The GP Migration Window Is Open Until 2029

Q: What are the key dates I should know about for Dynamics GP end-of-life (licensing, updates and security patches)?

1 April 2025: No new Dynamics GP perpetual licences for new customers. 1 April 2026: No new Dynamics GP subscription licences for new customers. 31 December 2029: Final product enhancements, tax and regulatory updates and mainstream technical support. 30 April 2031: End of security updates and extended support. From that point onward, you are effectively running a frozen, unsupported ERP at the heart of your finance and operations.

The GP migration window is open until 2029 but that’s the wrong deadline to plan around

The right time to start your GP migration is now, while you still have options, not when Microsoft’s support deadline forces the issue. Most businesses running on Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains (GP) have a different date in their heads: December 2029, when Microsoft ends Mainstream Support (Extended Support runs to April 2031). That sounds like plenty of time. But having time and having a good outcome are not necessarily the same thing. The window where you have options (the one worth planning around) is narrower than the support timeline suggests.

Is the GP support deadline the same as your migration deadline?

December 2029 feels like a long way off. For most businesses, it registers as a background fact rather than an active constraint. Something to deal with eventually.

But here’s what that framing misses: the support deadline is the last possible moment, not the right one. And the distance between those two things is where migrations go wrong.

A well-managed GP-to-Business Central migration isn’t a switch. It’s a complex project that involves:

Data mapping and cleansing. Years of transactional history, customisations, and integrations don’t move themselves. The messier your current environment, the more time this takes.
Configuration and testing. Business Central needs to be set up to match how your business is running today. That’s a process, not a setting.
User training and adoption. Post-migration success hinges on preparing teams to win. Change management takes time and attention.

Is upgrading GP worth it?

Most businesses that defer the migration conversation aren’t doing nothing. They’re continuing to invest in GP, even if that investment no longer makes sense given the direction of travel.

A leading South African power tools and equipment distributor estimated that upgrading their existing installation would have cost 80–85% of a full migration. With none of the upside. That’s a strong argument for making sure you’re spending money in the right direction.

The other cost of waiting is less visible but compounds faster: every year on GP is a year your competitors on Business Central are accumulating AI capability and platform improvements that ship automatically. That divide doesn’t reset when you eventually migrate.

What's the difference between a planned and a pressured GP migration?

A planned migration gives you weeks of proper discovery, testing, and training; a pressured migration compresses all of that to fit a deadline, with configuration and training decisions made on incomplete information.

The planned migration looks like this:

Discovery and scoping happen over weeks, not days. Your current environment gets properly mapped: customisations documented, integrations inventoried, data quality assessed before anyone starts moving anything.
Configuration is done to match how your business operates. Edge cases get addressed in testing, not after go-live.
Training is embedded into the project timeline. Your finance team, operations team, and any other users aren’t handed a new system on a Monday morning. They’ve been in it, in a test environment, for weeks.
Go-live is a known date, planned around your business cycle. A moment chosen because it makes sense, whether or not it coincides with month-end or peak season.
Post-go-live support is structured and available. When questions come up, there’s a clear process for resolving them quickly.

The pressured migration looks like this:

The timeline is set by the deadline, not the project. Everything gets compressed to fit.
Data cleansing gets deprioritised because there isn’t time. You migrate the mess.
Configuration decisions get made quickly, which means they get made with incomplete information. Some of those decisions are hard to unpick later.
Training gets reduced to the minimum. Users go live anxious and underprepared. Productivity drops sharply in the weeks after go-live, sometimes for months.
Your implementation partner is stretched, because everyone is running the same race at the same time.

	Planned migration	Pressured migration
Discovery	Weeks of scoping. Environment fully mapped before anything moves.	Compressed to fit the deadline. Partial at best.
Data	Cleansed and structured ahead of migration. You move clean data.	Deprioritised. You migrate the mess.
Configuration	Built to match how your business operates. Edge cases resolved in testing.	Decisions made fast, with incomplete information. Hard to unpick later.
Training	Embedded into the project timeline. Teams go live confident.	Reduced to the minimum. Productivity drops, sometimes for months.
Go-live	A date chosen to suit your business cycle.	Set by the deadline, not the project.
Post go-live	Structured support in place. Issues resolved quickly.	Problems surface without a clear resolution path.
Partner capacity	Full attention. Right resources, right pace.	Stretched. Everyone running the same race at the same time.

Early movers are winning on Business Central

While this conversation is happening, something else is happening in parallel.

Businesses that migrated to Business Central a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, are accumulating advantages that compound.

Microsoft ships two major Business Central updates per year. Every one of those updates brings new Microsoft Copilot capabilities, new automation features, new integrations. Businesses already on the platform receive them automatically.

The head start for a business already on Business Central takes shape in every corner of the organisation:

Their finance team is using Copilot to draft journal entries, summarise variance reports, and flag anomalies before month-end becomes a scramble.
Their operations team is querying live inventory data in plain language, getting answers in seconds that previously required a report request and a wait.
Their leadership team has AI-assisted forecasting and scenario modelling available inside the same system their team uses every day.
Their IT function is carrying less, because they’re not managing patch management or planning hardware refreshes.

