Native, Power BI direct, Jet Analytics, Cosmos or Fabric: why Business Central has five credible reporting paths, what each costs, and how to pick between them.
Why there are four routes, not one
Business Central has more reporting options than most other ERPs, and that is not an accident. BC reporting needs span genuinely different use cases: operational documents like invoices, statements and picking lists need pixel-perfect output; finance teams need flexible, Excel-shaped analysis; operations need self-service dashboards; and AI or forecasting work needs a modern data layer. No single tool serves all four well, which is why four credible options exist, each strong for a different job. The built-in reporting has five recurring gaps that push most organisations to look elsewhere for analytical work: multi-company consolidation is awkward or impossible depending on tenant structure, external data integration is limited to BC-only sources, there is no certified semantic model, performance suffers on heavy queries against the live system, and formatted financial reporting is constrained.
Native reporting: included, not free
Native reporting (RDLC and Word layouts) is included with BC, which is not the same as free. The real cost sits in hours: maintaining RDLC layouts, fixing them when BC versions change, and finding people who can still work with them, since those skills are increasingly scarce. Word layouts are easier to maintain than RDLC for simple documents, and most modern BC users build customer-facing documents in Word where possible, reserving RDLC only for documents that need its extra control. Total cost of ownership is real even when there is no licence line item attached to it.
Power BI direct, or Power BI on Fabric
“Power BI direct on BC” is one of two patterns we see regularly. It means treating BC’s own APIs as the data source and letting Power BI handle the modelling directly, with no warehouse, lakehouse or ETL layer in between. It suits smaller data volumes and single-entity setups. The other pattern lands BC data in Fabric first, which suits multi-entity, multi-source or governance-heavy requirements. Which one is right depends on scale and reporting complexity, not preference. The same principles apply to NAV and earlier Dynamics products: the extraction is more involved because the systems are older and the APIs less developed, but the downstream architecture is identical. Hopton has experience working with NAV environments through to BC migrations and has clients running on both, so being on NAV is not a barrier to starting.
Jet Analytics and Cosmos: the ready-made model
Between Power BI direct and a Fabric platform sit two products that give you the reporting model ready-made. Jet Analytics from insightsoftware takes data out of Dynamics on a schedule and builds a governed data warehouse with pre-built models, which Excel, Jet Reports and Power BI report from. The new cloud-managed version launched in June 2026 lands that model natively in Fabric, Azure Data Lake or Snowflake; the classic version runs on SQL Server in your own environment. It suits organisations that want to own a Dynamics data platform, hold history from NAV or GP beside Business Central, and extend the model themselves.
Cosmos, from Cosmos Data Technologies, is a cloud reporting tool built for Business Central. It gives business users a structured, multi-company Business Central data model in its own Azure service, with around 30 ready-made Excel reports, six Power BI report packs, scheduling and distribution, and nothing to build or run. It suits finance teams who want Excel and Power BI on the same governed numbers this quarter, and it can read from Business Central mirrored into Fabric, so it is not an either-or with a Fabric platform. Hopton partners on both; the Jet vs Cosmos decision sets out how we choose, and the short version is ownership: Jet is a platform you own, Cosmos is a tool you subscribe to.
Where Copilot fits
Copilot adds a fifth dimension worth addressing directly, because it now shows up in both BC and Power BI. Copilot in BC is useful for the operational user drafting purchase orders, summarising customer activity or asking questions about specific transactions. Copilot in Power BI is useful for the analytical user generating visuals, drafting DAX or exploring data. The two complement each other, and both work better when the underlying data foundations are right.
Microsoft's direction, and how to choose
Microsoft has not committed to a single reporting direction for BC, and that is a feature rather than a gap. It continues to invest in Native for operational reporting and in Power BI for analytics, and the architectural direction is clear: operational stays in BC, analytical moves to Power BI and Fabric, and there is still room for finance-specific tools like Jet to hold their place in that mix. Choosing between the four options is less about picking a winner and more about matching each reporting need to the tool built for it.
Related reading
Power BI for Business Central: extraction patterns, timelines, and the Jet vs Cosmos decision
Business Central to Power BI: the complete guide to reporting beyond the built-in tools
What is new in Cosmos for Business Central in 2026?
Shauna Duffy
Director of Professional Services
Part of the Hopton Analytics team, delivering governed analytics programmes for UK mid-market organisations.
