includes solid built-in reporting. Account schedules, analysis views and standard financial reports cover the essentials. But they have limits. They are static, difficult to share, awkward on mobile devices and lack the visual clarity that modern finance teams expect. addresses every one of these shortcomings, and it integrates natively with Business Central.
Here are five reports that we deploy for almost every client. They are not complex to build, they deliver immediate value and they fundamentally change how finance teams interact with their data.
Why Power BI Instead of BC's Built-In Reports
Business Central's built-in reports serve a purpose. They are reliable, they follow standard accounting conventions and they are available to every user without additional licensing. However, they were designed for printing and exporting, not for interactive analysis.
offers dashboards that update as transactions are posted. It provides drill-through capability, allowing you to click on a summary figure and see the individual transactions behind it. Reports can be shared with colleagues who do not have Business Central access. And they work on any device, including phones and tablets, which means your finance director can review cash position from anywhere.
Business Central includes a built-in Power BI integration. Reports can be embedded directly within BC role centres and pages, so users do not need to leave their working environment to access visual analytics.
Report 1: Cash Flow Forecast
This is the report that finance directors ask for most often. It combines accounts receivable, accounts payable, outstanding purchase orders and open sales orders to produce a forward-looking cash position.
The standard BC cash flow forecast is functional but limited in its presentation. A version adds visual timeline charts showing projected cash position over the next 30, 60 and 90 days. It highlights periods where cash may be tight, overlays expected customer payments against supplier commitments and flags concentration risk where a large proportion of expected cash depends on a single customer.
The value is not just in the numbers. It is in the visibility. A finance director who can see a cash shortfall three weeks ahead can act. One who discovers it the day before payroll cannot.
Report 2: Aged Receivables Dashboard
Every finance team runs an aged receivables report. The version transforms it from a static list into an interactive dashboard.
The dashboard presents a visual breakdown of overdue invoices by customer, grouped into standard ageing bands: current, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and over 90 days. A treemap or bar chart makes it immediately obvious which customers owe the most and how overdue they are. Trend lines show whether your overall receivables position is improving or deteriorating month on month.
Drill-through functionality allows the credit controller to click on a customer and see every outstanding invoice, its due date, amount and any partial payments received. This eliminates the need to switch between the Power BI report and the customer ledger entries in .
We also recommend adding a Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) metric to the dashboard. DSO gives a single number that summarises how quickly your customers pay, and tracking it over time reveals whether your credit control processes are working.
Report 3: Budget vs Actual by Department
If your organisation uses dimensions in Business Central to track departments, cost centres or projects, this report is essential. It compares posted general ledger entries against budgets, broken down by the dimensions that matter to your business.
The report highlights variances using conditional formatting. Departments running over budget are flagged in red. Those under budget are shown in green. The variance is presented both as an absolute figure and as a percentage, because a 10,000 pound variance on a 50,000 pound budget is very different from a 10,000 pound variance on a 500,000 pound budget.
Monthly and year-to-date views are available side by side. This is important because a department might be over budget in a single month due to timing differences but on track for the year. The report should reveal both perspectives without requiring the user to run separate queries.
For organisations that maintain budgets in Business Central, the data is already there. The Power BI report simply presents it in a way that is more accessible and actionable than the standard BC budget analysis.
Report 4: Inventory Valuation and Turnover
For businesses that hold stock, inventory is often the largest item on the balance sheet. This report provides visibility into what that stock is worth, how fast it is moving and where the risks lie.
The valuation component shows total stock value by location, by item category and by individual item. It uses the costing method configured in , whether that is FIFO, average or standard cost, ensuring consistency with your financial reporting.
The turnover component calculates how many times each item has been sold and replaced over a given period. Slow-moving items are highlighted, those sitting in the warehouse for 90, 180 or 365 days without a sale. These are the items tying up working capital and potentially heading for obsolescence.
We recommend combining valuation and turnover on a single dashboard. A high-value, slow-moving item deserves more attention than a low-value, slow-moving item. The dashboard should make this prioritisation obvious at a glance.
Report 5: Sales Performance by Customer and Product
This report gives your commercial team a clear view of revenue trends, margin analysis and top and bottom performers across both customers and products.
The customer view ranks customers by revenue, gross margin and order frequency. It identifies your most valuable customers, your most profitable customers (which are not always the same) and customers whose spending is declining. A customer whose revenue has dropped 20 percent over two quarters is a retention risk that your sales team needs to know about.
The product view ranks items by revenue, margin and volume. It reveals which products generate the most revenue, which deliver the highest margins and which are declining. Cross-referencing product performance with customer data answers questions like: which customers buy your highest-margin products, and are you actively selling those products to the rest of your customer base?
Time-based trend lines are essential. A snapshot tells you where you are. A trend tells you where you are heading. The report should show monthly revenue and margin trends over at least 12 months, with the ability to filter by customer group, product category, salesperson or region.
Getting Started
has built-in integration that requires no additional middleware or connectors. The BC pages expose financial, sales, purchasing and inventory data to Power BI, and Microsoft provides starter report packs that you can customise to your requirements.
For organisations that want pre-built, professionally designed report packs, our Astral Reports extension provides a set of reports specifically designed for Business Central. These cover the five reports described above and more, saving the time and cost of building reports from scratch.
Power BI Pro is included with most Microsoft 365 E5 licences. If you are on a lower tier, individual Power BI Pro licences are available. For report consumers who only need to view (not create) reports, Power BI embedded within Business Central provides access without a separate Power BI licence.
Ready to switch on Power BI reporting?
See our Astral Reports extension or book a call to discuss your reporting requirements.
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