Welcome back to our Dynamics GP vs. Dynamics Business Central Functionality Face-Off. This is Round 45. Last time we looked at Excel integration — the spreadsheet everyone works in. Today it’s the dashboard everyone wants: Power BI.
Power BI is Microsoft’s tool for charts, dashboards, and interactive reports. Both GP and BC can feed it. The difference is how much plumbing you build before the first chart lights up.
How you do it in Dynamics GP
GP was built long before Power BI existed, so the connection is something you construct.
- Connect to the SQL database. The most common route is pointing Power BI Desktop at GP’s SQL Server database. That works — but it means someone has to know GP’s table names and how they join. GP tables have names like GL20000 and SOP30200, not “Posted Sales Invoices.” Building a usable data model is a real project.
- Set up a gateway for refresh. GP’s database lives on your server, and the Power BI service lives in the cloud. To keep reports refreshing automatically, you install and configure an on-premises data gateway and manage its data source credentials (Microsoft Learn). That’s one more piece of infrastructure to patch and monitor.
- Or use the OData Service. GP 2016 added an OData Service — a separate install — that publishes endpoints so tools like Power BI can read GP data (Microsoft Learn). Helpful, but you define and maintain the endpoints yourself.
- Show reports inside GP. GP 2016 R2 added Power BI reports to the web client home page — after you register GP with the Power BI App Registration Tool (Microsoft Learn). Most GP shops we meet never got that far; they view dashboards in a browser, separate from GP.
None of this is impossible. But every step is your team’s job: the model, the gateway, the credentials, the refresh schedule.
How you do it in Business Central
Business Central online arrives ready to talk to Power BI.
- Install the ready-made apps. Microsoft publishes Power BI apps for Business Central — Finance, Sales, and CRM — on AppSource. You install the app in Power BI, connect it to your BC environment, and you get complete dashboards and reports built on your data (Microsoft Learn). No table names, no data model to design — the app already knows Business Central.
- See reports inside BC. Key list pages include a Power BI FactBox right on the page. It shows a report filtered to the record you select — click a customer, see that customer’s chart. The reports are embedded live from Power BI, not copies (Microsoft Learn). First time in, an assisted setup connects your account in a few clicks.
- Build your own on clean APIs. When you outgrow the ready-made apps, Power BI connects to Business Central through its published APIs — named, documented entities like Customers and Sales Invoices, secured by your BC login. No gateway, because both sides already live in the cloud (Microsoft Learn).
Side by side
| Task | Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|
| Task | Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|---|---|
| First dashboard | Build a data model on SQL tables | Install the Finance/Sales/CRM app from AppSource |
| Data source | SQL database or self-maintained OData endpoints | Published BC APIs with named entities |
| Automatic refresh | On-premises data gateway to install and maintain | Cloud to cloud — no gateway |
| Reports inside the ERP | Web client home page, after app registration | Power BI FactBox on key list pages, filtered per record |
| Who maintains it | Your team | Microsoft maintains the connection layer |
Why BC comes out ahead
Credit where due: GP’s SQL database is open and well-known, and skilled partners have built beautiful Power BI reporting on top of it for years. The OData Service and web client integration show GP kept reaching toward modern BI.
But with GP, Power BI is a construction project — model, gateway, endpoints, credentials, refresh. With Business Central, it’s a connection: install an app built by Microsoft, and the dashboards inherit your data on day one. Embedded FactBoxes put the chart next to the record instead of in another tab. And the part nobody sees — the plumbing — is Microsoft’s to run, not yours. If you want answers from your data instead of a BI infrastructure to babysit, BC gets you there faster.
Want dashboards, not plumbing?
Aisling Dynamics helps GP teams light up Power BI — and helps them see what the same effort buys in Business Central. See what we offer, then contact us or call (251) 293-0555 and we’ll show you the built-in apps against real data.
Next up in Round 46: the Copilot round-up — what Business Central’s AI assistant does today, with no GP equivalent.