When a report needs more than Business Central. Microsoft's Power BI connector and its Finance and Sales apps read Business Central well on their own. Once a report also needs the CRM, the tills, payroll totals or a second company's books, every report has to do that joining itself. We do it once, overnight, through Business Central's APIs and an application your administrator approves with reading permission sets, into a warehouse in your own cloud account. AI checks what arrives, and Power BI and the 110 Command Centre read the same result.
What Business Central's own reports see, and where they stop
Business Central records the ledger, sales and purchase documents, stock and the customer and vendor ledgers, and finance tags each entry with dimensions. Microsoft's Power BI apps for Business Central, among them Finance and Sales, report on exactly that, and the Finance app compares actuals with the G/L budgets kept in Business Central.
The edge is everything Business Central does not run. The pipeline sits in a CRM, walk-in sales in a till system, people costs with a payroll provider and the targets in a workbook. Each keeps its own customer list and its own codes, so any report that needs two of them begins with an export.
Groups are the other gap. Each company in a Business Central environment has its own data. Business Central's consolidation brings their general ledger entries into a consolidated company, and for a Power BI report across companies Microsoft's guidance is to fetch each company and combine them in Power Query, report by report.
What finance has already set up in Business Central, and how the warehouse uses it
The structure your finance team built into Business Central is reused, not redone. These are the parts the reports lean on most.
Dimensions
Business Central allows two global dimensions and up to eight shortcut dimensions, out of as many as you need to define. Postings carry a dimension set, and the dimension set entries come across with them, so the department, project or outlet on each entry arrives too.
G/L budgets
Budgets are set against the chart of accounts for any period, with up to four budget dimensions, and a company can keep several budgets for the same period. Microsoft's read-only Analytics API carries the budget entries, so loaded beside the ledger, budget against actual is current every morning.
Several companies
Each company in an environment is read on its own. Business Central's own consolidation already brings business units, including companies kept in other accounting systems, into a consolidated company. The warehouse keeps each company's detail as well: its customers, items and dimensions, beside the systems Business Central does not run.
Financial reports
The row and column definitions of your financial reports show how finance groups accounts today, and they are where the report lines agreed in the warehouse start.
How Business Central is read, and how each night's entries are checked
For Business Central online, Microsoft states that the only supported way to read data is through APIs, either its standard ones or custom ones, with no direct connection to the live database. The warehouse reads the standard APIs and Microsoft's Analytics API, which is read-only by design, is the one Microsoft's own Power BI apps use, and carries the G/L budgets, the customer and vendor ledger entries and the dimension sets. It signs in as an application your administrator registers in Microsoft Entra and adds on Business Central's Microsoft Entra Applications page, where it is given reading permission sets only, in line with Microsoft's advice to grant the least access an application needs.
The loads follow the pattern Microsoft describes for a data warehouse. The first full load can come from an export of the database made in the admin centre, where your subscription allows it. Each night after that, only records added or changed since the last successful read are fetched, filtered on the modified date Business Central stamps on every record, and the requests ask Business Central online to answer from its read-only replica, which it does where one is available.
Then AI goes over each night's entries before anyone opens a report: a posting without the dimensions finance relies on, a trade customer whose number matches nothing in the CRM, a till product that points at no item. Each one is flagged to the person who owns it, to correct in Business Central or in the system it came from, so the figures in the 110 Command Centre each morning are ones finance recognises.
On premises, Microsoft notes that the database itself can be read directly, and also that relying on it could stand in the way of a later move to Business Central online. Which route your installation uses is settled with your partner in the audit, with that in mind. Online, Microsoft limits how many requests one user or application can make at once, so the overnight loads are paced inside those limits; if one fails, a named person hears about it before anyone opens the morning's figures.
An importer with two companies and a Power BI report that stops at the ledger
An importer and distributor in Malta runs Business Central for its ledger, purchasing and stock, with a second company in the same environment for its showrooms. Field sales work in a CRM, the showrooms sell through a till system and payroll is run by an outside provider. The finance lead already uses Microsoft's Finance report in Power BI.
- The Power BI finance report is right about Business Central and silent about everything else.
- Sales and finance keep separate customer lists, so nobody can say which trade accounts are growing.
- Showroom takings and wholesale orders are compared once a quarter, from exports.
- Margin by department leaves out staff costs, which sit with the payroll provider.
- Both companies, the CRM, the till system and the payroll totals are read each night into one warehouse in the importer's own cloud account.
- Trade customers are matched by customer number, and accounts that match nothing are flagged each morning for sales to fix.
- The directors open the 110 Command Centre to showroom and wholesale sales by product range, current to yesterday.
- Margin by department includes people costs, visible only to the roles allowed to see pay figures.
Business Central and the partner's work on it did not change. Power BI stayed the reporting tool for finance; it now reads one checked warehouse instead of joining systems inside every report.
Matching rules to agree before Business Central meets your other systems
Customer number across companies
The same trade customer can carry a different customer number in each Business Central company. The CRM account holds the number agreed as the key, and the rule says how the other companies' numbers map to it.
