KPIs, dashboards, and financial reports

Path: Analytics, business intelligence, and reporting > KPIs, dashboards, and financial reports · tier official · system reporting · narrative reviewed (checked by Opus)

Overview

This section covers three connected areas: financial reporting, KPIs, and Power BI. Two pages are directly in the hub. One explains how to build financial reports that analyze general ledger accounts and compare them with budgets. The other explains what KPIs are, the types, and how to implement and monitor them with Business Central tools.

Two subtopics cover Power BI. “Power BI and Business Central” describes the built-in Power BI apps, reports and dashboards, KPI metrics and scorecards, and semantic models in Excel. “Power BI apps for Business Central” covers installing the connector and template apps, setting up calendars, using semantic models and KPIs by functional area, and FAQ topics such as licensing and refresh.

Start with the KPI page if you are deciding what to measure. Use the financial reports page if you need account-based reporting against budgets. Go to the Power BI subtopics for viewing, refreshing, embedding, or analyzing data in Power BI.

Key points

• Financial reports use row and column definitions together with G/L account categories to analyze general ledger accounts and compare against budgets.
• Prerequisites for financial reports include a structured chart of accounts, dimensions, and G/L budgets.
• A financial report can be created from scratch or by copying an existing one (2025 release wave 1 page).
• The KPI page explains quantitative, qualitative, lagging, and leading KPIs, plus best practices for implementing and monitoring them.
• Power BI integration includes built-in apps, reports and dashboards, KPI metrics and scorecards, and Power BI semantic models in Excel.
• Power BI apps setup involves installing the connector and template apps and choosing a standard, fiscal, or week-based calendar.
• The Power BI apps provide semantic models and KPIs by functional area, with multi-language support and back links to source documents.
• FAQ topics for the Power BI apps include licensing and data refresh.

Subtopics

• Power BI and Business Central (4 pages)
• Power BI apps for Business Central (8 pages)

More Learn pages

• Build financial reports using financial data and account categories: Describes how to use financial reports to create various views and reports for analyzing financial performance data.
• Using key performance indicators (KPIs) to meet your business goals: Provides an overview of what key performance indicators (KPIs) are and how you can use them to meet your business goals.

Videos and posts

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

• What’s Cooking in Business Central: Financial Report Scheduling (video): “financial report scheduling; recurring schedules; export to excel”

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.

