Reporting in the ERP system
Reporting and data analytics are key aspects of business management and monitoring of company process efficiency. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers reporting tools to instantly generate reports and the required information.
Business Central users do not have to repeatedly create their own reports. They have access to an extensive set of templates and reports for all functional areas, from finance and accounting, through sales and purchase, to fixed assets, warehouses, production and service.
Financial reports
Financial reporting gives you insight into the data recorded in your chart of accounts. You can define statements that analyze general ledger account balances and net changes, and compare ledger entries against budget data. Combined with dimensions, it lets you group and analyze data by customer, region, product, or salesperson, making it easy to build financial statements and metrics without reaching for external tools.
300+ built-in reports
Business Central provides over 300 ready-made reports that support business processes across every functional area. You can organize, run, print, schedule for automatic generation, and rearrange them. Some reports are designed for interactive analysis in Excel, others for printing to PDF. Report Explorer – available from the Tell Me feature, among other places – lets you quickly browse all the reports relevant to a given role.
Ad-hoc data analysis – analysis mode and Open in Excel
For quick, ad-hoc analysis, Business Central offers two features available directly inside the system. Data analysis mode lets you open almost any list page – general ledger entries or customer ledger entries, for example – and group, filter, and build pivot tables without leaving the ERP. The Open in Excel action, in turn, lets you take a list (in full or filtered) into Excel and keep working with features such as Analyze Data, What-If Analysis, or Forecast Sheet.
Data analysis mode can be further supported with AI – the analysis assistant in Microsoft Copilot lets you transform and aggregate data using natural-language queries.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboards
Business Central lets you identify and track key performance indicators (KPIs) – the company’s scorecard. Monitoring KPIs in real time helps you keep an eye on the company’s financial health, measure progress against strategic goals, catch problems early, and make better decisions in less time.
A single data analysis platform
Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end analytical solution that combines the processes of transfer, analysis and data science. It is an integrated package offering services such as Data Lake and data engineering. By using the SaaS model, Microsoft Fabric integrates various components, including Power BI, Azure Synapse, and Azure Data Factory, to create a coherent analytical environment.
Through advanced technology and artificial intelligence, the platform offers a wide selection of analyses, common environments for various use cases, easy access, a unified Data Lake service and centralized administration that significantly simplifies analytical processes in organizations.
Business Central can connect to Microsoft Fabric natively – ERP data is replicated to OneLake, the unified data layer in Fabric. This approach works on a zero-ETL / zero-copy model: data is available in the analytics environment without moving it to a separate warehouse or data lake and without creating extra copies. This lets you separate analytical workloads from the ERP’s transactional work.
Additionally, Copilot in Microsoft Fabric helps you create data flows, SQL queries, new machine learning models using natural language queries. It also supports reporting and data analysis.
What can you gain with a single data stream in Microsoft Fabric?
Power BI
Reporting in the ERP system Dynamics 365 Business Central
ERP Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central users can create and visualize reports and data analyses in Power BI. With Power BI integration, users can easily transform business data from the ERP system into interactive visualizations and reports that can be published and shared in Power BI. The tool provides features for embedding reports directly within Business Central tabs, allowing for data analysis without leaving the system.
External BI tools and data access
Business Central data can also be analyzed outside the system. Microsoft supports integration with external business intelligence tools, exporting data to warehouses and data lakes, analysis through Microsoft Fabric and OneLake, and direct data access via the Business Central APIs (API v2.0). This lets IT and analysts build their own analytics processes in the tools they prefer, while keeping a single, consistent source of data.
Data analytics is best combined with other areas of the Microsoft ecosystem – including Power Platform for automation and building custom apps, and Microsoft 365 tools (Excel, Outlook, Teams) that streamline working with ERP data.
