Red Pill Realities: The Hidden Risks of how the Payables Agent Stores Documents

Datahaven4Dynamics
Sep 23
3 min read

Updated: Oct 21

About the Blog Series:

Microsoft’s blue pill version of the Payables Agent looks convincing. But if you’ve worked with Business Central (and NAV before that) long enough, you know Microsoft works hard to establish a narrative when releasing new software. Sometimes the narrative holds up. Sometimes not so much.

This blog series steps outside the Microsoft narrative for the Payables Agent. Each post uncovers one of the red pill realities that you will discover if you were to use the Payables Agent in the real world.

You have to store invoice documents in the Business Central database

Every PDF processed by the Payables Agent is saved directly in the Business Central database rather than in lower-cost external storage such as SharePoint or Azure Blob Storage. Even non-invoice emails and unsupported attachments are logged as Agent tasks and consume database space. Over time, this design increases the database size and can push tenants beyond the storage capacity included with standard licensing.

💡 The practical way to think about the issue

Plan for steady database growth. You will have to think of Payables Agent storage as part of your ongoing cost model and include extra capacity in your budget. Although Business Central provides visibility through Inbound E-Documents, it does not provide a way to offload PDFs to less expensive storage. The result is a predictable but permanent upward pressure on storage usage.

⚙️ The technical reason(s) underlying the issue

The Payables Agent architecture stores attachments in Business Central’s SQL database as part of each Inbound E-Document record. This is deeply embedded in the application design, and Microsoft has stated that changing it would require major architectural work. Each PDF becomes its own e-document entry (for example, one email with three PDFs creates three records). The data model enforces this storage pattern and offers no redirection options.

📉 The impact on AP operations

Storage growth increases long-term costs and, if you’re hosting Business Central, it will increase backup times. AP and IT teams must monitor database usage closely to avoid performance degradation or unplanned capacity purchases. In addition, users with permission to view Inbound E-Documents can open PDFs even if they lack access to the related invoice, which introduces potential security gaps. The separation between e-document permissions and invoice permissions can expose sensitive vendor data or allow unauthorized viewers.

You can easily break the fragile link to the original email that contained the PDF invoice attachment

The Payables Agent depends on maintaining a live connection between each processed invoice in Business Central and the original vendor email in Outlook or Exchange. However, this link breaks easily if the message is opened, deleted, or moved. Even marking the email as unread again doesn’t always restore the connection, leaving the system unable to trace the invoice back to its source message.

💡 The practical way to think about the issue

You will have to think of the monitored inbox as untouchable once it’s connected to the Payables Agent. If users open or organize messages manually, 'The Payables Agent' may lose track of attachments or skip processing entirely. This fragile dependency makes it difficult to reconcile invoices with their source correspondence when disputes arise.

⚙️ The technical reason(s) underlying the issue

The Payables Agent’s processing logic depends on Exchange message identifiers and “unread” status flags to trigger extraction. When an email is opened or moved, the Exchange message ID can change or the system’s internal reference may no longer align with the stored record in Business Central. Because The Payables Agent does not store full message metadata locally, the connection cannot always be rebuilt automatically.

📉 The impact on AP operations

When the link breaks, AP staff lose access to critical context such as sender identity, timestamp, or special instructions embedded in the email body. This weakens the audit trail, increases rework during dispute resolution, and makes it harder to confirm invoice authenticity during compliance reviews.

The Result:

Each red pill reality in this blog series exposes the limitations of the Payables Agent. We offer Datahaven 365 to help you unify documents, data, and workflows throughout Business Central—not just AP. The result is complete visibility, faster approvals, and automation that scales with the complexity of your business.

Check out the other Blogs in this Series:

About the Author

About Brad Bimson As the CEO of Datahaven 365, Brad is passionate about helping companies streamline their processes leading to savings in time, costs, and improved customer service. Brad wants to connect w/ Microsoft Dynamics users, partners & ISVs who want to leverage Dynamics.less Musings, to tame the chaos.