What Great Plains End-of-Life Means for Nonprofits

Microsoft officially announced in September 2024 that Dynamics GP will reach the end of mainstream and extended support on December 31, 2029, with security patches continuing until April 30, 2031. This timeline was slightly extended in early 2025 to cover one final year-end update cycle. 

While Microsoft has occasionally provided short extensions in the past (for year-end tax updates or technical fixes), it has made it clear that GP’s long-term future lies in Business Central and other cloud solutions. The 2029 / 2031 dates are now firmly aligned with Microsoft’s broader move away from on-premise ERP systems. Another extension is highly unlikely, and organizations should plan migration efforts with the current deadlines in mind. 

“End-of-life” doesn’t mean your Great Plains system will suddenly stop running. It means Microsoft will no longer release updates, tax or regulatory changes, or non-security fixes after 2029. You’ll still be able to log in, enter transactions, and run reports, but the system will become increasingly vulnerable over time. Third-party integrations that you may rely on will start to break as they update independently and become incompatible with a legacy ERP.  

Without vendor support, routine tasks like updating Windows could cause significant GP downtime. Payroll, fund accounting, and reporting tools may drift out of compliance with CRA or IRS rules, meaning that critical figures like CPP/EI contributions could be miscalculated. By 2030, GP effectively becomes a “frozen” application, leaving IT teams to manage security, maintenance, and compliance risks on their own. 

Critically, once Microsoft stops releasing security patches in early 2030, any data still in Great Plains will be extremely vulnerable to threat actors, putting your financial information at significant risk. 

No — your data will still be yours. However, once Great Plains reaches end-of-life, how you access and use that data becomes more complex. Legacy systems will no longer receive database or integration updates, and newer reporting tools may not connect properly.

When migrating, Sparkrock helps you:

• Migrate key master data and active balances directly into Sparkrock ERP,
• Archive historical transactions in a secure, searchable data lake or Power BI workspace, and
• Maintain complete audit and reporting trails.

This ensures you retain visibility into every transaction and can respond to audits or board requests even after decommissioning GP.

Most nonprofits and public sector organizations complete their migration in six to nine months, depending on data volume, module complexity, and internal capacity. 

The project typically includes a readiness assessment (2–4 weeks), data migration and configuration (2–3 months), training and testing (1–2 months), and a go-live phase aligned to your fiscal year. Organizations with multi-entity consolidations or custom integrations may require additional time, but careful planning helps minimize downtime and ensures continuity during critical grant or payroll periods. 

Yes, and in most cases, they improve. Sparkrock is designed to replicate and modernize the key financial structures nonprofits rely on: funds, grants, cost centers, and encumbrances. During migration, our team maps your chart of accounts and reporting dimensions from GP into Sparkrock Finance. 

We also leverage Microsoft Power BI to rebuild and enhance your existing reports with real-time dashboards, automated drill-downs, and configurable board-report templates. You’ll retain historical continuity while gaining faster and more flexible insights. 

If your organization wants to migrate before GP starts to pose a risk to data security and operational integrity, the best time to start is within your next budgeting cycle. Most nonprofits plan major system investments at least 12–18 months in advance, meaning your 2026 or 2027 budget is the last realistic opportunity to allocate funds for implementation before the partner backlog begins. 

Starting early also gives your team time for training, data cleanup, and process mapping, avoiding the last-minute rush that many organizations faced during previous ERP sunsets. 

Successful migrations require collaboration across several departments. Typically:

• Finance and Accounting lead requirements-gathering and testing.
• IT manages integrations, data export, and security.
• HR or Payroll teams ensure workforce data transitions correctly.
• Leadership or Board approves the budget and oversees risk mitigation.

Sparkrock supports this cross-functional process with guided workshops and nonprofit-specific project templates, ensuring everyone understands their role and deliverables.

Costs vary depending on organization size, number of users, and integration complexity. Some lower-cost ERP options for nonprofits come with significant functionality gaps, so any initial savings are soon wiped out by add-on costs.  

In general, nonprofits can expect the total cost of ownership for a modern, purpose-built cloud ERP to be lower than maintaining Great Plains or a more “general” cloud ERP — eliminating additional costs like servers, backups, manual reporting, and separate integrations. 

If you’d like to find out what your exact ERP costs will be, book a Sparkrock demo and we’ll ask you the right questions in order to customize pricing for your organization. 

Unlike ERP systems built for profit-driven businesses, Sparkrock is purpose-built for mission-driven organizations. It includes fund accounting, grant tracking, encumbrances, and integrated HR and payroll, all within Microsoft’s secure cloud environment. 

Because Sparkrock is built on the Dynamics 365 Business Central platform, it delivers the same reliability and innovation of Microsoft’s ecosystem while layering on nonprofit-specific functionality that other systems lack. As a result, our customers benefit from faster audits, cleaner reporting, and less time spent reconciling systems. 

The first step is to book a migration strategy call. In this low-stakes session, we’ll ask you a few questions about your organization to help us determine which experts to bring to the table for a Migration Strategy call. During that call, our team reviews your current GP setup, identifies key modules and integrations, and helps you build a phased migration plan aligned with your fiscal year and staffing capacity. 

From there, we can provide a readiness checklist, sample project timeline, and cost estimate so you can begin budgeting confidently.