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How to Maximize Visibility with Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power BI

Are you a Dynamics NAV or Business Central user ready to trade basic reporting for next-level, real-time visibility? To help your business grow and thrive, you must fully understand how every business decision and change will impact your people, your customers, and your bottom line. Imagine being able to see the real story of your business with visual, interactive reports instead of clunky, outdated spreadsheets. 

We’re going to show you how! Read on to explore how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central’s dimensional accounting capabilities work with Power BI to provide powerful, flexible insight that will help your organization succeed. 

 

Dimensional Accounting in Business Central 

Like Dynamics NAV, Business Central’s dimensions empower you to easily set up and simplify your chart of accounts. For example, you can create a single expense account and tag it with dimensions such as department, project, or product line. It’s then possible to filter based on one or multiple dimensions. In addition to making it easier to find information, this adds incredible flexibility to the data you can choose to track as your business grows – just add a new dimension as needed, not a whole new account. 

When you add Business Central’s seamless integration with Power BI, it’s like having the instant gratification of focused insight at your fingertips—all day, every day. 

 

Dimensions and Power BI: Better Together 

Because Business Central and Power BI are built to connect and share data, all your dimension tags can be used immediately to generate reports and charts in Power BI. Within Power BI, you can use the dimensions you’re tracking in Business Central to create, sort, and change complex reports in just a few clicks.  

Power BI also makes it possible to view this information from any angle, using helpful visuals for easier insight. Want to view net changes in expenses based on project type, geographic area, and/or product line? No problem. You can report based on:  

  • Monthly totals  
  • Individual transactions 
  • Change over time 
  • Variance from performance thresholds 
  • Any other attribute that’s helpful for understanding operations. 

All you need to do is check a box to include an attribute! 

 

Strategizing and Supporting Growth 

To continue to thrive, your business needs to remain agile, respond quickly to market changes, and proactively pursue opportunities. Business Central’s intuitive dimensional accounting combined with Power BI’s visual reporting form a critical tool you can use to gain a more thorough, timely, and predictive look into the future of your organization.  

If you’d like to learn how dimensional accounting works in Business Central and how to use those dimensions to create reports in Power BI, watch our on-demand webinar Dimensional Accounting in D365 Business Central

 

Dimensional Accounting in D365 Business Central


Talk to a Dynamics Expert 

Whether you are ready to upgrade NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central or you’re already using Business Central and want to take Power BI to the next level, give us a call or send us a message today. Our focus is on educating and empowering our clients to succeed with technology solutions tailored to your unique needs.  

About the Author

Cady Jackson is a Digital Transformation Executive. Based in Hendersonville, North Carolina, Cady brings over 14 years of experience.

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