topic hubReporting & Analyticsofficial - Microsoftreviewed - checked by Opus

Analytics, business intelligence, and reporting

Analytics, business intelligence, and reporting in Business Central: financial reports, KPIs, Power BI, ad-hoc analysis, built-in reports, report development in AL, and BI tool options. It answers which tool fits a data need, how to use reports day to day, and how to build or extend them.

Path: Analytics, business intelligence, and reporting · tier official · system reporting · narrative reviewed (checked by Opus)

Overview

This area covers how Business Central data is turned into information for different roles. The overview page introduces financial reports, KPIs, Power BI apps, ad-hoc analysis, built-in reports and dimensions, and explains how roles consume data based on organizational needs. A separate page lists analytics content by functional area.

The subtopics split by task. End users can start with using reports in daily work, ad-hoc data analysis on lists and pages, and the built-in reports catalog reached through the Report Explorer. Finance and management readers can go to KPIs, dashboards, and financial reports, which includes Power BI integration. Developers use the Develop reports pages for layouts and datasets in AL, and the business intelligence tools pages for Fabric, OneLake, Power BI, data warehouse extraction and the v2.0 REST API.

Start with the overview page to pick the approach, then move to the subtopic that matches your role.

Key points

  • Financial reports are built from account categories, and KPIs can be chosen and monitored alongside Power BI apps and dashboards.
  • Ad-hoc analysis works directly on pages and lists: sorting, searching, filtering, saved list views, data analysis mode with pivot, and Open in Excel/Edit in Excel.
  • Daily report use covers running, previewing, printing, scheduling and sharing reports, saved settings, layouts, default printers, bookmarks, and raw data export to Excel or XML.
  • Built-in reports exist for finance, sales, purchasing, fixed assets, project, assembly, manufacturing and service management, found via the Report Explorer.
  • Report development supports Word, Excel, RDLC, external and composite layouts, with datasets and request pages defined in AL.
  • BI tool options include Microsoft Fabric and OneLake, Power BI, data warehouse extraction, and the v2.0 REST API for connect apps.
  • On-premises installations lack some cloud insights unless cloud migration is used.
  • Performance guidance for AL developers and report generation telemetry are covered.

Subtopics

More Learn pages

Videos and posts

Linked by a Haiku matcher with a grounding quote from the item’s summary (link/topics.ts); machine-generated.

Business Central pages and reports

The pages, reports and queries this hub’s Learn pages name (ms.search.form, API reference), joined to the code by exact object id (data/index/docs-objects.json); a page shows the table it runs on.

Learn also names 2 objects with no object page: report/10007, report/10008.

Source: Microsoft Learn (CC BY 4.0). Descriptions are Learn’s own.

What Learn documents here 8 of 70 Learn pages

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