# Business Central reporting assessment > Ten questions on exports, layouts, Power BI, refresh, history and definitions, pointing to the reporting layer that fits. Canonical: https://www.techfabric.com/assessments/business-central-reporting --- Self-assessment ## Business Central reporting assessment Business Central reporting has three layers: the built-in reports with your own layouts, Power BI reading the APIs, and a lakehouse for history and other systems. Answer ten questions about how reporting works today, and you get the layer that fits, the gaps to close first, and where to read about each. 10 questions · about three minutes · your answers stay in this browser tab #### Where does your month-end reporting come from today? - Excel exports, fixed by hand every month - Built-in Business Central reports as they ship - Reports with our own Excel or Word layouts - Power BI or a data platform, refreshed on a schedule #### Who changes a report layout when finance asks? - Nobody, we live with the standard layouts - A developer, through an extension - A partner, on request - Our own users, on the Report Layouts page #### How does Power BI read Business Central? - We do not use Power BI - Through OData web services published from pages - Through a mix of web services and APIs - Through API pages and API queries #### How does a refresh pick up new data? - Someone exports and replaces the file - Every refresh reads every table in full - Some tables are filtered, most are full - Incremental, filtered on lastModifiedDateTime #### Which account do your reporting tools sign in as? - We have no reporting tools connected - A person's own account - A shared login - A dedicated account or app registration, just for reporting #### What else has to sit beside Business Central in your reports? - Several systems, joined by hand in spreadsheets - Two or more systems, joined inside Power BI - One other system, joined inside Power BI - Nothing, or other sources already reconciled in one place #### If two people report gross margin, do they get the same number? - Rarely - Only if they use the same spreadsheet - Usually, with a few known differences - Yes, every report reads one agreed definition #### How far back do your trend reports need to go? - We cannot get trends at all - Only what Business Central still holds - A few years, rebuilt by hand when needed - Years of history, kept outside Business Central and refreshed #### Who owns a report when it is wrong? - Whoever built it, if they are still here - IT, as a ticket - A named person in finance or operations - A named owner per report, with a list of what each one is for #### Are Copilot or agents answering questions on your Business Central data? - No, and nobody has looked at it - We are curious, but permission sets have not been reviewed - In a sandbox, with a dedicated account - Yes, under reviewed permission sets, with read-only access where that is enough 0 of 10 answered The results ### What each result means 0% to 45% #### Start with what Business Central already has Most of the pain is the hand-fixed export, and the cheapest fix is inside Business Central: Excel layouts on the reports finance already runs, and a short list of who owns each one. 45% to 70% #### Ready for Power BI on the APIs The basics are there. The next step is Power BI reading API pages incrementally, under its own account, with one definition per metric. 70% to 90% #### Ready for a lakehouse Reporting is disciplined, and the limits now are other systems and history. That is where a lakehouse earns its cost: each source lands once, gets reconciled once, and every dashboard reads the same gold tables. 90% and above #### Ready for agents on governed data Reporting is mature. The next step is letting people ask questions in plain English, through the Business Central MCP server for live questions and Genie on the lakehouse for history. FAQ ### About this assessment Built-in reports with Excel or Word layouts cover most month-end packs. Power BI on the API pages fits dashboards across modules. A lakehouse earns its cost when reports join several systems or need years of history. The assessment points to the layer your answers describe. No. The scoring runs in your browser and nothing is stored or sent. Close the tab and the answers are gone. Use API pages and API queries. They are versioned contracts built for integration, while pages published as web services change whenever someone changes the page they come from. Yes, by one of two routes: a Databricks job that reads the Business Central APIs incrementally, or the bc2adls extension, which exports tables to Azure Data Lake Storage or Microsoft Fabric for Databricks to read. There is no managed Databricks connector for Business Central.