If you work in Business Central every day, you know the rhythm: enter data, request

approvals, check stock, send reminders… repeat. None of it is difficult, but all of it is time[1]consuming. That’s where automation makes the difference.

Before we dive into examples, there’s an important distinction: Business Central already

includes its own workflow and approval engine. Out of the box, you can create approvals for

purchase and sales documents, journals, and even master data like customer or vendor

cards. Those workflows can block posting until approvals are granted, route requests based

on thresholds and send notifications to approvers. If your needs are contained within

Business Central, those workflows are often all you need.

So why bring in Power Automate? Because it connects Business Central with the rest of the

Microsoft ecosystem—Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, Planner—and that’s where you can

extend approvals, alerts, and tasks to people who don’t spend their day in Business Central.

The key takeaway: don’t duplicate approvals. Decide whether a process should run with

Business Central’s built-in workflows (for simple, in-BC approvals), or in Power Automate

(for cross-app routing and collaboration). Mixing both on the same document only causes

confusion.

With that in mind, here are five everyday tasks across departments that make sense for

Power Automate.

1) Finance & Purchasing: Approvals where people actually work

- Built-in option: Business Central has strong native approval templates for purchase

orders, invoices, and payment journals. Approvers can block posting until the approval is

complete. If everyone lives inside BC, this works well.

- Power Automate advantage: Send approval requests directly into Teams or Outlook as

adaptive cards. Approvers don’t need to log into Business Central—they can respond

wherever they work most. This keeps processes moving, especially for managers who rarely

touch BC.

Tip: Don’t enable both. Pick native if you want to keep everything inside BC. Pick Power

Automate if your approvers are external or prefer Teams.

2) Sales: Quote follow-ups

- Built-in option: Business Central manages quotes well but doesn’t send follow-up

reminders automatically.

- Power Automate advantage: Build a simple flow that waits three days after a quote is

issued, checks if it’s still open, and then sends a professional follow-up email from Outlook.

It can also notify the salesperson in Teams.

Here, there’s no overlap—you’re adding capability that Business Central doesn’t provide

natively.

3) HR / People Operations: New hire onboarding

- Built-in option: Business Central holds employee records, but it doesn’t handle wider

onboarding tasks.

- Power Automate advantage: Trigger a workflow when a new employee record is created,

automatically assign tasks in Planner, create a SharePoint folder with policy documents,

send a welcome email, and notify IT in Teams.

This is a perfect example of Power Automate extending Business Central into the broader

Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

4) Operations & Inventory: Stock alerts before they become problems

- Built-in option: Business Central has planning worksheets and reordering policies. They

work when you’re looking inside BC.

- Power Automate advantage: Create flows that proactively notify buyers in Teams when

stock dips below a threshold, or even generate a draft purchase order automatically.

Here, you’re complementing the built-in planning engine with communication and task

creation, rather than replacing it.

5) Data Governance: Notifications for high-risk changes

- Built-in option: Approval workflows can block changes to key fields like customer credit

limits or vendor bank accounts until someone approves.

- Power Automate advantage: Send notifications outside of Business Central when sensitive

changes happen—posting them into Teams, logging them in SharePoint for audit purposes,

or escalating to compliance staff who don’t use Business Central daily.

Again, keep approvals in one place: use BC to block the change, and Power Automate to

extend visibility.

Choosing between Business Central workflows and Power Automate

Here’s a simple rule of thumb:

- Business Central workflows: Best when you want straightforward approvals inside

Business Central. They’re deeply integrated and automatically enforce posting restrictions.

- Power Automate flows: Best when you need to bring in people or systems outside of

Business Central—like Teams, Outlook, Planner, or SharePoint.

Pick one for each process, not both.

Licenses: What full vs. Teams member users can actually do

- Full Business Central license: These users can create, edit, and approve transactions

directly in Business Central. They can participate in both native approvals and Power

Automate flows that write back into BC.

- Teams member license (Business Central Team Members): These users have limited

read/update rights in BC. They can view data, run reports, and make certain light updates,

but they cannot perform full posting or transaction approvals inside BC. With Power

Automate, though, they can still participate in approval flows presented through Teams or

Outlook, where their response updates the status in Business Central.

This means Power Automate effectively extends approvals and notifications to Teams users

who don’t hold a full BC license. They won’t gain posting rights, but they can take part in

decisions.

Wrapping up

The smartest automation strategy is about balance. Use Business Central workflows where

you need tight control inside the system. Use Power Automate when you want to bring

other people, apps, or channels into the loop. And always check license types—because

knowing who has full rights vs. Teams rights determines whether a process belongs in BC or

Power Automate.

The result? Approvals happen faster, follow-ups never slip, onboarding is seamless, and

your people spend more time on work that matters—without tripping over duplicate

workflows.

If you’d like help reviewing your setup—especially figuring out what to automate in

Business Central vs. Power Automate, and how to make the most of your Teams licenses—

drop us a note at channel@4sight.cloud. We’ll map it out with you