NAV to Business Central Migration Checklist (Step by Step)

Bramvia — Business Central Experts

A practical, phase-by-phase checklist for moving from Dynamics NAV to Business Central without losing data, customizations, or sleep.

A NAV-to-Business-Central migration goes smoothly when it is planned in phases. Here is the checklist we use on real projects.

Planner: Migration planner. You choose the current system (Navision, Dynamics GP, Sage or another ERP, or spreadsheets), companies, years of history and custom changes, and it shows a six-phase plan with the weeks for each phase, what data moves and the risk without a phased plan. In the example, Navision 2009 with 2 companies, 3 years of history and quite a few customisations is about 21 weeks; from spreadsheets with few changes, about 9. Open the demo

Phase 1 — Assess

Inventory your current version, customizations, and integrations.
Identify which custom objects are still used and which can be retired.
Document open transactions, historical data, and reporting needs.

Phase 2 — Plan

Decide cloud (SaaS) vs on-premise — cloud is right for most.
Map customizations to Business Central extensions (AL), replacing obsolete code with standard features where possible.
Set a data-migration scope: what moves, what is archived.

Phase 3 — Build and test

Re-implement customizations as clean AL extensions.
Migrate data into a sandbox and validate against the live system.
Run user acceptance testing with real day-to-day scenarios.

Phase 4 — Cut over

Freeze the legacy system, migrate final data, and switch over (often across a weekend).
Keep NAV available read-only as a safety net.

Phase 5 — Stabilize

Support users through the first month-end close.
Tune performance and roll out AI and automation features.

The single biggest risk-reducer is keeping your current system live until cutover. Request a migration plan tailored to your environment.

FAQ

How long does a NAV migration take? 3-9 months for a typical mid-sized company. Under three only with very few customizations.

Do we have to migrate all our history? No. Masters, balances and open documents migrate; history is archived read-only. Migrating everything is the most common way to inflate a quote.

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