Migrate from Xentral ERP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Xentral's unified Address object holds both customer and vendor records with a type discriminator field. We split these into separate Business Central Customer and Vendor entities during migration. The Xentral tax ID, payment terms, and default warehouse assignments map to Customer Posting Group and Vendor Posting Group fields. Any Xentral custom Address fields (the only three objects supporting custom fields alongside Articles and Projects) transfer to equivalent custom fields on Customer and Vendor tables respectively. Address line splitting, country codes, and EU VAT registration numbers map to the standard Dynamics 365 address structure.

Xentral Articles map to Business Central Item records. The article number becomes the Item No., multilingual labels migrate as translations on the Item Translations page, and item-specific pricing rules map to Sales Prices and Purchase Prices on the Item. Article custom fields migrate to custom Item card fields. For businesses migrating to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Articles map to Released Products with the engineering and warehouse management dimensions configured post-migration. Xentral's product type (stocked, service, non-stock) maps to the Item Type field in Business Central or the Product Type on F&O Released Products.

Open Xentral Sales Orders map to Business Central Sales Order records with the original order number preserved in the External Document No. field. Order status, warehouse assignment, shipping method, and line items transfer directly. Closed orders are typically not re-created as open documents; historical order data migrates as posted Sales Invoice records or as a closed-order archive table depending on the customer's reporting requirements. Sales Order custom fields migrate to custom Sales Line or Sales Header fields if the schema has been extended.

Open Xentral Purchase Orders map to Business Central Purchase Order records. Vendor assignment, expected delivery dates, and received quantities transfer with the PO number preserved in External Document No. Partially received Purchase Orders require a status reconciliation because Xentral tracks received quantities per line while Business Central tracks posted receipt quantities against the order. We flag any discrepancy greater than the tolerance threshold for manual resolution before finalising the import.

Xentral AR invoices map to Business Central Sales Invoice records (posted or posted as finishing), and AP invoices map to Vendor Invoice records. Document numbers, dates, and gross amounts transfer directly. Multi-currency invoices require exchange rate resolution at the transaction date; we pull historical rates from the European Central Bank reference rates or the customer's bank feed depending on what is available during scoping. Tax amounts require mapping from Xentral's tax configuration to Business Central's VAT Business Posting Group and VAT Product Posting Group setup.

Xentral Delivery Notes map to Business Central Posted Sales Shipment records linked to the parent Sales Order. Credit Memos map to Sales Credit Memo records. The document number hierarchy is preserved so that downstream reporting (such as revenue by delivery date or credit analysis) retains its historical context. PDF attachments linked to delivery notes in Xentral are downloaded separately and re-associated as document attachments in Business Central.

Xentral warehouse stock levels per Article map to Business Central Item Ledger Entries through an initial inventory posting. The migration requires a stock freeze period during which no new inventory transactions occur in Xentral. Batch and serial number tracking fields in Xentral map to Item Tracking Code configuration in Business Central; if Xentral warehouses use batch numbers inconsistently, we flag the gap and recommend a manual reconciliation post-import. Bin structure mapping requires the customer's warehouse zone configuration to be set up in Business Central before stock levels are posted.

Xentral's chart of accounts (account codes and names) maps to Business Central G/L Account records. Tax code configurations and cost centre assignments do not migrate automatically because they require the destination tax setup and dimension configuration to be defined first. We deliver a structured account mapping spreadsheet and flag that the customer's accountant must configure VAT posting groups, G/L Posting Groups, and any Dimensions (cost centres, departments, projects) before financial history is imported. Historical journal entries are imported as opening balances via the General Journal rather than as re-created transactions to avoid duplicate posting risk.

Xentral Project records map to Business Central Job records with the original project number preserved. Project custom fields (one of the three objects supporting custom fields in Xentral) migrate to Job card custom fields. Project task hierarchies and time entries require a separate migration workstream because task dependencies and billable time tracking data models differ substantially between the two platforms; we flag these as requiring manual review and selective import.

File attachments linked to orders, articles, and addresses in Xentral are accessible via the API and downloaded during the export phase. We re-upload them to the equivalent records in Business Central as Document Attachments, preserving the original filename and file type. Large attachment volumes (more than 100,000 files) may require a phased import or Azure Blob Storage integration for the Business Central document attachments feature.

Xentral Flows workflows are stored in the Xentral Connect middleware layer and are not accessible through the standard REST API. We cannot extract workflow definitions programmatically. During scoping, we audit active workflows by reviewing Xentral Connect execution logs and document each workflow's trigger conditions and actions. We deliver a written inventory of every active workflow with its trigger, conditions, actions, and a recommended Power Automate or Business Central Workflow equivalent. The customer's admin or a Dynamics 365 partner rebuilds them post-migration.

Xentral custom field values export as named properties on Article, Address, and Project records. We create equivalent custom fields in Business Central (field name, data type, and option values matched) before the migration begins. Custom field definitions cannot be exported from Xentral; the customer must provide the field schema during discovery. Any bespoke tracking implemented on non-custom-field objects (Orders, Invoices, Warehouse records) via third-party workarounds is flagged as a manual post-migration task because those implementations have no standard API representation.