At a Glance

Effective reporting in Dynamics 365 Business Central enables stronger, data-driven decision-making, yet many organisations underutilise its native tools and rely on manual spreadsheets. By optimising account structures, dimensions, dashboards, and integrating Power BI where necessary, businesses can improve visibility, reduce inefficiencies, and build a structured, growth-focused reporting strategy. Book a consultation with the Brookland Solutions’ team to learn more.

Reporting in Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central is a popular ERP system with a wide range of capabilities. However, reporting in Business Central is not always utilised to its full potential. Even after integrating the system, many businesses continue to export data into spreadsheets or create reports manually.

Organisations that use reporting effectively can make better and more informed decisions. Business Central already contains powerful reporting capabilities that, when used correctly, can help you get the most out of your business data.

You don’t always need more software to optimise Business Central reporting. In this guide, explore structured, strategic ways to optimise reporting in Business Central.

What are the Native Reporting Capabilities of Business Central?

Microsoft 365 Dynamics Business Central offers a wide range of reporting functions straight out of the box.

Built-In Reports & Templates

Access, filter, and customise trial balance, P&L data, balance sheet, cash flow, debtors and creditors information through built-in financial reports and templates.

Account Schedules

With Account Schedules, you can build financial statements using your own structure. Create specific P&L statements, compare budgets vs actuals, group accounts for reporting, and add variance columns. This eliminates the need to create separate spreadsheets.

Analysis Views

Analysis Views allow you to examine data across multiple departments, projects, and cost centres without modifying your chart of accounts.

Role-Based Dashboards

Access dashboards tailored to user roles, allowing your sales managers, finance teams, and operations leads to view relevant KPIs immediately upon logging in.

Excel Integration

Business Central strategically integrates Microsoft Excel, keeping it part of your reporting workflow by connecting data.

With these reporting capabilities in Business Central, organisations have the tools they need, but may not be using them to their full potential.

Copilot

Copilot unlocks the full potential of Business Central’s capabilities, making everyday tasks quicker and more intuitive. You can ask this AI assistant questions such as, “Show me overdue balances” or “Add a column” and get immediate answers.

Available throughout Business Central, Copilot may not be a core reporting feature, but it is instrumental in helping teams spend less time searching and get answers faster.

Why Many Businesses Underutilise Business Central Reporting

Here are some common reasons why reporting in Business Central remains underutilised:

  • Poorly structured Chart of Accounts
  • Ineffective configuration of Dimensions
  • Designing reporting around legacy systems
  • Overdependency on exporting data to Excel
  • Unclear KPIs
  • Limited user training

These Business Central reporting issues often lead to inconsistent reports across departments, wasted time manually modifying spreadsheets, delays in generating month-end insights, and a lack of real-time performance visibility for leadership.

By optimising reporting in Business Central, you add more structure to your decision-making process. Our team of consultants can help you harness the potential of reporting in BC. Get in touch with us to find out how.

Using Dimensions Effectively for Deeper Analysis

Dimensions is one of the most powerful and complex tools in Business Central. This feature allows you to “tag” transactions for analysis without creating additional general ledger accounts.

You can apply dimensions to transactions and generate reports filtered by them. Applying Dimensions strategically allows you to generate P&L by department, track expenses by cost centre, calculate margin by project, and report revenue by region.

It’s ideal to design Dimensions based on how your leadership wants to measure and analyse performance.

When to Introduce Power BI for Advanced Reporting

Business Central’s native reporting capabilities can meet a wide range of reporting requirements. However, if your organisation wants more in-depth visualisation and analytics, integrating Power BI is the way to go.

Power BI pulls data directly from BC and lets you create visually rich dashboards and interactive reports.

Power BI adds more value to reporting when you need:

  • Report combined data from systems (CRM and ERP data)
  • Executive dashboards with visual storytelling
  • Predictive trend analysis
  • Data modelling across business units

For example, a CEO dashboard can display invoiced revenue from BC, product-wise margin performance, sales pipeline from the CRM, and a cash flow forecast, all in a single visual interface.

Brookland Solutions can also help you pick the best fit from the wide range of reporting add-ons and extensions when required. 

How Brookland Solutions Can Create a Growth-Focused Reporting Strategy

Business Central’s reporting capabilities are often underutilised and underestimated. But only an experienced Dynamics 365 partner specialising in Business Central can help users understand that its strength lies in its design and strategic logic, not just in mere technical setup.

At Brookland Solutions, optimising your organisation’s reporting capabilities goes beyond configuring reports. We work with your business to:

  • Review existing reporting gaps and reporting issues in Business Central
  • Identify unnecessary manual workarounds and inefficiencies
  • Optimise Dimensions and the chart of accounts
  • Align reporting structure to business objectives
  • Introduce Power BI when required
  • Train users to manage change and adoption, and build confidence

Our team designs reporting systems for Business Central that help your business improve decision-making, increase operational visibility, reduce manual workloads, and gain real-time clarity.

Harness the full strategic value of reporting in Business Central with Brookland Solutions. To explore reporting solutions, book a consultation with our team today.