# ERP reporting that finance and operations both read > TechFabric builds ERP reporting and dashboards on Dynamics 365 Business Central and the wider Dynamics 365 estate. That means Power BI on the ERP record with measures reconciled to the trial balance, and a Databricks lakehouse where the ERP has to be joined with plant, lab, warehouse or market data. The same team implements Business Central, so the model knows what a posting group means. Canonical: https://www.techfabric.com/expertise/erp-reporting --- The ERP holds the truth. Getting it into a report nobody re-checks is the other half of the project. ## What we implement - **What Business Central already does**: Word and Excel report layouts, analysis mode on list pages, Financial Reporting and Microsoft's own Power BI apps. We start there, because a report you don't have to build is the cheapest one. - **Power BI on the ledger**: One semantic model on the Business Central API, measures reconciled to the trial balance, and refresh scheduled against the posting cycle so Monday's number is Friday's close. - **ERP data beside everything else**: A Databricks lakehouse where the question needs the historian, the lab, the scale house or the warehouse as well as the ERP, with one definition per metric in the gold layer. - **Dashboards and plain-English questions**: AI/BI dashboards for the reports leaders open every week, and a Genie space on the same tables for the question somebody thought of in the meeting. Sectors: Manufacturing, Distribution, Warehouse, Supply chain ## What we build - Word and Excel layouts edited on the Report Layouts page, no extension needed - Analysis mode for ad hoc pivots, with its limits known: no hierarchical lists, calendar-year date grouping - Financial Reporting row and column definitions for the statements finance owns - Microsoft's Power BI apps, which need a Power BI Pro licence or capacity to use ## Questions ### What is ERP reporting? It's everything that turns the records in an ERP into numbers people make decisions on: the statements finance signs, the operational dashboards a plant or warehouse runs on, and the ad hoc questions in between. On Business Central it ranges from Word and Excel report layouts and Financial Reporting inside the product, through Power BI on the ERP, to a lakehouse that joins the ERP with systems it was never going to hold. ### What are the reporting options in Dynamics 365 Business Central? Inside the product, report layouts in Word, Excel and RDLC, analysis mode on list pages, and Financial Reporting for statements. Microsoft publishes nine Power BI apps for Business Central, covering finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, inventory valuation, manufacturing, projects, subscription billing and sustainability, which need Power BI Pro or capacity. Past that, a custom Power BI model on the API, or a lakehouse when other sources have to join in. ### Is Power BI enough, or do we need Databricks? If every number you need is in Business Central, Power BI on the ERP is enough and cheaper. Once a question needs the line historian, the lab, a warehouse system or market prices, a lakehouse is how those join the ERP under one definition. We'll tell you which one you need after reading the reports you have now, and the answer is often Power BI. ### Does Databricks connect to Business Central directly? Not through a managed connector. As of September 2026 the Lakeflow Connect Dynamics 365 connector reads the Dataverse applications and Finance & Operations through Azure Synapse Link, and Business Central isn't among them. Business Central data reaches Databricks through its API with incremental reads, or through bc2adls exporting to Azure Data Lake Storage or Fabric. ### Will heavy reporting slow Business Central down? Less than it used to. Business Central online sends reports, API pages and queries to a read-only replica by default, so a refresh doesn't compete with people posting. The limits that still bite are per user: five concurrent OData requests, 6,000 in a five-minute window, and an eight-minute timeout per request. Incremental refresh and a dedicated service account keep a reporting load inside them. ### Do you do ERP reporting for systems other than Business Central? Yes, for the reporting half. Business Central is the ERP we implement, but we build reporting and move history off SAP, Oracle, Epicor and Dynamics NAV, so the dashboards keep working through a migration. AZP Multifamily at /case-studies/azp-multifamily is reporting on Epicor Prophet 21. ### How does an ERP reporting engagement start? With two to three weeks reading the reports you have, the ones people export to Excel and fix by hand, and the questions nobody can answer yet. It ends in a written recommendation, built-in reports, Power BI or a lakehouse, that you can act on with us or without us. Build work is scoped against that document.