Business Central holds the transactions behind many important management decisions. Turning those transactions into consistent Power BI reporting across finance, sales, purchasing, inventory and operations can nevertheless become a significant BI project.
Organisations can build reports from scratch, use Microsoft's standard Power BI apps, or choose a purpose-built option such as Business Central Insights. Ready-made reporting supplies the model, measures and reports, but the key question is:
How far does a ready-made Power BI solution go before you need to start building reports yourself?
, with more than 400 reports and thousands of available views. Its aim is to cover more day-to-day management questions rather than provide only a starting dashboard.
The Business Central Insights On Time Delivery report helps teams monitor shipped and outstanding sales orders, delivery performance and trends in Power BI.
Why Business Central reporting becomes difficult
Business Central records invoices, ledger entries, orders, inventory movements, production, projects, warehouse transactions and service activity. Management reporting must turn those entries into decisions about customers, cash, stock, suppliers and delivery performance.
Excel exports can answer some questions, but recurring exports add manual work, inconsistent formulas and competing versions of the truth. An internal Power BI solution can solve this, but the team must develop and maintain its data model, measures, security, refresh process and reports. Ready-made reporting reduces that workload; the difference is how much has already been built.
Microsoft already provides Power BI apps for Business Central
, covering areas including finance, inventory, manufacturing, projects, purchasing and sales.
For many organisations, these apps can provide a useful starting point.
The question is whether that starting point provides enough depth for the organisation's reporting requirements.
Business Central Insights takes the ready-made approach further in several ways. The three areas below are useful examples, rather than a complete list of the differences.
A few examples where reporting depth really matters
1. One reporting model across companies and currencies
Microsoft's standard Business Central Power BI apps work per company, so organisations with several companies must install and configure the app separately for each one.
Business Central Insights datasets can include multiple companies in one reporting model. Users can analyse them together, create company groups and build consolidated views. International groups can also convert Local Currency into configurable reporting currencies across Finance, Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable.
2. Bring Business Central custom fields into Power BI
Real Business Central implementations often contain custom item, customer or operational fields. Microsoft's standard APIs do not let users simply add fields to an existing API page, so missing information may require an AL developer and changes to the Power BI model.
For supported fields, Business Central Insights' Table Extensions feature offers another route. Users select additional fields through the Insights Connector and bring them into Power BI without a separate custom API or manual semantic-model extension.
3. Keep historical ERP data available
Moving to Business Central can leave years of useful information in the previous ERP system. Business Central Insights' Legacy Data functionality can bring historical Sales, Purchasing, Inventory and Finance information into the reporting environment from sources including Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL and QuickBooks.
Teams can then analyse that history alongside current Business Central data, preserving long-term comparisons without keeping the previous ERP as a separate reporting source.
Ready-made should not mean rigid
No two Business Central implementations are identical. Business Central Insights combines pre-built reports and measures with the ability to create additional Power BI analysis. Reusable Cube reports also let users choose measures, rows and columns without commissioning a new dashboard for every question. The aim is to avoid rebuilding common requirements so development can focus on genuinely unique analysis.
Customer example: two days of reporting work saved every week
The difference is easiest to see in practice.
Hutchinson Engineering faced this reporting challenge after moving to cloud-based Business Central. Its previous direct access to SQL reporting was no longer available, teams relied more heavily on Excel and different departments began producing conflicting figures.
After implementing Business Central Insights, the manufacturer reduced manual reporting effort by up to two days per week.
Leadership gained live reporting across sales, manufacturing, finance, inventory and purchasing using a shared reporting foundation rather than separate departmental processes.
One practical example is On Time Delivery. Hutchinson uses the Business Central Insights reporting to monitor delivery performance and investigate delays by areas such as customer and month. The company has also applied deeper reporting to supplier performance and manufacturing.
Instead of spending time preparing and validating reports, teams can spend more time investigating the causes of performance problems and taking action.
Read the full to see how reporting changed across the business.
When does a deeper ready-made solution make sense?
Microsoft's standard apps may be enough when reporting requirements are relatively straightforward and focused on individual Business Central companies.
Custom Power BI development also has an important place when an organisation has highly specialised processes, several external data sources or unusual analytical requirements.
Business Central Insights becomes particularly relevant when the organisation wants to reduce the gap between standard reporting and a full custom BI project.
That might include businesses that:
- Operate several Business Central companies
- Have customised Business Central fields they want to analyse
- Need historical data from a previous ERP
These are only a few examples of what the apps can do. The covers more of the available reporting capabilities. We will explore more of those differences in future posts.
A practical approach starts with the strongest ready-made foundation available, then develops only the reporting that is genuinely unique.
Questions to ask before choosing a reporting approach
Rather than comparing reporting solutions only by the dashboards shown in a demonstration, test them against the questions your organisation will actually need to answer.
Ask:
- Can the solution analyse multiple Business Central companies together?
- How does it handle companies operating in different currencies?
- Do users have the ability to drill from a KPI into the Business Central transactions behind it?
- Does the solution add Business Central custom fields to reporting without a development project?
- How deep does the reporting go within areas such as manufacturing, purchasing, inventory or service?
- Can users create additional views without rebuilding the underlying model?
- Who maintains the reporting solution as Business Central and Power BI change?
These questions reveal much more about the value of a ready-made reporting solution than the number of charts on its home page.
Ready to see how much Business Central reporting can be available before you start building your own?
Explore the , start a free trial or to see how ready-made reporting can work with your Business Central data.
Frequently asked questions
Does Business Central already include Power BI reports?
Microsoft provides standard Power BI apps for Business Central across several functional areas. They can provide a useful starting point for organisations that want ready-made Power BI reporting.
How is Business Central Insights different from Microsoft's standard Power BI apps?
Business Central Insights provides a deeper reporting layer, including multi-company and multi-currency analysis, support for selected custom Business Central fields, legacy ERP data and more than 400 ready-made reports.
The difference is not simply whether reports are pre-built, but how far the supplied reporting goes before teams require additional development.
Can Business Central Insights report across multiple Business Central companies?
Yes. Business Central Insights can include multiple Business Central companies in the same reporting model, enabling cross-company analysis and consolidated reporting.
Do I need to know DAX to use Business Central Insights?
No. Standard measures and reports are already provided. Power BI and DAX knowledge can still be useful when an organisation wants to create additional custom analysis.