Are Business Central reports not enough for your needs? Connect your data to Power BI

Business Central reliably records what has happened across the company. To manage the business, however, you need to compare numbers, put them into context, and quickly identify what requires your attention.

Inspiration

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is primarily a transactional system. It ensures that documents are properly posted, receivables are tracked, inventory movements are recorded, and business transactions remain traceable. Management analytics serves a different purpose: connecting this data into KPIs, displaying their trends, and enabling root-cause analysis of variances.

This is why even a well-configured Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central may not, on its own, answer all executive questions. The CFO needs to compare actuals against budgets and prior periods, the Sales Director needs to monitor margins by customer and product line, and the CEO needs visibility into the relationship between sales, receivables, inventory, and liquidity. The data required for these answers often already exists within the company. What is missing, however, is a unified data model that connects these figures and presents them consistently across all roles.

One option is to build a custom Power BI solution from the data interface down to individual KPIs. The second path is to leverage a pre-built analytics foundation for Business Central and customize it to the company's specific needs. The choice between these two approaches depends on the business questions you need the data to answer, the maturity of your Business Central configuration, and your specific requirements for custom metrics, data sources, or access control rules.

When reports and Excel are no longer enough

Standard Business Central reports have their place: they provide transaction-level detail, reflect the context of specific operational agendas, and support day-to-day work. Excel, on the other hand, is the natural choice for ad-hoc analysis. The weakness emerges the moment the same report is compiled every week, relies on a specific individual, or requires combining data from multiple functional areas.

A key warning sign is having conflicting definitions for the same metric. Finance calculates margin from general ledger entries, Sales derives it from posted sales invoice lines, and management is presented with two plausible, yet contradictory, numbers. Another indicator is the inability to drill down quickly from an aggregate figure to the root cause—such as tracing a decline in margin to a specific product category, customer, or cost center.

A BI layer also makes sense when an organization needs to view multiple legal entities through the same lens. This involves more than simply aggregating results. It requires clarity on which entities are included, what currency is used to display figures, and whether shared dimensions hold consistent definitions across companies.

The solution is the Analytics Suite extension for Business Central

Analytics Suite is an extension installed directly into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It makes selected accounting and operational data accessible via a proprietary application programming interface (API), which is then consumed by a pre-built data model and report in Power BI. As a result, users do not need to build data interfaces, relationships, or foundational KPIs from scratch.

Analytics Suite covers finance, bank accounts, receivables and payables, sales, purchasing, and inventory. Users can work with ready-made report pages and build custom analyses on top of the same underlying model. The primary benefit lies not in having a higher volume of charts, but in the standardized interpretation of metrics and the ability to filter them across uniform attributes and dimensions.

The report can be displayed in Czech, Slovak, German, or English based on the user's language settings.

Finance and liquidity in a single context

For financial management, the general ledger balance alone is not the deciding factor; the relationships between actuals, budgets, receivables, payables, and cash flow are equally critical. Analytics Suite enables tracking revenues, expenses, and margins over time, comparing actuals against budgets and prior periods, and working with account schedules (financial reports) configured in Business Central.

For receivables and payables, key capabilities include "as-of-date" reporting, aging analysis, and maturity breakdowns. Management does not have to rely solely on current open balances, but can evaluate trends in payment behavior. A straightforward cash flow overview links bank account balances with expected inflows and outflows from open entries based on due dates.

Sales, purchasing, and inventory reveal the broader context

The same data carries different significance for different roles. Management tracks sales trends and margins, sales focuses on customers and product assortments, procurement needs to compare costs and vendors, and operations manages working capital tied up in inventory. A unified model enables switching between these perspectives without building a new spreadsheet for every question.

In sales, users can analyze net sales, costs, margins, discounts, quantities, or trends across customer segments. Procurement views work with vendors, costs, quantities, and year-over-year comparisons. For inventory, quantity, value, and inventory turnover are linked together. This helps distinguish an item that simply takes up physical space from one that ties up capital over an extended period.

Multiple entities require shared rules

Analytics Suite can work with a single company or across multiple companies selected within the Business Central environment. Every record includes company-level identification, allowing users to filter views or aggregate across entities. For corporate groups that currently prepare reports for individual companies separately, this represents a significant simplification.

However, technical integration alone does not resolve data discrepancies. Analytics Suite processes Dimensions 1–8 based on their sequence in the General Ledger Setup. If one company uses the "Cost Center" dimension for a branch office and another for an internal team, combined charts will be misleading. Furthermore, amounts are loaded in each company's local currency, meaning that aggregating entities with different currencies without conversion is invalid. Prior to deployment, it is therefore recommended to harmonize charts of accounts, item categories, currencies, fiscal calendars, and the definitions of key dimensions. True financial consolidation—including intercompany eliminations and currency translation—must not be confused with simple multi-company aggregation.

When is Analytics Suite the right tool?

Analytics Suite makes sense for companies that want to quickly establish recurring reporting on top of Business Central data without building an entire analytics solution from scratch. It delivers the greatest value where the chart of accounts, dimensions, item categories, or budgets align with how the business actually tracks its finance, sales, and inventory. While an analytics extension brings clarity to data and places it in context, it cannot compensate for inaccurate underlying records.

If decision-making also critically depends on data from manufacturing, jobs/projects, service management, unposted documents, or external systems, it is necessary to assess whether the standard scope of Analytics Suite is sufficient or if the solution should be further extended. The same applies to specialized planning, multi-company consolidation, or custom-configured metrics.

The first step should therefore not be a wishlist of charts, but rather a few specific questions that management currently struggles to answer. A consultation focused on these questions will help determine what can be addressed by the turnkey solution and where customization or follow-up development makes sense.

FAQ / Frequently Asked Questions

Does Analytics Suite replace standard Business Central reports?

No. Standard reports remain ideal for transactional details, audit trails, and day-to-day operations within specific business areas. Analytics Suite adds a managerial and analytical layer in Power BI, facilitating trend comparisons and cross-functional analysis.

Are the data in the report real-time?

No, not strictly speaking. The report reflects the state of data as of the latest Power BI semantic model refresh. The appropriate refresh schedule is configured based on the company's business needs, and the pages display the timestamp of the last update.

Can custom reports be built on top of the prepared model?

Yes. The prepared data model can also be used for custom reports and analyses. Prior to making modifications, it is recommended to define who manages metric definitions and how changes will be tested and deployed.

Does the solution include open sales and purchase orders?

The standard scope of the solution works with posted data; unposted orders and quotes are not included. If these are critical for the sales, purchasing, or liquidity outlook, the scope of such an extension must be assessed separately.

Can different users see only their respective company or customers?

Such restrictions can be implemented in Power BI using Row-Level Security (RLS), but they cannot be assumed to be an automatic component of every model. Therefore, define the required roles, groups, and exceptions prior to deployment, and test the resulting views for each individual role.

What determines the deployment duration?

Beyond the technical installation, the key factors are data readiness, the number of companies, dimension alignment, access control rules, and the scope of requested customizations. The fastest approach is typically deploying the standard model first and defining required changes based on its actual use.

What is required to run the solution?

Business Central with the Analytics Suite extension installed, an account with the appropriate permissions in Business Central used to refresh data in Power BI, and Power BI licenses for report authors and consumers depending on the selected sharing method. For multi-company environments, the companies to be included in Power BI must also be selected in Business Central.

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Describe the reporting or data challenges you are currently addressing. We will get in touch to review which options make the most sense for your specific environment.