In the AFAS ERP vs Business Central choice, AFAS is the stronger fit when finance, HR and payroll carry the most weight, and Business Central when production, stock and warehouse do. AFAS is a Dutch suite with payroll built in, sold and implemented by AFAS. Business Central is Microsoft's ERP, sold through partners, with routings and production orders.
At Lleverage we think the ERP decision and the manual-work decision are two separate choices. Pick the ERP for where your complexity sits: people and money, or goods and machines. On either one, customer orders, supplier invoices and order confirmations keep arriving as emails, PDFs and spreadsheets, and someone still types them in. That typing is work for an AI agent for order management, whichever ERP sits underneath.
This article compares the 2 systems for a Dutch company that makes, moves or sells physical products. It covers production and stock, finance and HR, hosting and partners, and what each one still leaves to your team. If you already run one of them and want to see the order desk or the invoice desk handled by an agent, book a demo.
AFAS ERP vs Business Central: what is the difference?
AFAS Software is a Dutch vendor that sells one system covering CRM, finance, HR, payroll, projects and order management. Business Central is Microsoft's ERP for small and midsize businesses, covering finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, warehouse, manufacturing, projects and service. AFAS goes deeper on people and payroll. Business Central goes deeper on production and supply chain.
Business software of this kind is common in the Netherlands. According to Eurostat's 2025 figures on e-business software, 70% of enterprises in the Netherlands used ERP, CRM or BI software, against 53% across the EU. In the same Eurostat data, ERP use alone ranged from 41% of small EU enterprises to 89% of large ones.
The difference shows in who builds and runs the system. AFAS implements its own software: an AFAS consultant guides the setup, the data migration and the training. AFAS hosts it in its own cloud at Leaseweb, with customer data stored in the Netherlands. Business Central is sold and supported only through Microsoft's partner network, and the partner you choose shapes the setup, the extensions and the support. It runs online in Microsoft's cloud or on your own servers.
| AFAS | Business Central | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | AFAS Software, Dutch | Microsoft |
| Core strength | Finance, HR and payroll in one system | Finance, supply chain and manufacturing |
| Production | Assembled items and a production analysis for them | Production BOMs, routings, work and machine centres, production orders (Premium experience) |
| Inventory and warehouse | Stock per item, multiple warehouses, pick lists, packing slips | Inventory, warehouse pick and put-away, replenishment forecasting |
| HR and payroll | Included in the same system | A separate system |
| Hosting | AFAS's own cloud at Leaseweb, data in the Netherlands | Microsoft's cloud, or on-premises |
| Who implements | AFAS consultants, with partners for webshops and scanning | Microsoft partners |
| Built-in AI | Jonas AI for supplier quotes, workflow fields and text | Copilot, Sales Order Agent, Payables Agent (online only) |
| Price model | A fixed monthly amount, monthly notice after the first year | Through the partner |
Which ERP handles production and inventory better for a manufacturer?
For a manufacturer with real routings and shop floor capacity, Business Central has the deeper production module. It models operations, work centres, machine centres and production orders, and posts consumption, output and scrap. AFAS covers assembled items built from stocked components, which suits assemble-to-order and light manufacturing better than multi-step production.
Business Central's manufacturing features sit in its Premium experience. They include production BOMs for components and routings for operations. Work and machine centres model capacity and cost. Production orders run from planned demand to finished goods. Subcontracting of single operations, a view of the load on each work centre and finished-order costing are part of the same module. If your planner schedules machine time, this is the module that holds it.
AFAS approaches it from the item side. Its help documentation describes a maakartikel, an item assembled from other stocked items, and a production analysis. That analysis shows how many you can build from current component stock, gives a 10-week outlook of orders and assemblies, and helps decide whether to buy or assemble. AFAS's order management pages describe sales, purchasing, stock and warehouse work. They do not describe routings or capacity planning.
For stock and distribution, both cover the daily work. In AFAS a sales order reserves stock and shortages flow into a purchase proposal. Purchase advice uses demand, lead times and a sales forecast. You can run several warehouses, with pick lists, generated packing slips and goods receipts booked in the AFAS Pocket app. Business Central covers vendor management, purchasing, warehouse pick and put-away, returns and inventory forecasting, with a Shopify connection for e-commerce.
