- Feature
- Easier subcontracting setup
- Availability
- Generally available (October 2026)
- Industry focus
- Furniture manufacturing
Furniture manufacturers often split production between their own workshop and specialist partners. Frames might be made in-house, upholstery sent out, and lacquering or metal components handled by subcontractors. Business Central has strong subcontracting capabilities, but setting them up involves many moving parts. Business Central 29.0 makes that set-up much easier.
The industry challenge
Subcontracting in Business Central touches several areas at once:
- Work centres that represent subcontractors
- Vendors with subcontractor locations
- Locations for components and work in progress sent out
- Prices for subcontracted operations
- Production BOMs and routings that define what goes out and comes back
Microsoft notes that subcontracting needs coordinated set-up across work centres, vendors, locations, prices and production BOMs. When something is missing, the problem often only shows up in the middle of production, for example when components can't be shipped to the upholsterer because the vendor has no subcontracting location.
For mid-sized furniture makers without a dedicated ERP team, that complexity can stop them using the feature at all.
What Microsoft delivered in Business Central 29.0
According to Microsoft, Business Central 29.0 adds:
- A Subcontracting Setup assisted setup guide, available after the Subcontracting app is installed. It has three steps: an introduction, a review of company defaults, and links to set up work centres, vendors, locations, subcontractor prices, component supply methods and supporting documentation.
- Easier discovery. From the work centre card, you can open subcontractor prices, subcontracting WIP entries and the subcontractor dispatch list. From routing lines and production orders, you can review comments, prices, WIP entries, related purchase documents, transfers and linked components, and create subcontracting orders.
- Actionable warnings, for example when a subcontractor vendor assigned to a work centre has no subcontracting location.
- Richer demonstration data, showing intermediate and final subcontracting operations and more than one subcontractor.
Where the value shows up
| Business area | Impact for a furniture manufacturer |
|---|---|
| Implementation effort | A guided path through subcontracting set-up |
| Fewer production surprises | Missing set-up flagged before it stops work |
| Visibility | Subcontracting information reachable from work centres and orders |
| Evaluation | Demo data to explore scenarios before going live |
| Adoption | Lower barrier for teams without ERP specialists |
The warnings are the quiet hero. Catching a missing subcontracting location during set-up costs minutes. Discovering it when a lorry is waiting to take frames to the upholsterer costs much more.
A worked scenario
Consider a manufacturer of upholstered sofas and chairs that sends frames to two external upholsterers (an illustrative example). It wants to manage this in Business Central instead of on spreadsheets.
The operations manager installs the Subcontracting app and follows the setup guide. She reviews the defaults, then opens the linked pages to set up the two upholsterers as work centres and vendors. When she assigns the second upholsterer to its work centre, a notification explains that the vendor needs a subcontracting location for components and WIP. She adds it immediately. Before going live, the team explores the demonstration data to understand intermediate versus final operations.
Adoption considerations
- Install the Subcontracting app. The guide becomes available once it's installed.
- Explore in a sandbox. Use the demonstration data to understand the flows before configuring your own.
- Involve production and purchasing. Subcontracting crosses both teams.
- Set up prices carefully. Subcontractor prices drive purchase order costs.
- Act on warnings. Treat set-up notifications as a checklist, not noise.
The bottom line
Furniture manufacturers increasingly rely on partners for specialist operations, and they need their ERP to manage that properly. Easier subcontracting set-up in Business Central 29.0 lowers the barrier to doing so, with guidance, warnings and realistic examples. It helps businesses move subcontracting out of spreadsheets and into a controlled, visible process.
If you're considering managing subcontracting in Business Central, an experienced adviser can help you plan the set-up and processes.
Source: Microsoft roadmap 573353