Welcome back to our Dynamics GP vs. Dynamics Business Central Functionality Face-Off. This is Round 44. Let’s be honest about something every accountant knows: no matter which ERP you run, the real work often ends up in Excel. So today’s question matters — how well does your ERP actually talk to Excel?
Both systems can get data into a spreadsheet. The difference is what happens next: in GP, Excel is the end of the road. In Business Central, it is a two-way street.
How you do it in Dynamics GP
GP gives you two main routes into Excel, and both are one-way.
- Export from SmartList. Build or open a SmartList, click the Excel button, and the rows land in a workbook. It works, and everyone uses it — we covered SmartLists in depth back in Round 25. Just watch the quirks: since GP 2013, currency values export with five decimal places, so many shops keep a formatting macro handy (Microsoft Learn).
- Deploy refreshable Excel reports. GP can deploy Excel reports with live data connections to your SQL Server. These refresh on open — genuinely useful. But they come with infrastructure: users need extra SQL Server privileges, and the recommended setup involves creating local security groups on the server just so people can view the data (Microsoft Learn). The connections also age with the technology stack — the deployed reports use the old SQLOLEDB provider, which requires TLS 1.0, so hardening your network means manually editing connection strings in the Excel files (Microsoft Learn).
And in both routes, the traffic flows one direction. If you spot a wrong customer credit limit or a batch of item descriptions to fix while working in Excel, you write them down — then go back to GP and key the changes one card at a time.
How you do it in Business Central
Business Central treats Excel as a working surface, not just a destination.
- Open in Excel or Edit in Excel. Nearly every list, journal, and worksheet has both actions. Open in Excel gives you a snapshot for analysis. Edit in Excel is the headline: it opens the data with a Business Central add-in pane, you change records right in the spreadsheet — and then click Publish to send the changes back into BC (Microsoft Learn).
- Fix data in bulk. Need to update fifty customer credit limits or re-map a column of dimension values? Edit in Excel handles the whole batch in one publish. It even works on item journals and warehouse worksheets, so you can prepare journal lines in Excel and push them in (Microsoft Learn).
- Send financial statements to Excel. The Business Manager and Accountant role centers include a Reports action that opens your balance sheet or income statement in Excel, refreshed with current data. Financial reports can also fill an Excel template you design, so the board book keeps your formatting (Microsoft Learn).
- Export any report as raw data. Any report can send its full dataset to Excel from the request page — no layout, just clean rows for pivot tables (Microsoft Learn). And for refreshable reporting, Excel layouts can use Power Query against Business Central’s APIs — no SQL Server access, no connection strings, no server security groups (Microsoft Learn).
Because BC is a cloud service, all of it works from anywhere, secured by the same login and permissions as the application itself.
Side by side
| Task | Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|---|---|
| Get a list into Excel | SmartList export | Open in Excel on any list or journal |
| Change data from Excel | Not supported — rekey in GP | Edit in Excel, then Publish back |
| Refreshable reports | Deployed Excel reports wired to SQL Server | Excel layouts with Power Query against BC APIs |
| Setup required | SQL privileges, server security groups, connection strings | Sign in with your BC account |
| Financial statements | Export and reformat | Role center Reports action; Excel templates |
| Aging technology | SQLOLEDB / TLS 1.0 connection strings to maintain | Cloud service, maintained by Microsoft |
Why BC comes out ahead
Credit to GP: refreshable Excel reports were a great idea, and SmartList-to-Excel is a reflex every GP user relies on daily. For read-only analysis on a well-maintained network, it still does the job.
But GP’s Excel story ends at export. Every fix you find in a spreadsheet becomes rekeying work, and the refreshable plumbing lives on old providers and server-side security that somebody has to maintain. Business Central closes the loop: Edit in Excel turns the spreadsheet into a supported entry form with a Publish button, financial statements arrive refreshed instead of reformatted, and the connection layer is Microsoft’s problem, not yours. If your team lives in Excel — and whose doesn’t — the two-way street wins.
Ready for Excel that talks back?
If your month-end involves exporting, fixing, and rekeying, we can show you Edit in Excel against your own data. Aisling Dynamics helps GP teams bring their SmartList habits — and their spreadsheets — into Business Central. See what we offer, then contact us or call (251) 293-0555 for a no-pressure conversation.
Next up in Round 45: Power BI — connecting GP data vs. Business Central’s built-in Power BI apps and embedded reports.