Last Updated: March 2026
Here’s a scenario your AP team probably knows too well. An electronic invoice hits Business Central. It processes automatically. Then someone notices the GL account is wrong, an item reference didn’t map correctly, or the vendor wasn’t recognized. Now you’re correcting a posted document instead of just… not having the problem in the first place.
Microsoft’s 2025 Release Wave 2 addresses this directly. The new e-invoice draft page gives your team a dedicated checkpoint to review and correct incoming invoices before they ever touch your financial records. It’s a practical fix to a workflow problem that costs AP teams real time every month.
What the Old Workflow Was Missing
The original Business Central e-invoicing workflow was efficient but rigid. When an electronic invoice arrived, the system automatically created a purchase invoice or attempted to match it to an existing purchase order using Copilot or manual matching. There wasn’t much room to intervene before the document entered your system.
If something was off—wrong account coding, unrecognized vendor, mismatched item numbers—you found out after the fact. Correcting a posted invoice is a hassle. It’s the kind of low-grade friction that adds up fast across a full month of payables.
What the Draft Page Actually Does
Now, when Business Central receives an electronic invoice, it creates a draft version first. That draft is where your team does the actual review work before anything becomes part of your official records.
From the draft page, you can:
- Edit header fields. Dates, document numbers, and vendor information are all adjustable. If the system can’t automatically identify the vendor from their VAT number or address, you look them up and select the right one yourself.
- Edit every line item. Quantities, prices, units of measure, descriptions, type, and number fields are fully open. You’re not locked into whatever the automatic mapping produced.
- Review intelligent account suggestions. The system works through a hierarchy: first checking item references you’ve configured for that vendor, then text-to-account mappings, then historical invoices from the same vendor. If none of those match, AI analyzes the line description and suggests a GL account with an explanation of its reasoning.
- Create a purchase invoice or purchase order. Depending on your vendor setup and process, you choose which document gets created—after you’ve confirmed everything looks right.
Financial controllers will appreciate the deferral and GL verification step that’s now built into the process rather than bolted on afterward.
Real Situations Where This Pays Off
A few scenarios where this makes a meaningful difference:
Vendor item number changes. Your vendor updates their item numbers. With the draft page, you map the new numbers to your internal items before the purchase invoice gets created. No cleanup required after the fact.
Mixed invoices. An invoice arrives with both inventory items and service charges. The draft page lets you verify inventory items are tied to item numbers and service charges are coded to the right expense accounts—all before posting.
New vendors. Before item references or account mappings are fully configured, the draft page gives you the space to get it right on the first invoice, with AI suggestions to speed up the process rather than starting from scratch.
One Important Setup Decision
Here’s something to know before you move forward: you can’t run both workflows simultaneously. You choose one approach for your organization.
Version 1 is the original automatic creation workflow. Version 2 is the new draft page workflow. To switch, go into your e-document services setup, find the importing section, and select version 2. You’ll also choose the format the system uses to read data into the draft—Peppol and other standard formats are supported.
This isn’t a “one is better” situation. It depends on how your team actually operates. If your AP process relies heavily on automatic PO matching and you have clean vendor data, version 1 may still serve you well. If invoice accuracy issues are a recurring headache, version 2 is worth evaluating seriously.
Test It Before You Go Live
Microsoft is releasing this in public preview first, which means you have time to evaluate it before committing. Use your sandbox environment. Run it against actual vendor documents your team processes regularly. Get input from the people who will use it every day.
This is a meaningful change to a core AP process. Taking the time to test it thoroughly is the right call—and it’s exactly the kind of thing we help our Business Central clients work through.
Is the Draft Page Right for Your Team?
If your AP team has struggled with invoice accuracy, needed more control over how electronic invoices are processed, or spent too much time correcting documents after the fact, this feature is worth a serious look. It’s a practical improvement to a workflow most Business Central users deal with every single day.
For more on what else is new in Wave 2, check out our post on how Word layouts got a major overhaul in the same release.
Questions about how the new draft page workflow fits your specific setup? Contact CAL Business Solutions and we’ll walk you through the configuration and help you decide which approach makes sense for your organization.
By CAL Business Solutions, Connecticut Acumatica & Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC/GP Partner, www.calszone.com
