Build Financial Reports in business central

Creating financial reporting in Business Central empowers businesses to analyze the company’s financial health and performance to track expenses and profits margins consistently.

An organization’s financial performance ensures how long a company can sustain and thrive in its landscape. It is vital for an organization to analyze their performance, detect the wrong decision, and fix it promptly.

Hence, financial reporting comes into play that allows companies to leverage their existing data sets and convert them into visuals to analyze and draw conclusions.

The report allows companies to identify trends and patterns, ensure tax compliance, track and analyze cash flow, identify risks associated with cash flow, and make informed decisions.

However, inaccurate financial reporting can also cost your business. It can lead to wasted time and resources, noncompliance with tax reporting, hefty penalties, a shortage of cash while paying the bills, and a loss of credibility.

Business Central allows you to leverage in-built reporting capabilities to make an accurate and wide range of financial reports to fulfill your unique needs. It empowers you to generate, manage, and analyze financial data more accurately and effectively.

Businesses need to create a financial report in Business Central first to leverage these benefits and analyze their financial health. Creating a financial report is straightforward. Let’s delve into financial report types, features, and how to create reports in Business Central.

What are Financial Reports in Business Central?

A financial report is a detailed review of financial data, which includes documents or statements, such as balance sheets and profit & loss, at a specific time.

With the help of a financial report, an organization can detect the gap, make informed decisions about their investments, identify their future growth opportunities, and allocate more resources to an area that can boost profitability.

Also, an organization can comply with the tax regulations to maintain accurate financial records. You can also represent your company finances using reports among your team and stakeholders to demonstrate transparency.

Types of Financial Reports

Businesses can create various Business Central reports according to their requirements. For instance, you can create a report to understand their profit and loss in Dynamics BC by choosing the required dataset. While to understand how their company has performed against the allocated budget, you can create another report.

Categorization of reports prevents you hover through the report to understand what data say about a specific requirement. Here are the different types of report you can create in Business Central according to your requirements.

Income Statements

Dynamics Business Central includes revenue, cost of goods sold, gross profit, operating expenses, and net income. This empowers you to analyze revenues, expenses, and profits over a specific period.

Balance Sheets

This report helps you assess assets, liabilities, and equity, which enables you display the financial position of a company at a specific point in time.

Cash Flow Statements

With this reporting type, you can analyze your operating, investing, and financing activities. This helps you understand the inflows and outflows of cash over a specific period.

Budget Reports

You can compare actual financial performance against budgeted figures, track financial performance, identify variances.

Aged Accounts Receivable and Payable Reports

You can list invoices and bills, categorize them by age, and manage payments.

Key Features of Financial Reporting in Business Central

Financial reporting in Dynamics 365 Business Central aims to help business to present information that is correct, complete, and understandable. Here are the features that help you to achieve the goal:

1. Customize Report for specific needs

You can create custom layouts to match your specific reporting needs by defining the structure and content of the report.

These reports enable detailed analysis of financial data, including profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

2. Analyze Data in Multi -Dimensions

Dimensions in Business Central allow you to categorize financial entries, including departments, projects, and regions. With filter and group data in financial reports, you can get deeper insights into specific areas of your business.

3. In-Built Reports

Dynamics 365 Business Central offers built-in financial report templates, such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. You can customize these templates to match your specific reporting requirements. However, you can integrate Business Central with Power BI for advanced data reporting and visualizations.

Additionally, reports can be exported to various formats, including Excel and PDF, for further analysis and sharing.

4. Consolidated Financial Reporting

Business Central supports financial consolidation for businesses with multiple entities. You can consolidate this data into a single report.

5. Budgets

In this report, you can set up budgets for different periods, dimensions, and accounts. This allows you to compare actual financial data with budgeted amounts to track performance and identify variances.

5 Ways to Generate Financial Reports in Dynamics 365 Business Central

There are multiple ways to create financial reports in Business Central. You can select any method as per your business requirements. Here, we are mentioning five methods to generate financial reports.