Item number to the till's product code
Shop or showroom sales meet the ledger only if each till product points to a Business Central item. The audit lists the products that do not.
Dimension sets to report lines
Each entry carries one dimension set. Finance decides which dimensions in the set drive the report lines, and how an entry posted without them is shown.
Each company to the group lines
Different charts of accounts, currencies and year ends are aligned under shared report lines, and finance agrees how trading between group companies is treated.
Which budget a report uses
Business Central can hold several budgets for one period. Finance names the one each report compares against.
What we do not do
- We do not sell, license, implement or support Business Central. Your partner keeps doing that.
- We do not build extensions, change your setup or post anything in Business Central.
- We do not move you from on premises to online. That decision stays between you and your partner.
- Business Central data is copied into a warehouse in your own cloud account.
How it works
- A strategy callThirty minutes with Glen, free, with no pitch deck. Bring the systems you run and the question none of them answers on its own. You leave knowing whether joining them is worth doing, and where to start.
- The data auditAbout three hours with your team, mapping where each figure comes from, which system holds it and which steps are done by hand. The audit confirms how each system can be read, and it ends with a quote.
- The buildThree to four weeks from an accepted quote to a live dashboard. Implementation is the first month. Your team agrees the definitions with us; we do the building.
- The fractional teamAn ongoing senior team keeps the loads running, follows changes made to your systems and connects the next source when the business needs it.
Glen Sultana founded 110 Analytics after a career built where the numbers move daily. Our people have run analytics for tier-one companies, S&P 500 firms and high-growth technology businesses. Glen is the person on the first call, and he runs every data audit himself.
- Built in your environment, under your account
- Every connection approved by you first
- Based in Malta
Straight answers
Does Business Central stay as it is?
Yes. Finance keeps posting in Business Central and stock keeps moving there. The warehouse only takes a nightly copy of the entries your reports use and sets it next to the systems Business Central does not run.
Will this affect our Business Central partner or licence?
Your partner keeps its role, and nothing in Business Central is changed. The application the warehouse uses is registered in your own Microsoft Entra tenant and set up in Business Central by your administrator or partner, who controls it; if it needs anything licensed on your side, the audit names it before the quote.
How do you connect to Business Central?
On Business Central online, through its APIs, which Microsoft describes as the only supported way to read data there, using an application your administrator approves with reading permission sets. On premises, the audit settles with your partner whether to use the APIs or the database itself.
Can Power BI not connect to Business Central directly?
It can, and Microsoft provides both the connector and ready-made reports. For a report on Business Central alone that may be all you need. The warehouse earns its place when reports need other systems or several companies together, so the joining is done once rather than inside each report.
What does the AI do with our Business Central data?
It checks. Each night's entries are compared with the rules finance agreed in the audit, and anything that does not fit, such as a missing dimension, a customer that matches nothing or a budget no report names, is flagged to the person who owns it. It reads; it never posts in Business Central.
We run several companies in Business Central. Can they be reported together?
Yes. Every company is read separately, then the group is assembled in the warehouse on report lines finance has approved, and each company can still be viewed alone. Group companies on a different accounting system can join the same view.
Will the overnight loads slow Business Central down for our team?
They run overnight and only read. On Business Central online the requests ask for the read-only replica, which answers where one is available, and Microsoft caps how many requests any one application may send at once.
What does it cost?
You receive a quote when the data audit ends. It turns mainly on the number of systems beside Business Central and the matching they need.
Terms on this page
- Dimension set
- The combination of dimension values on an entry, such as department and project, kept once in Business Central and referred to by an ID on each posting.
- Environment and company
- An environment is one Business Central instance, and it can hold several companies, each with its own books.
- Permission set
- A named group of rights inside Business Central. The application the warehouse uses holds reading permission sets only.
- Read scale-out
- Microsoft's read-only replica of the Business Central online database, used for reports and read requests where one is available.
Where the product facts come from
Every product fact on this page comes from the vendor's own documentation, read on 22 October 2026. Vendors change their products, so the audit checks the version you run.
- Microsoft Learn: extract data from Business Central (APIs online, the database on premises, delta loads)
- Microsoft Learn: Analytics API overview (read-only; G/L budgets, ledger entries, dimension sets)
- Microsoft Learn: tips for working with the APIs (company context, Data-Access-Intent)
- Microsoft Learn: service-to-service authentication (Microsoft Entra Applications page)
- Microsoft Learn: permission set D365 READ
- Microsoft Learn: using read scale-out for better performance
- Microsoft Learn: exporting databases in the admin centre
- Microsoft Learn: operation limits in Business Central online
- Microsoft Learn: Power BI reports on Business Central data (several companies)
- Microsoft Learn: Power BI apps by functional area
- Microsoft Learn: the Power BI Finance app (budget comparison)
- Microsoft Learn: Power Query connector for Business Central
- Microsoft Learn: work with dimensions
- Microsoft Learn: create G/L budgets
- Microsoft Learn: consolidate data from multiple companies
- Microsoft Learn: build financial reports