• Page 103 “Account Schedule Names” · captioned “(Financial Report) Row Definitions” · on Table 84 “Acc. Schedule Name”
• Page 104 “Account Schedule” · captioned “(Financial Report) Row Definition” · on Table 85 “Acc. Schedule Line”
• Page 108 “Financial Reports” · on Table 88 “Financial Report”
• Page 195 “Acc. Sched. KPI Web Srv. Setup” · captioned “Financial Report KPI Web Service Setup” · on Table 135 “Acc. Sched. KPI Web Srv. Setup”
• Page 196 “Acc. Sched. KPI Web Srv. Lines” · captioned “Financial Report KPI Web Service Setup” · on Table 136 “Acc. Sched. KPI Web Srv. Line”
• Page 197 “Acc. Sched. KPI Web Service” · captioned “Financial Report KPI Web Service” · on Table 197 “Acc. Sched. KPI Buffer”
• Page 198 “Acc. Sched. KPI WS Dimensions” · captioned “Account Schedule KPI WS Dimensions” · on Table 197 “Acc. Sched. KPI Buffer”
• Page 488 “Column Layout Names” · captioned “(Financial Report) Column Definitions” · on Table 333 “Column Layout Name”
• Page 489 “Column Layout” · captioned “(Financial Report) Column Definitions” · on Table 334 “Column Layout”
• Page 490 “Acc. Schedule Overview” · captioned “Financial Report” · on Table 85 “Acc. Schedule Line”
• Page 764 “Acc. Sched. Chart Matrix” · on Table 763 “Acc. Sched. Chart Setup Line”
• Page 765 “Acc. Sched. Chart Line” · on Table 763 “Acc. Sched. Chart Setup Line”
• Page 766 “Acc. Sched. Chart SubPage” · on Table 763 “Acc. Sched. Chart Setup Line”
• Page 36984 “Financial Overview” · captioned “Financial Overview (Power BI)”
• Page 36985 “Income Statement by Month” · captioned “Income Statement by Month (Power BI)”
• Page 36986 “Balance Sheet by Month” · captioned “Balance Sheet by Month (Power BI)”
• Page 36987 “Budget Comparison” · captioned “Budget Comparison (Power BI)”
• Page 36988 “Liquidity KPIs” · captioned “Liquidity KPIs (Power BI)”
• Page 36989 “Profitability” · captioned “Profitability (Power BI)”
• Page 36990 “Liabilities” · captioned “Liabilities (Power BI)”
• Page 36991 “EBITDA” · captioned “EBITDA (Power BI)”
• Page 36992 “Average Collection Period” · captioned “Average Collection Period (Power BI)”
• Page 36993 “Aged Receivables (Back Dating)” · captioned “Aged Receivables (Back Dating) (Power BI)”
• Page 36994 “Aged Payables (Back Dating)” · captioned “Aged Payables (Back Dating) (Power BI)”
• Page 36995 “PowerBI General Ledg. Entries” · captioned “General Ledger Entries (Power BI)”
• Page 36996 “Detailed Vendor Ledger Entries” · captioned “Detailed Vendor Ledger Entries (Power BI)”
• Page 36997 “Detailed Cust. Ledger Entries” · captioned “Detailed Cust. Ledger Entries (Power BI)”
• Page 36998 “Sales Overview” · captioned “Sales Overview (Power BI)”
• Page 36999 “Daily Sales” · captioned “Daily Sales (Power BI)”
• Page 37000 “Sales Moving Average” · captioned “Sales Moving Average (Power BI)”
• Page 37001 “Sales Moving Annual Total” · captioned “Sales Moving Annual Total (Power BI)”
• Page 37002 “Sales Period-Over-Period” · captioned “Sales Period-Over-Period (Power BI)”
• Page 37003 “Sales Month-To-Date” · captioned “Sales Month-To-Date (Power BI)”
• Page 37004 “Sales by Item” · captioned “Sales by Item (Power BI)”
• Page 37005 “Sales by Customer” · captioned “Sales by Customer (Power BI)”
• Page 37006 “Sales by Salesperson” · captioned “Sales by Salesperson (Power BI)”
• Page 37007 “Sales Actual vs. Budget Qty.” · captioned “Sales Actual vs. Budget (Power BI)”
• Page 37008 “Sales Actual vs. Budget Amt.” · captioned “Sales Actual vs. Budget Amount”
• Page 37009 “Purchases Overview” · captioned “Purchases Overview (Power BI)”
• Page 37010 “Purchases Decomposition” · captioned “Purchases Decomposition (Power BI)”
• Page 37011 “Daily Purchases” · captioned “Daily Purchases (Power BI)”
• Page 37012 “Purchases Moving Averages” · captioned “Purchases Moving Averages (Power BI)”
• Page 37013 “Purchases Moving Annual Total” · captioned “Purchases Moving Annual Total (Power BI)”