1. Using Account Schedules

• Go to the account schedules setup page in Business Central.
• Create rows for accounts or account groups and columns for periods, dimensions, or data types.
• Add calculations, subtotals, and formatting to customize the report layout.
• Save the schedule and run it to generate the report.

2. Using Financial Report Templates (In-built Report)

• Utilize predefined templates available in Business Central for common financial reports.
• Customize these templates to fit your specific needs.
• Select the relevant template, apply filters, and generate the report.
• Export the report to Excel or PDF for further analysis or distribution.

3. Using Dimensions

• Define dimensions relevant, like departments, projects, and region to your business.
• Assign dimensions to financial entries during data entry.
• Use dimensions to filter and group data in financial reports.
• Generate detailed financial reports based on dimension-specific data.

4. Using Budgets

• Create budgets for different periods, dimensions, and accounts.
• Input budgeted figures in Business Central.
• Generate reports comparing actual financial performance against budgeted figures.
• Identify and analyze variances to track financial performance.

5. Using Custom Reports and Extensions

• Utilize the custom report design capabilities in Business Central.
• Leverage Business Central connector to integrate with other apps, like Power BI for advance reporting
• Create custom reports, visualize data, and share insights with stakeholders.

Take Your Financial Reporting to Next Level with Power BI

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central allows you to create financial reports, but it doesn't offer you advance visualization and analytics capability. Hence, you can go for Power BI and Dynamics Business Central integration.

It helps you transform complex financial data into intuitive visual reports, which are easier to understand. With a wide range of visualizations such as bar charts, pie charts, and heat maps, you can get different perspectives on the data.

Also, the integration ensures your reports and dashboard always reflect your latest data. This helps you get timely insight and analyze them deeper to uncover trends, predict future performance, and take proactive action.

Here is how you can connect Business Central to Power BI to take your reporting to next level:

• Integrate Power BI and Business Central with built-in Business Central connector.
• Go to Power BI Desktop or service to create report.
• Select financial data to create report.
• Use visualization to understand your data better.
• Publish the report to Power BI service.
• Share among your team for better collaboration.

Create Accurate Financial Report with Dynamics Square

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers comprehensive financial reporting capabilities that can significantly enhance the financial management of your business. You can gain deep insights into your financial performance by leveraging its pre-defined reporting templates.

Creating financial reporting in Business Central helps you increase efficiency, better visibility, and scalability to support your business's growth. However, you need to ensure accuracy in your report to get a better outcome.

While creating a financial report, you might encounter challenges due to many reasons, like not having adequate expertise. In case of any challenges, look no further Dynamics Square, a leading Microsoft Solution Partner in Ontario.

We have served 350+ clients globally with their diverse requirements and helped them to utilize their investments in the best possible way. Our consultant is 24/7 available to you. Reach out to them to resolve your queries and get financial transparency.

Schedule a call to create financial report hassle free!

People Also Ask:

What are the 4 types of financial reporting?

Financial reporting is a detailed analysis of your company's financial data over a specific period, like quarterly or yearly. The report is classified into 4 categories, so you can leverage it according to your requirements.

a. Balance Sheet: Help you understand your company’s financial health at a particular time.

b. Profit and Loss Statement: Provides you with a clear picture of your company’s profitability in a specific period.

c. Cash Flow Statement: Help you understand the inflow and outflow of cash. Understand the future investment opportunity.

d. Statement of Changes in Equity: Empower you with the opening and closing balance of your equity, allowing you to understand your financial position.

How do I schedule a report in Business Central?

To schedule a report in Business Central to run at a specific time and date, you can use the Next Run Date Formula field:

• Click the Send to button.
• Select Schedule
• Enter the desired details, like the printer, date, and time.
• Set the Next Run Date Formula field to D4.
• Click OK to schedule the report.

How to create a report in Business Central?

To create a report in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can follow these steps:

a. Create a report object.

b. Design the dataset: The dataset determines what data is extracted or calculated from the Business Central database tables and used in the report. You can define the dataset directly in the AL code.

c. Design the visual layout: You can design the layout in Visual Studio Report Designer, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Report Builder, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Excel.

d. Make a report available for the user.