Business Central SLA: What Microsoft Really Guarantees

Microsoft provides a financially backed 99.9% uptime SLA for Dynamics 365 Business Central online, documented in the “Service Level Agreements for Microsoft Online Services”.

In this article we break down what’s actually guaranteed, where to find the official SLA, and the gaps you still need to cover with your own support and processes.

Microsoft Business Central SLA 

When you move finance and operations into the cloud, you’re placing a lot of trust in Microsoft and the platform that runs your day-to-day business.

One of the first questions we get from owners and FDs is:

“What service levels does Microsoft actually guarantee for Business Central SaaS?”

In this article we’ll walk through:

• The official Microsoft SLA for Business Central online

• What’s included: uptime, credits, backups and updates

• Where to find the full legal wording

• What the SLA doesn’t cover – and what you still need from a partner

This is the same explanation we give to UK SMEs when we’re scoping Business Central projects.

Does Microsoft provide an SLA for Business Central?

Yes. Dynamics 365 Business Central online is covered by Microsoft’s central “Service Level Agreements for Microsoft Online Services” – the same master SLA that covers Dynamics 365, Office/Microsoft 365 and other cloud services.

A few key points:

• Business Central online is governed by the Modern Lifecycle Policy – continuous updates and regular release waves, rather than “mainstream/extended support” timelines.

• The SLA for Business Central is defined in that Online Services SLA document (Dynamics 365 section), not in a standalone “Business Central SLA” PDF.

• Microsoft publishes the current and archived SLA versions on the licensing site, and can update them over time.

In practice, you should download and file the SLA version that’s current when you sign or renew, then keep an eye on later revisions.

The core SLA: 99.9% uptime and service credits

The headline commitment for Business Central online is a 99.9% Monthly Uptime Percentage for the service.

The SLA defines downtime for Dynamics 365 services (including Business Central) as periods when users cannot access their tenant/environment, based on Microsoft’s own health monitoring and logs.

Monthly Uptime Percentage is calculated using user-minutes:

(User Minutes – Downtime) ÷ User Minutes × 100

If Microsoft fails to meet the uptime commitment in a given month, you may be entitled to service credits on that month’s fees. The standard banding used across the SLA is:

*As per the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Level Agreement for Microsoft Online Services (Worldwide English, December 2021) and subsequent Online Services SLA updates.

Important realities we always flag:

• Credits, not compensation – you get a discount on future subscription fees, not compensation for lost revenue or operational impact.

• Per rules in the SLA – outages are evaluated against the SLA definitions and exclusions. What feels like “down all morning” to your team may not always translate into a formal SLA breach.

This is why we treat the Microsoft SLA as a minimum safety net, not the whole story.

Backups, restores and what Microsoft actually does behind the scenes

The SLA itself sticks to availability and connectivity, but customers understandably care about backups and recovery as part of “service level”.

For Business Central online:

• Microsoft takes automatic backups of Business Central databases using Azure SQL.

• Backups are kept for 28 days, covering both production and sandbox environments.

• Admins can perform point-in-time restores within that 28-day window through the Business Central Admin Centre.

That gives you a decent safety net if something goes wrong – for example, a bad data import, a faulty extension, or accidental mass posting.

However, there are important limitations that aren’t always understood:

• Restores are only available if you have a paid Business Central subscription (no paid subscription, no environment to restore).

• Each environment can be restored up to 10 times per calendar month.

• Restores are environment-wide – you can’t restore just one company or one table.

• Anything older than 28 days is gone, unless you’ve put your own export/archiving process in place.

When we design Business Central solutions, we treat Microsoft’s backup/restore as the base layer, then add data export, reporting and archiving to meet any stricter retention or audit requirements.

Related Article: Backup & Restore

Updates, maintenance and the Modern Lifecycle

On top of uptime and backups, Business Central online is run under the Modern Lifecycle Policy with:

• Two major release waves per year (typically April and October)

• Monthly minor updates with regulatory changes, bug fixes and smaller improvements

• Critical hotfixes rolled out once validated in Microsoft’s staging environments

As a tenant admin, you can:

• Configure update windows so major upgrades hit your system in a specific time slot, and

• Check service health and incident history via the Microsoft 365 admin centre and BC Admin Centre.

From our side, we usually plan:

• A test cycle in sandbox ahead of major updates, and

• A simple change log so internal teams know what’s coming and when.

Are sandboxes covered by the SLA?

The SLA is written at the service level (Business Central online as an Online Service), not at the individual environment level.