None of that is available to a business still running on GP. And by the time a GP customer migrates under deadline pressure in 2030 or 2031, the businesses that moved in 2025 or 2026 will have had five or six years of compounding advantage to show for it.

The market will get crowded

Supply is another variable that rarely makes it into the migration planning conversation.

As December 2029 gets closer, every GP customer in the region will be having the same conversation at the same time. Implementation can only succeed on the back of skilled consultants and data migration specialists, and that capacity is finite.

Businesses that wait long enough won’t just be competing with a deadline. They’ll be competing with each other for the partners who can do the work properly.

When to start your GP migration (the answer isn't 2029)

For most South African businesses, staying on GP is, at best, a decision to defer the inevitable. And the longer it’s deferred, the more it shapes what’s possible, operationally, and in terms of AI readiness.

The window to do this well is open now. It won’t stay that way indefinitely, and the cost of a compressed migration is both high and completely avoidable.

If that’s a conversation your leadership team is starting to have, the Braintree Dynamics Discovery Assessment is how we make it concrete. A structured look at your current GP environment, an honest view of what migration would involve, and a documented roadmap your board can act on.

Book a Dynamics Discovery Assessment with Braintree

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Microsoft ending support for Dynamics GP, and what does that practically mean for my business?

Microsoft is ending support for Dynamics GP to concentrate investment on cloud ERP, principally Dynamics 365 Business Central. GP will not be developed further. For your business, this means a fixed deadline. After GP’s end-of-support dates, Microsoft will stop issuing tax and regulatory updates, security patches and technical support. Your system will still run, but over time it will fall behind on compliance, become harder to secure, and grow more difficult to integrate with modern tools. The longer you stay on GP past those dates, the more those risks compound.

What are the key dates I should know about for Dynamics GP end-of-life (licensing, updates and security patches)?

1 April 2025: No new Dynamics GP perpetual licences for new customers.
1 April 2026: No new Dynamics GP subscription licences for new customers.
31 December 2029: Final product enhancements, tax and regulatory updates and mainstream technical support.
30 April 2031: End of security updates and extended support.

From that point onward, you are effectively running a frozen, unsupported ERP at the heart of your finance and operations.

Will we lose our historical data and reporting when we migrate from Dynamics GP to Business Central?

You will not lose your history. Microsoft’s GP migration tool moves core master data, opening balances and historical transactional data into Business Central, including customers, vendors, items and general ledger information. Historical GP data typically lands in dedicated tables that you can still access for audit and reporting, without cluttering new transactions.

Many organisations also keep a read-only GP instance or export deeper history to a data warehouse or Azure Data Lake for long-term analysis and compliance. Braintree helps you decide which approach suits your data volume, retention requirements and budget.

Which data and companies can be migrated using Microsoft’s GP migration tool and what happens with older GP versions?

Microsoft’s cloud migration tool supports GP 2015 and later. It migrates multiple companies’ setup, master data and transactional history into Business Central Online, covering core modules including general ledger, payables, receivables and inventory.

If you’re on an older version, you have two options:

Note that SQL Server 2016 or later is also required. Customers on older GP versions are often running older SQL infrastructure too, so it’s worth checking both together.

Braintree will assess your current GP and SQL versions early in the process and recommend the most practical path.

Is moving to Business Central more expensive than staying on GP once we factor in servers, upgrades and support?

If you only compare licence line items, Business Central can look like an added cost. But once you factor in ageing servers, storage, backups, datacentre costs, GP/SQL upgrades, third-party support and the risk of unsupported software, staying on GP is rarely cheaper over a 3–5 year horizon. Business Central’s subscription model shifts you to predictable operating expenditure, removes most infrastructure spend and includes updates and new features as part of the service. Microsoft’s Bridge to the Cloud 3 offer for eligible customers also provides significant licence discounts and dual-use rights, which Braintree can help you structure to avoid “double paying” during the transition.

How steep is the learning curve for users moving from GP to Business Central – will our teams recognise familiar concepts?

For most finance and operations users, Business Central feels like an evolution rather than a completely new system. Core concepts such as the general ledger, customers, vendors, items, document posting and period-end processes carry over, even though the screens and workflows are modernised. Business Central’s browser-based interface, search, personalised views and Microsoft 365 integration are different from GP’s classic client, but many teams adapt quickly with role-based training and a period of dual running. Braintree’s GP-experienced consultants also help by explaining Business Central “in GP language” so users can connect new features back to what they already know.

Can we modernise processes and reporting as part of the migration, or is this only a 'like-for-like' move from GP to Business Central?

You can do both, but a pure like-for-like move often leaves a lot of value on the table. Many organisations take the opportunity to simplify charts of accounts, move to dimension-driven reporting, replace manual workarounds and retire legacy add-ons when they move to Business Central. The safest pattern is usually a phased approach: first ensure core processes and reporting work at least as well as they did in GP, then layer on improvements such as new analytics, automation, integrations and additional modules. Braintree’s methodology is built around that principle: protect business-critical processes first, then help you unlock the extra value that Business Central makes possible.

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The GP migration window is open until 2029