Cosmos multi-company reporting in Business Central

Business Central logs you into one company at a time. Cosmos builds one model across all of them. How companies, currencies, dimensions and history come together, and what finance still decides.

The short answer

Business Central logs a user into one company at a time, and its native reports are single-company. Cosmos connects to one or more Business Central environments and builds one governed data model across as many companies as you need, with transaction-level data that can be reported in one or more currencies, extra dimension values beyond the two global dimensions, and history from a previous system if you want it. One Excel or Power BI report then shows the group, a region or a single entity by filter. What Cosmos does not do is make the finance decisions for you: the group chart mapping, the currency approach and the treatment of intercompany are yours, and a good implementation captures them once in the model. Hopton is a Cosmos partner for the UK and Ireland.

The problem as finance sees it

A group on Business Central with four companies produces four sets of native reports. The group view is a spreadsheet that someone assembles from four exports, reconciles by hand, converts to sterling with a rate they looked up, and emails on a Tuesday. It is right most of the time. It is late every time. And when the board asks why Q3 margin moved, the answer is in four other spreadsheets.

Companies

Cosmos reads each Business Central company into the same model with the company as an attribute of every transaction. Reports are built once and filtered: group, sub-group, legal entity. Cosmos's technical director has described customers running around 100 companies in one model. The practical effect is that the consolidation spreadsheet disappears, because the consolidation happens in the data layer every time the model refreshes rather than in Excel every month.

Where companies share a chart of accounts, this is immediate. Where they do not, a mapping to a group chart is defined once in the model as part of implementation. That mapping is a finance artefact, not a technical one, and the finance team should own it.

Currencies

Because the model holds entries at transaction level, reports can be run in a reporting currency as well as each company's local currency. The question an implementation has to settle is which rates: closing rate for the balance sheet, average for the P&L, and whether group rates are maintained in Business Central or supplied separately. Cosmos will report whatever approach you choose consistently. What it removes is the risk of a different rate in a different spreadsheet.

Dimensions

Business Central allows two global dimensions on every entry, and the choice made at implementation tends to be permanent. Cosmos extends the transactional tables in its model with further dimension values down to entry level, which gives reporting the effect of three, four or more global dimensions without changing Business Central. For a group that chose Department and Cost Centre at go-live and now needs Region and Product Line in the P&L, this is often the single most valued feature.

History

A group that migrated to Business Central from NAV, GP or Sage usually opened with balances, which means trend reporting stops at the migration date. Cosmos can load the historical transactions and join them to the Business Central data in the model, mapped to the current chart and dimensions, so a five-year sales trend runs across the join without the reader knowing it is there. We go into this in keeping NAV or GP history when moving to Business Central.

Intercompany

Cosmos reports what is posted. Eliminations therefore come from the elimination entries finance already posts, or from report definitions in the model that exclude intercompany accounts and dimension values. The product does not fabricate eliminations, and that is the right behaviour: an auditor wants to trace a group number back to entries, not to a formula in a tool.

Excel and Power BI on the same numbers

All of this lands in one model that both the Excel add-in and the six Cosmos Power BI report packs read. The finance team's group pack in Excel and the board's Power BI dashboard show the same consolidated figure because they are the same figure. That, more than any individual feature, is what ends the Tuesday spreadsheet.

Where Cosmos fits for a group

Cosmos suits groups that want a ready-made consolidation model with nothing to build or run. Groups that want to own and extend a data platform, or that have many non-Dynamics entities, should look at Jet Analytics or a Fabric platform; we partner on all three and the three routes sets out the choice. What is new in Cosmos for Business Central in 2026 covers the rest of the product.

Working with Hopton

We implement Cosmos for multi-company groups, capture the chart mapping, currency approach and dimension design with your finance team, build the first group reports, train and support. A free audit of how your group reports today is the starting point. Details on our Cosmos partner page, or get in touch.

How does Cosmos handle multi-company and multi-currency reporting in Business Central? Companies, currencies, dimensions and history in one model