Business Central stores data brilliantly. But an executive rarely wants to “open the ERP and look at a report” — they need one panel that shows the state of the business in 30 seconds. That gap is exactly what Power BI closes.
Why this pairing
Power BI connects to Business Central natively — no intermediate Excel exports, no overnight copy-outs. Data refreshes on a schedule and the dashboard always shows the current picture. For teams on Microsoft 365 that means zero extra connector licences.
Which dashboards to start with
Don't try to visualize everything at once. Four basic panels deliver the most value:
Financial pulse
Revenue, margin, cash flow and receivables on one screen. This is the panel an executive opens every morning.
Sales
Trends by customer, product and rep. You immediately see who and what drives revenue and what's slipping.
Inventory
Turnover, dead stock, shortages. The money “frozen” in the warehouse becomes visible.
Receivables
Who owes, how much and how overdue. One panel instead of endless calls to accounting.
The rule of a good dashboard: it answers a specific executive question rather than showing “every possible chart.” If a panel doesn't change a decision, it's noise.
The typical mistake
Starting with looks instead of a question. A dashboard with 20 widgets looks impressive but nobody uses it. We always start with a conversation: which 3–5 decisions do you make regularly, and which numbers are you missing for them. The dashboard is built for those decisions — and then people actually use it.
What you need to start
The main condition is clean data in Business Central. Power BI only shows what's in the system: if the accounting is tidy, a good dashboard comes together quickly. If not, it's worth putting the data in order first — then the analytics come alive.