Key Financial Reporting Features in Business Central

If you’re a small or medium business owner, you’ll probably have to wear many hats and juggle multiple responsibilities at any given time. For example, keeping track of finances and generating reports needs to be at the top of your list, because it’s a responsibility that no owner can ignore for the good of their business.

Financial reports give you a complete picture of your business’s overall financial performance and health. These insights help you make important decisions for your business, from where to invest your resources to how to get better at managing expenses. Plus, they let you track your company’s progress over time and benchmark your performance with other businesses in the industry.

If you’re not already generating financial reports for your business, now is the time to start. With financial reporting in Business Central, you can track, analyse, and report your finances, as well as make sure you meet financial reporting regulations.

In this blog, you’ll learn how you can maximise Business Central’s financial reporting features and produce better business results.

Why Business Central is Ideal for Financial Reporting

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a modern cloud ERP solution catering to small and medium-sized enterprises. Beyond handling daily operations, Business Central offers valuable tools and features for creating financial reports in real-time.

Three of the many good reasons that make Business Central a strong and reliable financial report analysis software are:

A Collective Data Source: All of your business departments use a shared database to reduce the risk of data errors and isolation.
Real-Time Reporting and Audit Trails: You can access and report data in real-time with complete tracking for any transactions and changes.
Excel and Power BI Integration: You can use familiar tools like MS Excel and Power BI to visualise, analyse, and present your business’s financial data for better understanding.

Core Financial Reporting Tools in Business Central

Generating financial reports in Business Central allows your financial team to not just track how your business performs and grows, but also meet the necessary financial reporting regulations.

The financial reporting tools in Business Central range from core tools like account schedules and analysis views to advanced options like no-code report generation and AI-powered forecasting to powerful third-party add-ons like Power BI, Cosmos, and Jet Reports.

Account Schedules

Account Schedules allow your financial team to customise financial reports with Business Central without writing a single line of code. With this tool, you can easily compare actuals to budgets, create side-by-side comparisons for different periods, and filter data with funnels like cost centre or department.

You can also customise and export these reports to Excel.

Analysis Views

Summarise General Ledger (GL) entries using dimensions in Analysis Views. This tool allows your team to create reports that break down business revenue by department or location. You’ll have the data you need to derive insights that support your strategic business decisions.

Financial Reports (Trial Balance, Income Statement, etc.)

Business Central has pre-built standard financial reports, including Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Trial Balance. You can edit row and column definitions to modify how the figures are grouped and represented. These reports come in handy for statutory reporting and internal reviews, and can be exported into PDF or Excel for board meetings.

Predictive Cash Flow Forecasting Using AI

Business Central takes advantage of its Microsoft AI services to project cash flow trends, flag risks, and recommend actions. This allows your financial leadership the ability to plan for your business with complete confidence.

No-Code Financial Reporting Capabilities

Experience effortless financial reporting without the need to punch in code. Benefits of Business Central’s no-code financial reporting capabilities include:

Report Formatting Options

With Business Central’s formatting features, you can hide empty rows, use professional accounting formats, and create layouts that align with common financial reporting regulations and standards. Now you don’t need to rely on Excel for formatting.

Report Owner Controls

Effortlessly assign report ownership for audits, add introductory and concluding text to financial reports, and use saved Excel templates.

Administrator Telemetry and Permissions Monitoring

Those with administrator access now have more visibility into who is creating, editing, and running reports, making it easier to keep in line with financial reporting regulations and regulate access to sensitive information.

Third-Party Reporting Add-Ons

Beyond its in-built features, you can use Business Central for more in-depth and tailored financial reporting with third-party add-ons like Power BI, Jet Reports, and Cosmos.

Power BI Integration

Power BI is a visualisation tool that lets you visually explore financial data, uncover trends, and focus on specifics like sales by customer or cost centre.

Excel Reporting via Jet Reports

Integrating the Jet Reports tool allows you to customise financial reports in Excel with easy drag-and-drop.

Cosmos

Cosmos is a cloud-based reporting add-on, allowing you to build dynamic financial reports in Excel using real-time data, without any complex formulas.

The above features are only a handful of those that exist in Business Central to make financial reporting simpler. Other features include Automated Bank Reconciliation Enhancements, Ad-Hoc Analysis & Analysis Views, and Integration of Financial KPIs and Alerts.

Using these built-in and add-on features fully helps your business make better decisions, avoid reporting mistakes, and stay focused on the metrics that matter.

How Brookland Solutions Can Help

Brookland Solutions is a certified Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner that’s here to help you make the most of the finance modules and reporting features in Business Central.

Our time-honoured commitment to delivering exceptional services allows us to offer hands-on support to small and medium businesses in implementing, managing, customising, and training their Business Central systems.

We’ll help you get more out of your Business Central subscription. We can also assist you if you’re looking to migrate or integrate this ERP software with incredible financial reporting features into your business operations.