- Feature
- Brand document reports with themes
- Availability
- Generally available (October 2026)
- Industry focus
- Multi-brand furniture and homeware companies
Furniture and homeware companies often trade under several brands: a premium label, a value range and perhaps a contract or trade division. Each brand has its own look. Customers see that look on the website, in the showroom and on every document they receive. Keeping invoices, order confirmations and delivery notes on-brand has traditionally meant maintaining many separate report layouts. Business Central 29.0 changes the approach.
The industry challenge
A multi-brand homeware business might have:
- Several Business Central companies, one per brand or trading entity
- Dozens of customer-facing document reports, including quotes, order confirmations, invoices, delivery notes and credit memos
- Brand guidelines that change with each rebrand or seasonal campaign
In the past, each combination of brand and document often needed its own layout. A colour change meant editing many layouts one by one. Inconsistencies crept in, and customers noticed when an invoice didn't match the brand they bought from.
What Microsoft delivered in Business Central 29.0
According to Microsoft, the new composable layouts feature lets you apply a report theme to layouts for a consistent look on PDF output. Defaults can be set globally, per company, per report or per layout, giving administrators full flexibility.
An MVP walk-through shows how it works in practice:
- Themes are created as Word templates (.dotx files) and managed on a new page for themes and header/footer layouts.
- Word layouts have a new Subtype: Default, Body, HeaderFooter or Theme.
- Themes and headers/footers apply to Word layouts with the Body subtype. Existing standard layouts use Default, so you may need to set up Body layouts to take advantage.
Where the value shows up
| Business area | Impact for a multi-brand homeware company |
|---|---|
| Brand consistency | Every document matches the brand the customer bought from |
| Rebrand effort | Change a theme once instead of editing many layouts |
| Multi-company control | Different themes per company or brand |
| Report maintenance | Fewer layout copies to maintain |
| Customer experience | Professional, recognizable documents at every touchpoint |
The separation of content from styling is the real breakthrough. The invoice layout says what goes on the document. The theme says how it looks. Change one without touching the other.
A worked scenario
Consider a furniture business with two brands: a premium design label and a value range sold through marketplaces (an illustrative example). Each brand has its own Business Central company.
Before, the company maintained separate invoice, order confirmation and delivery note layouts for each brand, six layouts in all, each with its own colours and fonts. When the premium brand refreshed its identity, a developer had to update three layouts by hand.
With Business Central 29.0, the team creates body layouts for the three documents and a theme for each brand. The premium company defaults to the premium theme and the value company to the value theme. At the next rebrand, the marketing team supplies a new template, the administrator updates one theme, and every document follows.
Adoption considerations
- Plan your layout structure. Decide which reports need Body layouts that can take themes and headers/footers.
- Work with your brand team. Build themes from official brand templates.
- Set defaults at the right level. Use global, company, report and layout defaults deliberately.
- Test PDF output. Check how themes render on real documents with long lines and many pages.
- Mind RDLC layouts. Themes apply to Word layouts, so consider moving key documents to Word.
The bottom line
For multi-brand businesses, every customer document is a brand touchpoint. Report themes in Business Central 29.0 separate look from content, so branding can be managed centrally and applied consistently across companies and documents. The result is a more professional customer experience with far less layout maintenance.
If managing branded documents is a recurring headache, it's worth planning a move to composable layouts with an experienced Business Central adviser.
Sources: Microsoft roadmap 573327 · Dynamics 365 Lab: Brand document reports with report themes