• Page 37014 “Purchases Period-Over-Period” · captioned “Purchases Period-Over-Period (Power BI)”
• Page 37015 “Purchases Year-Over-Year” · captioned “Purchases Year-Over-Year (Power BI)”
• Page 37016 “Purchases by Item” · captioned “Purchases by Item (Power BI)”
• Page 37017 “Purchases by Purchaser” · captioned “Purchases by Purchaser (Power BI)”
• Page 37018 “Purchases by Vendor” · captioned “Purchases by Vendor (Power BI)”
• Page 37019 “Purchases by Location” · captioned “Purchases by Location (Power BI)”
• Page 37020 “Purch. Actual vs. Budget Qty.” · captioned “Purchase Actual vs. Budget Quantity (Power BI)”
• Page 37021 “Purch. Actual vs. Budget Amt.” · captioned “Purchases Actual vs. Budget Amount (Power BI)”
• Page 37022 “Inventory Overview” · captioned “Inventory Overview (Power BI)”
• Page 37023 “Inventory by Item” · captioned “Inventory by Item (Power BI)”
• Page 37024 “Inventory by Location” · captioned “Inventory by Location (Power BI)”
• Page 37025 “Purchase and Sales Quantity” · captioned “Purchase and Sales Quantity (Power BI)”
• Page 37026 “Item Availability” · captioned “Item Availability (Power BI)”
• Page 37027 “Gross Requirement” · captioned “Gross Requirement (Power BI)”
• Page 37028 “Scheduled Receipt” · captioned “Scheduled Receipt (Power BI)”
• Page 37029 “Inventory by Lot” · captioned “Inventory by Lot (Power BI)”
• Page 37030 “Inventory by Serial No.” · captioned “Inventory by Serial No. (Power BI)”
• Page 37031 “PowerBI Bin Contents” · captioned “Bin Contents (Power BI)”
• Page 37032 “Bin Contents by Item Tracking” · captioned “Bin Contents by Item Tracking (Power BI)”
• Page 37033 “Projects Overview” · captioned “Projects Overview (Power BI)”
• Page 37034 “Project Tasks” · captioned “Project Tasks (Power BI)”
• Page 37035 “Project Profitability” · captioned “Project Profitability (Power BI)”
• Page 37036 “Project Realization” · captioned “Project Realization (Power BI)”
• Page 37037 “Project Performance to Budget” · captioned “Project Performance to Budget (Power BI)”
• Page 37038 “Project Invoiced Sales by Type” · captioned “Project Invoiced Sales by Type (Power BI)”
• Page 37039 “Project Invd. Sales by Cust.” · captioned “Project Invoiced Sales by Customer (Power BI)”
• Page 37040 “Current Utilization”
• Page 37041 “Historical Utilization”
• Page 37042 “PowerBI Work Center Load” · captioned “Work Center Load (Power BI)”
• Page 37043 “Allocated Hours” · captioned “Allocated Hours (Power BI)”
• Page 37044 “Expected Capacity Need” · captioned “Expected Capacity Need (Power BI)”
• Page 37045 “Finished Prod. Order Breakdown” · captioned “Finished Production Order Breakdown (Power BI)”
• Page 37046 “Consumption Variance” · captioned “Consumption Variance (Power BI)”
• Page 37047 “Capacity Variance” · captioned “Capacity Variance (Power BI)”
• Page 37048 “Average Productions Times” · captioned “Average Productions Times (Power BI)”
• Page 37049 “PowerBI Released Prod. Orders” · captioned “Released Production Orders (Power BI)”
• Page 37055 “Production Scrap” · captioned “Production Scrap (Power BI)”
• Page 37056 “Inventory Valuation Overview” · captioned “Inventory Valuation Overview (Power BI)”
• Page 37057 “Inventory Valuation by Item” · captioned “Inventory Valuation by Item (Power BI)”
• Page 37058 “Inventory Valuation by Loc.” · captioned “Inventory Valuation by Location (Power BI)”
• Report 25 “Account Schedule” · captioned “Run Financial Report”
• Page 6316 “Sustainability Report Power BI” · captioned “Sustainability Report (Power BI)” · via Power BI and Business Central
• Page 6317 “To Net Zero Carbon Power BI” · captioned “Journey to Net Zero Carbon (Power BI)” · via Power BI and Business Central
• Page 36951 “PowerBI Reports Setup” · captioned “Power BI Reports Setup” · on Table 36951 “PowerBI Reports Setup” · via Power BI apps for Business Central

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