How do AFAS and Business Central compare on finance, HR and payroll?
On finance both cover invoicing, payments, approvals and bookings. The gap is HR and payroll: AFAS includes leave, absence, payslips and payroll changes in the same system as finance. Payroll is not among the areas Microsoft lists for Business Central, so a company on it plans for HR and payroll in a separate product.
That matters most for companies with many people on the payroll and few complex products. For that profile one Dutch system for money and people saves an interface to maintain.
On the purchase invoice side, AFAS includes Scan & Herken, which reads PDF invoices into the financial administration at no extra cost. E-invoices arrive through Peppol. Invoices, payments and budget requests route to the right approver, and approvals work in the app. In order management, purchase invoices are matched to the goods receipt. Business Central has its own purchase invoice handling, approval workflows and, online, the Payables Agent covered below.
Hosting, partners and implementation: which is easier to run?
AFAS is one vendor for software, hosting and implementation, which keeps the number of parties small. Business Central depends on the partner you pick, which gives more choice of industry extensions and more variation in quality. The hosting choice is also wider: Business Central runs online or on your own servers, AFAS runs online in its own cloud.
On data location, AFAS stores customer data in the Netherlands, while Business Central online keeps it in a Microsoft Azure region set by your country version, and Copilot features within the EU Data Boundary keep data inside that boundary. For webshops, scanning and product configuration, AFAS points to its partner network; Business Central extensions come from Microsoft partners and the apps they build or resell.
Microsoft's Copilot and its agents are exclusive to Business Central online, so an on-premises installation does without them.
What do AFAS and Business Central still leave to manual work?
Both systems process a document well once its data is in the right fields. Getting it there is still the manual part. Customer orders arrive as email text, PDF purchase orders and Excel sheets. Supplier order confirmations change dates and prices, and invoices miss order numbers. Someone reads each one, finds the customer and item and types it in.
Order entry
AFAS's order management creates quotes and orders with current prices and stock, but its pages describe no step that reads an order from an email or a PDF. Jonas AI analyses supplier quotes, fills workflow fields and summarises text. On Business Central online, Microsoft's Sales Order Agent reads customer emails and PDF, PNG and JPG attachments, and finds the customer and the items. It always creates a sales quote first, which can be converted to an order, and a designated user reviews every outgoing message. It identifies the customer only by matching the sender's email address to a contact card, so a forwarded order needs a person to link the right customer. It uses Copilot Credits, and when those run out it stops processing new emails.
Supplier invoices
Business Central's Payables Agent reads PDF invoices from a monitored mailbox, proposes the vendor and purchase order lines, and leaves an unposted invoice for a person to review and post. It does not process PDFs over 10 pages or 5 MB, or more than 100 emails and 500 invoices a day, and it has no approval flows. Microsoft's language table lists Dutch for it, while its overview page still notes it is validated in English only, so test it on your own Dutch invoices first. AFAS's Scan & Herken reads PDF invoices; deciding what to do with a price difference or a missing receipt stays with your finance team.
Purchasing
AFAS gives purchase advice, and Business Central plans replenishment. Neither describes a step that reads the supplier's order confirmation. A confirmation with a new delivery date, a substitute item or a changed price still sits in an inbox until a buyer compares it with the purchase order and updates it.
Where do AI agents take over the back-office work on either ERP?
An AI agent takes over the reading and the typing in front of the ERP. It reads orders, invoices and supplier confirmations, checks them against the customer, item, price and order data in AFAS or Business Central, and fills in the same fields a person would. Work it is sure of goes through; the rest goes to a person.
We build these agents at Lleverage. The agent works through the ERP's own interfaces, so the ERP validates its input the same way it validates your team's. Nothing is migrated. AFAS and Business Central are both on our ERP integrations list. On Business Central the agent looks up customers and items, creates sales orders and quotes, and creates purchase invoices with their lines, on the Business Central integration. It runs on Business Central online and on your own servers, and on Navision.
