A Business Central customer portal for orders, invoices and account details

What a Business Central customer portal lets customers do

A portal answers the questions your customer service team answers all day. Where is my order? Can I have a copy of that invoice? What do I owe? What is my price for this item? The customer signs in and finds the answer without waiting for an email reply.

Most portals start with read-only account information and grow from there. Common second steps are reordering from past purchases and submitting a new order. Others are paying an open invoice through a payment provider or raising a return request. Each one is a separate piece of scope. So you decide what is worth building.

Three ways to build a Business Central customer portal

Power Pages is Microsoft's own tool for external websites on Dataverse. You can show your Business Central data there through its Dataverse connection and virtual tables. That keeps you on Microsoft technology. The platform itself handles sign-in, page permissions and hosting.

The second route is an AppSource solution built as a portal or business-to-business storefront for Business Central. These start faster and follow the vendor's design. The third is a custom web application that talks to Business Central through its APIs. That gives you full control over the experience.

When a Business Central customer portal is worth building

A portal earns its keep when the same requests arrive again and again. The customers who send them would happily help themselves. Distributors with repeat buyers are the usual case. So are manufacturers with dealer networks and service companies with contract customers. Their buyers already know what they want.

It is a weaker idea when you have few customers with complex, negotiated orders. It is also weaker when your item and price data in Business Central is not yet reliable. A portal shows customers exactly what the ERP holds. Sometimes the better first step is to email statements and invoices automatically.

How we deliver a Business Central customer portal

First, we write down each thing a customer should be able to do. For each one, we note the Business Central data behind it. We use that list to compare the three routes fairly. That includes the licenses each route needs for external users. Microsoft's licensing guide has specific terms for external access, and we go through them with you.

After you choose a route, we build in a sandbox and connect a test site. We try it with a few friendly customers before we open it to everyone. Where the standard APIs do not expose what you need, we write custom APIs or extensions in AL. You receive the portal, its administration notes and a support path.

Security first for a Business Central customer portal

The most serious mistake is a portal where one customer can reach another customer's documents by changing a web address. The server must filter every request by the signed-in customer. Hiding data on the page is not enough. We test for this directly before launch.

Other pitfalls are less dramatic. Performance suffers if each page fires many slow calls to the ERP. Customers also lose interest if sign-in is awkward or documents are missing. Finally, a portal needs an owner after launch. That person adds users, answers questions and decides what to build next.

Business Central customer portal questions

Does Business Central include a customer portal?

Not as a standard feature. Business Central provides the data, the APIs and a Dataverse connection. You then build the portal itself with Power Pages, an AppSource solution or a custom website. Which one suits you depends on the functions you want and your budget. We compare the three routes with you before any build starts, so the choice is clear.

Do portal users need Business Central licenses?

Microsoft's licensing guide treats external users, such as your customers, differently from your own employees. The rules depend on how the portal reaches the data. We read the current guide with you for the route you choose. This matters because Microsoft updates the terms from time to time, so an old answer may no longer hold.

Can customers pay invoices in the portal?

Yes, if you connect a payment provider. The portal shows open invoices. The customer pays on the provider's secure page. Then the payment is recorded against the invoice in Business Central. The provider handles the card details, so your ERP does not store them. This also saves your finance team from keying in payments by hand.

Will customers see their own prices?

They can. Business Central holds customer-specific prices and discounts in price lists. A portal can ask for the price for the signed-in customer. It needs careful testing, because pricing rules with dates, quantities and campaigns must give the same answer online as on a sales order. We test several real customers before launch.

Can a portal also serve vendors or field staff?

The same approaches work for other audiences. A vendor portal might show purchase orders and payment status. A staff portal might cover requests or approvals. Each audience needs its own permissions and its own licensing check. So we treat them as separate scopes. That keeps your Business Central customer portal simple and safe.

Related integration services

A portal is an integration project at heart. The pages below cover the connection methods and neighboring tools that come up when you plan self-service for customers. Read them before you pick a route. Then we can talk through your Business Central customer portal and the data your customers need to see. For the product detail, see Business Central documentation on Microsoft Learn.