How to Connect Power BI to Dynamics 365 Business Central (3 Ways, Compared)

There are three ways to connect Power BI to Dynamics 365 Business Central, and the right one depends on how much reporting you need and how far you plan to scale:

1. Built-in Power BI reports for quick, out-of-the-box visuals inside Business Central.
2. The Power BI connector for Business Central for custom reports on Business Central data alone.
3. bc2adls with Microsoft Fabric for large data volumes or combining Business Central with other systems.

The three methods compared

1. Built-in Power BI reports in Business Central

Business Central includes Power BI reports that you can embed in role centers and list pages, and Microsoft publishes Power BI apps for Business Central covering areas such as finance, sales, purchasing and inventory. They're fast to turn on and good for standard views. You can't easily customize them beyond what Microsoft has built, and they only cover the data Business Central exposes for those reports.

2. The Power BI connector for Business Central

Power BI has a dedicated Dynamics 365 Business Central connector that reads data through Business Central's APIs and published web services. This is the right choice when you need a custom report, such as a dashboard combining sales and inventory in a way the built-in reports don't, but don't yet need to blend Business Central with data from other systems.

How to connect Power BI Desktop to Business Central

1. In Power BI Desktop, choose Get data → More.
2. Search for Dynamics 365 Business Central, select it and choose Connect.
3. Sign in with the organizational account you use for Business Central.
4. Expand your environment and company, then select the tables you need. Standard API entities are listed, along with any web services your administrator has published.
5. Choose Transform Data to shape the tables in Power Query, or Load to start building the report.
6. Publish to the Power BI service and set up a scheduled refresh so the report stays current.

For Business Central on-premises, use the separate Dynamics 365 Business Central (on-premises) connector, which reads the OData web services your server exposes.

The connector's limits are the same as the APIs': it can't see fields or tables that aren't exposed, and refreshes slow down as ledger tables grow. If you can't find the field you need, Page Inspection shows which table it lives in.

3. bc2adls + Microsoft Fabric (for scale and custom data models)

When reporting outgrows a live connector (large data volumes, complex transformations, or combining Business Central with your CRM, e-commerce platform or other ERPs), the more durable approach is to export Business Central data with the open-source bc2adls extension to Azure Data Lake Storage or a Microsoft Fabric lakehouse, then model it in Fabric before it reaches Power BI. It adds setup work up front, but gives you a proper data platform instead of a single report: room to add new data sources without rebuilding, and reporting performance that holds up as your data grows. Our bc2adls setup guide covers the whole setup.

Which method should you use?

Use the built-in reports if you need something today and standard views are enough. Use the Power BI connector if you need a few custom reports on Business Central data alone. Move to bc2adls + Fabric once you're combining data sources, hitting refresh or performance limits, or building reporting that needs to scale with the business. That last stage is where we spend most of our time with clients. For a wider look at getting data out of Business Central, see three ways to export data from Business Central.

A note on naming: this guide is about Dynamics 365 Business Central. Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, Dynamics NAV and Dynamics AX connect to Power BI in different ways.

Need help choosing?

Polaris Insights builds Power BI and Microsoft Fabric dashboards on top of Business Central for supply chain, sales, production, inventory and financial reporting. Get in touch and we'll help you work out which approach fits your data and where it needs to go next.