For companies retiring Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Keep 20 years of Navision history without keeping NAV running.
Your migration to Business Central will take two or three years of history. This is where the rest of it goes — one local, searchable file, checked against NAV before anything is switched off.
Dynamics NAV support is in development. The archive runs on Dynamics GP today; the NAV source pack is next. Everything on this page describes how it will work, and we will not take money or run an assessment for NAV until it does. If you are planning a NAV retirement now, tell us your version and timing — it is the fastest way to be first in line, and it costs you nothing.
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Runs on your network
Your NAV records are not uploaded to us.
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Read-only source access
The supplied SQL user cannot post or change NAV data.
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Reconciled before shutdown
Counts and accounting totals are checked against NAV.
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No reader subscription
Opening and exporting an existing archive never expires.
What it saves you
You are paying to keep a server alive for data that never changes again.
NAV history is finished. Nothing will post to it. Everything below is what you stop spending once those records live in a file your team can actually use.
At cutover — this year
- The server bill stops.The Windows Server licence, the SQL Server licence, the VM and the backup job exist to hold history. When the history is elsewhere and proven, they can all be cancelled — and NAV 2018 and earlier need ageing Windows and SQL versions that get harder to stand up every year.
- One payment, known in advance.From $2,495, fixed before you buy. Having a consultant pull the same history by hand into a folder of CSVs commonly runs around $7,000 — and when they are done, you still cannot search it.
- The migration gets smaller.Once the history has a home, it stops being an open question in the project. The free assessment takes 5 to 10 minutes and answers what is actually in there, which is usually the meeting nobody can finish.
Every year after — for as long as you must keep records
- Nothing renews.No reader subscription, no per-seat charge when the auditor needs to look, no renewal to renegotiate. Opening the archive in year seven costs nothing.
- An old question takes minutes, not days.Search a name or an invoice number, open the document, export it. No restoring a backup, no finding the one person who still knows the table layout, no standing a retired system back up to answer one email.
- Your next hire can answer it.A controller who has never seen NAV can find a 2017 invoice in their first week. That matters more than it sounds — the people who can work the old system are exactly the people who eventually leave.
Licence and hosting costs vary by agreement and deployment, so use your own numbers rather than ours. The shape is the point: one column is a bill that repeats for as long as you are required to keep the records, the other is not.
The problem, before the product
Business Central will not take all of it — and that is the right call.
NAV migration guidance is consistent: bring the current and prior year, plus two to three years of posted history, and archive the rest. Loading a decade of transactions into Business Central inflates storage cost, slows the project, and clutters reporting in the system your team now uses every day.
That advice is sound. The catch is that "correctly left behind" still means left behind, and Business Central cannot answer a question about data that was never loaded into it.
The questions that keep arriving
Years after go-live, usually to someone who never used NAV.
- ✓The annual audit. A date range, a customer, and the documents behind the numbers.
- ✓A tax review. Transaction-level detail from before the migration.
- ✓A customer dispute. One order from 2017, with its lines and its terms.
- ✓A new finance hire. Who has never seen a NAV screen and never will.
How it will work
Free assessment first. Buy the archive only if the numbers tie.
The free software tells you what is in NAV. The paid software copies the records out, proves the copy matches, and gives your staff a permanent way to use it. Same product, same prices as Dynamics GP — a different source pack behind the same front door.
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Assess, freeOne read-only program against your NAV SQL Server, 5 to 10 minutes. Reports companies, years of history per module, transaction counts, database size and any custom tables. Copies no transaction rows.02
RehearseThe first of two included extraction runs creates a working archive while NAV is still live, so your team can check real values against the source before cutover.03
Extract and reconcileThe final run works from the frozen cutover state and produces a reconciliation report: row counts per table, and the general ledger trial balance for every fiscal year with a difference column.04
Then switch NAV offOnly after your controller and IT provider have both accepted the evidence. Keep the archive and reader on your own storage, with your own backups.
Research before you commit