning and quality validation
- Deep integration between the agent and Business Central finance capabilities
The result is an experience where AI is not an add‑on—but the foundation.
How it works
When a user uploads or shares a receipt, Expense Agent automatically:
- Extracts required data from the receipt across supported languages
- Categorizes expenses based on configured expense categories
- Add other relevant information
- Optionally itemizes receipts, or add other information, if configured
- Applies relevant company policies and rules in the background
Once reviewed, expenses are automatically added to an existing expense report—or a new one is automatically created when appropriate. Users simply submit the report for approval.
Expense Agent also supports:
- Mileage, per diem, and other types of allowances
- Cash, corporate card, and bank‑paid expenses
- Project‑related expenses posted directly to project ledgers
- Billable expenses that are automatically reinvoiced
Behind the scenes, the agent continuously validates expenses against regulatory and internal policy requirements—helping organizations support compliance requirements while minimizing additional complexity for users.
Availability and what’s next
Expense Agent is currently available in private preview, where we’re collecting early feedback.
- Public Preview planned to start in May 2026, as part of 2026 Release Wave 1
- The public preview will initially be available in English only and limited to the United States.
- Additional languages and country availability are planned to begin rolling out from July 2026
We’ll showcase Expense Agent publicly for the first time at Directions NA, followed by Directions Asia and DynamicsMinds.
Public preview is not a single milestone—it’s an ongoing journey. We have a strong backlog of enhancements already in progress, with new capabilities planned to roll out regularly throughout the year as we expand language coverage, regional availability, and end‑to‑end scenarios.
Our goal is to be a full end-to‑end expense agent supporting employees, approvers, and finance teams across the entire lifecycle, from capture to posting, with minimal manual effort.
