Drop Shipments in Business Central: What Changes with 2026 Wave 1

Drop shipment has been a core Business Central capability for years: the vendor ships directly to your customer, your warehouse stays out of the loop. The concept is straightforward. What version 28 (2026 Wave 1) brings to the table is a set of practical improvements that remove long-standing friction from the process and make drop shipments a genuinely flexible workflow.

The Standard Flow (Still the Foundation)

Before diving into the new features, here is the base process that remains unchanged.
A drop shipment starts by linking a sales order to a purchase order. On the sales order, you enable the «Drop Shipment» flag on the relevant lines. If the field is not visible, it can be added through workspace personalization. On the purchase order, you set the ship-to address to «Customer Address» and specify the corresponding customer.
When you post the shipment from the sales order, Business Central automatically posts the receipt on the linked purchase order. This synchronized behavior is the backbone of the feature and it carries forward into version 28.

Invoice Independence: No More Forced Sequencing

This is arguably the most impactful change for daily operations. Through version 27, Business Central enforced a strict rule: you had to post the sales invoice before you could post the purchase invoice for a drop shipment. If your vendor sent their invoice before you invoiced your customer, you were stuck waiting.
Version 28 removes that constraint. You can now post the purchase invoice as soon as you receive it from the vendor, regardless of whether the sales invoice has been issued. This works both directly from the purchase order and through the «Get Receipt Lines» action on a separate purchase invoice.
In practical terms, the purchase and sales invoicing cycles are no longer chained together. Each progresses at its own pace.

Undo Shipment: Error Correction Without the Pain

Anyone who has worked with drop shipments knows what happened when you posted a shipment in error: credit memos, manual quantity adjustments, line recreation. It was a painful, error-prone process.
Version 28 introduces «Undo Shipment» for drop shipment scenarios. If the posted sales shipment and its linked purchase receipt have not yet been invoiced, you can open the posted sales shipment and select «Undo Shipment.» Business Central automatically reverses the linked purchase receipt, creates the necessary correction entries, and lets you reprocess the transaction.
One important detail: the reversal must be initiated from the posted sales shipment, not from the purchase receipt. Attempting to undo from the purchase receipt side will result in an error.

Expanded Purchase Order Creation Methods

Until now, the standard approach to generating drop shipment purchase orders was through the Requisition Worksheet. It worked, but it added steps.
Version 28 expands the options with three paths depending on your operational volume.
The first is direct creation from the sales order. Open a sales order with drop shipment lines and use the «Create Purchase Orders» action. The system suggests the vendor based on the Item Card or Stockkeeping Unit Card. This is the fastest option for one-off operations.
The second is batch creation. The Requisition Worksheet and Planning Worksheet now include a dedicated «Drop Shipment» action group with «Get Sales Orders.» This lets you pull all pending drop shipment orders at once and generate purchase orders in bulk.
The third is integrated planning. Drop shipment lines are now respected by the Order Planning page when calculating a plan. This is particularly useful for organizations that need a complete view of purchasing needs, including those driven by drop shipments.

What This Means in Practice

The three core improvements — invoice independence, shipment reversal, and expanded creation methods — all point in the same direction: making drop shipments a normal workflow rather than an exception that requires special care.
For e-commerce businesses or distributors operating without their own stock, these changes reduce operational friction and the risk of errors in day-to-day operations. For finance teams, decoupling the invoicing sequence directly improves cash flow management.
References
Make drop shipments – Business Central | Microsoft Learn
What’s new in BC 2026 release wave 1 (v28)

Original Post https://techspheredynamics.com/2026/04/06/drop-shipments-in-business-central-what-changes-with-2026-wave-1/