What's Cooking in Business Central: Excel Reports that Become Generally Available

Overview

The video explains that built-in reports, previously coded in AL, now have Excel layouts. These were marked as preview in earlier releases and are moving to general availability. The demo runs the Trial Balance report in Excel, where Power Query supplies the data and editing must be enabled.

The presenter then shows how a user can change the look of the report. Rows can be removed, tabs hidden, spacing adjusted and pivot table fields modified. Slicers filter by dimensions such as fixed asset categories. The changed layout is uploaded back to Business Central after clearing filters. The video ends with the finance analytics documentation, which covers worksheet descriptions with screenshots, use cases by persona, Copilot tips, and links to Power BI, legacy reports and financial reporting.

Key points

• The Excel reports menu was once limited to built-in reports that were hard for users to change because they were coded in AL. New Excel layouts were added a couple of releases ago and are marked as preview.
• Per the presenter, the new Excel layouts become generally available in 2025 release wave 1.
• When you open the downloaded report, you need to enable editing in Excel. The report uses Power Query, so you must also allow it to communicate before it renders.
• Users can change the look and feel of the Microsoft-provided template: delete rows, reduce white space, hide tabs such as the data tab, filter with slicers, and remove pivot table fields.
• The modified report can be uploaded back to Business Central. Clear filters before uploading.
• For the generally available version, slicers will likely be moved to the right side.
• The short URL ‘BC Finance analytics’ opens the finance analytics documentation. It lists Excel and classic finance reports, with descriptions, worksheet screenshots, persona use cases, a tip on using raw pivot data with Copilot, direct links to try reports, and alternatives such as Power BI, legacy reports and financial reporting.

Features

AL objects mentioned

As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

• report “Trial Balance Over Previous Year” at 1:00
• report “Detailed Trial Balance” at 5:23
• report “Trial Balance in Excel” at 5:23
• report “Trial Balance Previous Year or Budget Over Balance Over Budget in Excel” at 5:43

Not found in BC28-30: report “Trial Balance Over Previous Year”, report “Detailed Trial Balance”, report “Trial Balance in Excel”, report “Trial Balance Previous Year or Budget Over Balance Over Budget in Excel”.

Quotes

• 0:19 “to change because they were coded in the al language”
• 0:39 “a couple of releases ago we added new Excel layouts and they are marked here with a preview the new thing for wave 1”
• 2:10 “because this report is using some power query inside Excel it’s not communicating to the outside world I need to open for that”
• 2:32 “as a user I can completely change the look and feel for this um if I don’t what I don’t like”
• 4:13 “I can upload this back to business Central make sure I clear my filters”
• 5:43 “you can also get a description of the worksheets in the report with screenshots so you can kind of get an idea of what”
• 6:24 “there’s a link to the report if you want to try it out so you don’t have to go from business Central”
• 6:44 “links to alternative ways to analyze this data maybe you want to use powerbi maybe you want to use the legac report”

Disclaimers in the video

• 0:39 preview: they are marked here with a preview
• 3:13 subject-to-change: for the generally available version we’ll likely put these slices to the right

Presenters (as heard): Kim Teld.