In Business Central, licensing is not module-based but user-type based. This works differently from familiar ERP pricing and frequently causes budgeting mistakes.
01. Three User Types
Essentials: finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, projects and basic warehousing. Premium: everything in Essentials plus manufacturing and service management. Team Members: read-only, entering their own records and approving.
02. The Mixed Licence Rule
You cannot use Essentials and Premium in the same environment. If a single department needs the manufacturing module, all full users move up to Premium. This is the item most often overlooked in cost planning.
03. The Limit of Team Members
Because it's cheap, people want to hand it out widely, but its rights are narrow: it cannot enter a sales order or issue an invoice. Trying to cover warehouse and field teams with Team Members usually backfires.
04. Items Beyond Licensing
Licensing usually makes up less than half of total cost. Other items: implementation consultancy, the Turkish localisation package subscription, integrator fees, data migration, training and annual support.
05. When Budgeting
Calculate the five-year total; the distribution between year one and year five is very different. With local ERP the first year is heavy and the rest light; with a cloud subscription cost is flat and denominated in foreign currency.