TL;DR
- ✓Planning note, not a deadline panic button: Dynamics GP 18.x does not simply “switch off” in 2029. Microsoft says product enhancements, regulatory/tax updates, and technical support end December 31, 2029; security patches, if needed, continue through April 30, 2031. The practical risk is waiting until your decision window, testing capacity, and partner availability have narrowed.
- ✓Microsoft stopped selling new GP perpetual licenses to new customers on April 1, 2025 and new GP subscriptions to new customers on April 1, 2026. Those sales milestones are not shutdown dates for existing customers. They do make the next few years a useful time to move from an assumed future migration to an owned, evidence-based plan.
- ✓A safe plan starts with a go-live date that avoids peak periods and leaves time to stabilize, then works backwards through testing, cutover rehearsal, solution design, partner selection, and funded discovery. The 6–12 month range below is a Top Dynamics Partners editorial planning estimate—not Microsoft guidance, an SLA, or a market median.
Planning note, not a deadline panic button: Dynamics GP 18.x does not simply “switch off” in 2029. Microsoft says product enhancements, regulatory/tax updates, and technical support end December 31, 2029; security patches, if needed, continue through April 30, 2031. The practical risk is waiting until your decision window, testing capacity, and partner availability have narrowed.
Microsoft stopped selling new GP perpetual licenses to new customers on April 1, 2025 and new GP subscriptions to new customers on April 1, 2026. Those sales milestones are not shutdown dates for existing customers. They do make the next few years a useful time to move from an assumed future migration to an owned, evidence-based plan.
Work backwards from December 31, 2029
A safe plan starts with a go-live date that avoids peak periods and leaves time to stabilize, then works backwards through testing, cutover rehearsal, solution design, partner selection, and funded discovery. The 6–12 month range below is a Top Dynamics Partners editorial planning estimate—not Microsoft guidance, an SLA, or a market median.
Inventory companies, modules, customizations, integrations, ISVs, reports, data quality, users, and decision owners.
Run fit-gap, choose archive versus migrate, prototype critical workflows, compare evidence, and contract deliberately.
Configure, migrate in a sandbox, validate, rehearse cutover, train users, and establish operational support.
Reserve room for remediation, failed testing, peak-season constraints, and partner-capacity changes before technical support ends.
Why start discovery before the deadline feels urgent: discovery exposes data, integration, ownership, and control decisions that cannot be compressed safely into a rushed cutover. A visible contingency window protects the business when one of those assumptions changes.
Free Phase 1 checklist: assess your GP estate
Complete this phase before a vendor solution is allowed to define the problem. Name an executive owner and a business lead, and do not leave any item “assumed.”
- Set the decision charter: name executive, business, finance, and technical owners; define the outcomes that matter beyond GP feature parity.
- Inventory the operating estate: list every company, GP module, security role, report, integration, ISV, customization, batch, and manual workaround.
- Classify data before mapping it: identify records to migrate, archive, cleanse, retain for audit, or retire; document owners and reconciliation rules.
- Capture critical workflows: trace close, order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, inventory, project, manufacturing, service, and exception work with real users.
- Record constraints: include blackout periods, controls, localization, reporting dependencies, integration risk, and internal capacity.
- Validate license facts: record Enhancement Plan status, existing Dynamics 365 products, CSP relationship, geography, and BTC3 eligibility questions.
- Set the evidence standard: require future partners to demonstrate workflow fit, a data approach, named delivery capacity, scope exclusions, and a rehearsed cutover plan.
Open the full GP Exit Playbook for the complete assess → select partner → migrate data → go-live checklist, the backwards-planning worksheet, BTC3 questions, cost evidence, and a weighted partner-selection scorecard.
When the estate inventory is complete, use the AI Partner Selection tool to create a requirements-led starting shortlist, then browse Business Central partners to research visible product signals. Directory presence is a discovery signal, not proof of capacity or GP-migration depth.