Business Central holds the numbers; Power BI is how the board sees them. The five reports that come up in every board pack, how each one is built from Business Central data, the standard Power BI apps Microsoft now ships, and the two mistakes that make dashboards nobody trusts.
Business Central's own reporting is good for the finance team: financial reports, analysis mode, Excel layouts. It is not what the board wants to look at. The board wants five numbers, a trend and a traffic light, on their phone, before the meeting. That is Power BI, and this is how to build the five reports that every board pack we have seen comes back to.
Since 2025 Microsoft ships standard Power BI apps for Business Central: finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, projects and subscription billing, connected to Business Central's analytics data through purpose-built APIs rather than the old OData scrape. They are well designed, they cover 60 to 70 per cent of what most businesses need, and they are the place to start rather than a blank canvas. Each user who views them needs a Power BI Pro licence (or Premium capacity), on top of their Business Central licence.
The five reports below are what we build on top of, or alongside, those apps.
The one every board opens first. Revenue, gross margin, overheads, EBITDA; this month, year to date, against budget and last year; by dimension (department, division, region) with drill-down to the account and the transaction. Built from G/L entries and G/L budget entries with the dimensions, using the same financial report structure the finance team uses so the numbers agree. The rule: if the Power BI P&L and the Business Central financial report ever disagree, nobody trusts either again, so build one from the other.
Bank balances now, aged debtors and creditors, and a thirteen-week cash forecast built from open customer and supplier items, open orders, payroll and known commitments. Business Central's own cash flow forecast (with the Copilot-assisted version) is the source; Power BI puts it next to the actual balance and shows the trend. Boards of growing businesses look at this one more than the P&L.
Orders taken, invoiced, backlog, by customer, product group, salesperson and region, with gross margin on each. From sales invoice lines and item ledger entries for the cost side. The margin by customer view is the one that changes behaviour: the biggest customer is rarely the most profitable one, and boards act on that.
Debtor days, creditor days, stock days and the trend; aged debtors by customer with the overdue tail; stock value by location and category with slow-moving and obsolete flagged; GRNI. All from the sub-ledgers. This is the report that stops "we have had a great month" and "where has the cash gone" being said in the same meeting.
Every business has one number the board watches that is not financial: on-time-in-full delivery, production output against plan, warehouse pick rate, project utilisation, service response. It lives in Business Central (warehouse entries, production output, job ledger, service orders) and it belongs on the same page as the money, because the board should be able to see the cause next to the effect.
The standard Power BI apps, connected to your tenant, as the base. A small data model on top (dimensions, budget, the operational tables) refreshed at least daily. One board page, one page per area for the people who run that area, row-level security so a regional manager sees their region. Published to a Teams channel so it is where people already are. For most mid-sized businesses this is two to four weeks of work, and the reconciliation discipline is the part that takes the time.
If your board pack is still a PDF assembled on the last day of the month, this is the fastest-payback project on the list. We build it as part of CIO and CTO as a service (reporting and BI ownership is part of the scope) or as a standalone piece of work: get in touch.