• The SLA explicitly excludes preview, pre-release, beta and trial versions of services – these are “as-is” and excluded from SLAs and warranties.

• It does not explicitly carve out standard sandbox environments under a paid subscription.

In practice:

• Production and sandbox environments under a paid Business Central online tenant benefit from the same underlying platform availability and backup regime.

• If you’re working in a preview wave or time-limited trial tenant, expect “best effort”, not SLA-backed uptime or credits.

We normally explain it this way: if it’s a proper paid tenant, Microsoft stands behind the service; if it’s a preview or trial, treat it as non-SLA test ground.

Where to find the official Business Central SLA

Microsoft doesn’t hide this, but it’s not surfaced on glossy marketing pages either. The authoritative sources are:

1. Business Central service overview / FAQ
   These docs state that Business Central online is governed by the Modern Lifecycle Policy and that service level agreement terms are described in the “Service Level Agreements for Microsoft Online Services” on the Licensing terms page.
2. Service Level Agreements (SLA) for Online Services page
   This page lists the current and archived SLA documents for all Microsoft Online Services. From here you download the actual SLA PDF/DOCX that contains the Dynamics 365 / Business Central uptime and credit terms.

Practically, we recommend customers:

• Download the SLA version that applies when they sign or renew

• File it alongside their Product Terms and partner contracts

• Note the document date (for example, “Worldwide English, December 1, 2021” for a previous volume licensing version) so there’s no confusion later

That way if there’s ever a dispute or major outage, everyone is looking at the same document.

What the Microsoft SLA does not cover

This is the bit that causes most misunderstanding. The Microsoft SLA is narrow by design. It focuses on platform availability and connectivity – not everything you might reasonably consider “service levels”.

1. Performance and “speed”

The SLA does not promise that:

• Pages will load within a given number of seconds

• Reports or posting routines will complete within a set time

• Integrations or background jobs will always run within specific performance targets

Performance depends heavily on:

• Your configuration and data volumes

• Extensions and custom code

• Integrations and external systems

• User behaviour and workflows

If performance matters (and it always does), that belongs in:

• Solution design and testing, and

• A separate support / managed service agreement with your partner, not the Microsoft SLA.

2. Support response and resolution times

The Microsoft Online Services SLA is about uptime and service credits. It does not promise:

• How quickly Microsoft (or your partner) will respond to incidents

• Resolution times for bugs, functional issues or “how do I do X?” questions

The SLA is very clear that service credits are your sole and exclusive remedy for SLA breaches – it is not a support contract.

This is why we always layer your own support SLA on top, with:

• Priority definitions (P1–P3 etc.)

• Response and resolution targets

• Escalation paths

3. Anything outside Microsoft’s reasonable control

The SLA explicitly excludes outages or problems caused by factors outside Microsoft’s reasonable control, such as:

• Your ISP, local network or Wi-Fi

• VPNs, firewalls, proxies and other security layers you manage

• Third-party software or services

• Natural disasters, government actions, and other “force majeure” events

If your office line drops or your internal network is flaky, that’s a local IT issue, not a Microsoft SLA breach.

4. Customisations, ISV add-ons and integrations

Microsoft’s SLA is scoped to the standard Business Central service.

It does not cover:

• Bugs or failures caused by your own extensions / per-tenant apps

• Third-party ISV add-ons

• Integrations with e-commerce, WMS, CRM, BI or other systems

We’ve seen plenty of performance and stability issues that turned out to be caused by custom code or integrations. Those are on your partner and development process, not on Microsoft’s SLA.

What this means in practice for UK SMEs

When we help SMEs decide whether Business Central SaaS is right for them, we boil the SLA discussion down to three practical points:

1. You get a serious, enterprise-grade uptime commitment.
   A 99.9% financially backed SLA, with defined service credits if Microsoft falls short, is better than most SMEs could achieve on their own kit in a server cupboard.
2. It’s the platform guarantee, not the whole service story.
   You still need a partner-side SLA and operating model that covers performance, support response, bug-fixing, training, data quality and “we broke something at month end” scenarios.
3. You’re still responsible for how the system is used.
   Configuration, data, extensions, integrations and local IT – none of that is magically covered by Microsoft’s Online Services SLA. That’s where a solid implementation approach and sensible ongoing governance matter.

At Eazy Dynamics our view is simple: Microsoft keeps the platform available and secure; our job is to make sure what you run on top of it actually works for your business.

Business Central SLA – Frequently Asked Questions

Next step

If you’re unsure of what you’re getting with Business Central (SaaS), then get in touch. We’ll happily answer your questions.