The jobs that come up most in Dutch manufacturing and distribution:
- Customer orders. The agent reads the order in whatever format it arrives, matches the customer's own item codes to yours, checks price and stock and creates the sales order. An unknown article or a missing reference goes to a person with the question already written.
- Supplier invoices. For accounts payable, the agent matches each invoice against the purchase order and the receipt within your tolerances. Disputes go to a person with the history gathered, and the agent never releases a payment.
- Purchase confirmations. In procurement, the agent compares each supplier confirmation with the purchase order and updates what changed. When a date or price needs a decision, it asks your buyer in Teams or Slack and carries on with the answer.
The agent scores how sure it is of each piece of work. Below the line a person decides, above it the work goes through on its own, and only you move that line. Every step is logged in an audit trail you can read.
On Business Central this runs in production. At Topa Bathroom Products, a Dutch importer and wholesaler with about 700 customers, over 90% of incoming orders are processed into Business Central with no manual input, and customers can have their confirmation within 30 seconds. At Koninklijke Dekker, the agent reads orders from PDF, Excel and email and checks products, availability and pricing before it creates the order in Business Central. Bryan van Ingen described the starting point at Topa:
"We had four and a half people · about 3.8 full-time equivalents · sitting there all day long, manually entering every single order into our Business Central ERP." Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director, Topa Bathroom Products
We have no published AFAS customer story yet. On AFAS the agent works the same way, through AFAS's own interfaces, filling the fields your team fills today. For the wider picture across SAP, Infor, Dynamics 365 F&O and Navision, see the ERP AI integration guide. For the invoice side on Business Central, see invoice automation in Business Central.
Which ERP fits a Dutch manufacturer or distributor?
Choose Business Central when production, stock and warehouse drive the business: routings, machine capacity, several locations or many order lines a day. Choose AFAS when finance, HR and payroll drive it and production is assembly from stock. A wholesaler with one warehouse and a large workforce often fits AFAS. A manufacturer with multi-step production fits Business Central.
If your planner schedules machine or work centre capacity, Business Central's manufacturing module covers it and AFAS's pages do not. The more people on your payroll, the more AFAS's single system for finance and HR saves. AFAS is one party for software, hosting and implementation; Business Central gives you a partner market and an on-premises option.
Whichever you choose, count the order emails, supplier invoices and purchase confirmations your team types in each week, and who does it. Bring those numbers and a week of real documents to a demo with our team. We walk through how the agent would handle them in your AFAS or Business Central, and the first process typically runs supervised within a few weeks.
Frequently asked questions
Is AFAS or Business Central better for a manufacturer?
For multi-step production, Business Central. Its Premium experience includes production BOMs, routings, work and machine centres and production orders, with capacity load and subcontracting. AFAS handles assembled items built from stocked components, with a production analysis for planning them. That fits assemble-to-order and light manufacturing better than shop floor scheduling across several operations.
Does Business Central include Dutch payroll like AFAS?
Payroll is not among the areas Microsoft lists for Business Central, so companies on it run HR and payroll in a separate product. AFAS includes HR and payroll in the same system as finance and order management, covering leave, absence, payslips and payroll changes. For companies with a large workforce that single system is a real advantage.
Can Business Central's Copilot agents run on-premises?
No. Microsoft states that Copilot in Business Central is exclusive to Business Central online and is not available on-premises or in a private cloud. That includes the Sales Order Agent and the Payables Agent. An AI agent from Lleverage works with Business Central online, Business Central on your own servers and Navision.
Can invoice automation work with AFAS?
Yes. AFAS includes Scan & Herken, which reads PDF invoices into the financial administration, and receives e-invoices through Peppol. Matching an invoice with a price difference or a missing receipt still needs someone to decide. Lleverage connects to AFAS through its own interfaces, so an agent can match invoices against the order and receipt and pass exceptions to finance.
How long does it take to put an AI agent on AFAS or Business Central?
The first process typically runs supervised within a few weeks, built by our forward deployed engineers with your team. The ERP stays as it is: no migration and no new system for your staff. The agent starts on the work you choose, often order entry or supplier invoices, and takes on more once its numbers hold.
