Budgeting & Financial Reporting for Business Central and NetSuite
Most mid-market finance teams are still reconciling spreadsheets at month-end. We implement Solver BI360, Jet Reports, and Power BI to give your team live financial data, a structured budget process, and reports that distribute themselves.
Why native ERP reporting is not enough
Business Central and NetSuite are excellent transaction systems. Their built-in reporting tools are a starting point — not a finish line.
Native ERP reporting has hard limits
Business Central and NetSuite ship with functional but rigid standard reports. Finance teams quickly hit walls: no multi-entity consolidation, no rolling forecasts, no variance commentary, and no way to distribute formatted board packs without exporting to Excel first.
Spreadsheet budgeting breaks at scale
Most mid-market businesses still run their annual budget in Excel — emailing versions between department heads, reconciling conflicting figures, and losing hours to version control. One formula error in a shared workbook can corrupt a month of planning work.
Month-end close takes too long
When actuals live in the ERP and budgets live in spreadsheets, every month-end requires a manual reconciliation step. Finance teams spend days extracting, transforming, and loading data before they can produce a single variance report.
Leadership lacks timely financial visibility
If your CFO is waiting until day 10 after month-end for a P&L, the business is making decisions on stale data. The gap between transaction and insight is a structural problem — one that the right reporting layer closes permanently.
Three tools. One reporting layer.
We are certified partners for Solver BI360 and Insight Software (Jet Reports), and a Microsoft partner for Power BI. Each tool solves a different reporting problem — we help you choose the right one, or the right combination.
Solver BI360
Structured budgeting, forecasting, and multi-entity consolidation
Solver BI360 is a Corporate Performance Management platform built for finance teams that have outgrown spreadsheet-based planning. It connects natively to Business Central and NetSuite, pulling live GL data, dimensions, and actuals without manual exports. Budget owners enter figures in a structured web or Excel interface; the platform handles version control, approval workflows, and variance reporting automatically.
Learn more about Solver BI360Common use cases
- Annual and rolling budget cycles replacing Excel workbooks
- Multi-entity consolidation across subsidiaries and currencies
- Board pack and management account distribution on a schedule
- Budget vs actual variance analysis by department, project, or cost centre
Jet Reports
Live financial statements in Excel — P&L, balance sheet, cash flow
Jet Reports by Insight Software is the reporting layer of choice for finance teams that live in Excel and need structured, auditable financial statements. It installs as an Excel add-in and connects directly to Business Central or Dynamics 365 Finance — pulling live data into pre-built report templates without any export or import step. Every time you open the workbook, the figures refresh from the ERP.
Learn more about Jet ReportsCommon use cases
- P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statements in Excel
- Departmental cost reports with drill-down to transaction level
- Budget vs actual reports refreshed from live ERP data
- Formatted management accounts ready for distribution
Power BI
Real-time operational dashboards connected to your ERP
Power BI sits above the ERP as a real-time analytics layer — surfacing KPIs, trends, and operational metrics that the ERP's own reports cannot display. We connect Power BI directly to Business Central, NetSuite, or Dynamics 365 Finance using native connectors or a data warehouse layer, depending on data volume and refresh requirements. The result is a live dashboard that updates as transactions are posted.
Learn more about Power BICommon use cases
- Executive and operational KPI dashboards
- Sales, margin, and pipeline reporting from ERP and CRM
- Inventory, fulfilment, and production metrics
- Cross-source reporting combining ERP, CRM, and external data
Solver BI360 vs Jet Reports vs Power BI
A side-by-side comparison to help you identify the right tool for your reporting requirements.
| Dimension | Solver BI360 | Jet Reports | Power BI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Budgeting, forecasting, consolidation | Financial statements in Excel | Operational dashboards & KPIs |
| Primary user | Finance team & CFO | Finance team | Finance, operations, leadership |
| ERP connection | Native (BC, NetSuite, D365) | Native (BC, D365 Finance) | Native + API + data warehouse |
| Excel interface | Yes (add-in + web) | Yes (primary interface) | No (Power BI Desktop/Service) |
| Multi-entity consolidation | Yes — core capability | Limited | Via data model |
| Budget workflow & approvals | Yes — structured workflow | No | No |
| Variance commentary | Yes — inline annotations | Manual in Excel | Via tooltips/notes |
| Report distribution | Automated scheduling | Manual distribution | Power BI Service subscriptions |
| Self-service by non-finance | Limited | Limited | Yes — designed for self-service |
Budgeting & Reporting — Common Questions
Which tool is right for our business — Solver BI360, Jet Reports, or Power BI?
The answer depends on what problem you are solving. If your finance team needs to replace spreadsheet-based budgeting and run a structured planning cycle, Solver BI360 is the right choice. If your finance team needs live financial statements — P&L, balance sheet, cash flow — in Excel without manual exports, Jet Reports is the right choice. If your leadership team needs real-time operational dashboards showing KPIs, sales trends, and margin data, Power BI is the right choice. Many of our clients use two of these tools together — for example, Jet Reports for financial statements and Power BI for operational dashboards. We help you choose based on who will use it and what decisions it needs to support.
Can Solver BI360 replace our Excel budget process entirely?
Yes — that is exactly what it is designed to do. Solver BI360 provides a structured, collaborative budgeting environment where department heads enter figures in a controlled interface (web or Excel add-in), the platform manages version control and approval workflows, and the finance team can compare actuals against budget in real time. The difference from a shared Excel workbook is that the data is stored centrally, version-controlled, and connected live to your ERP — so there is no reconciliation step at month-end.
Does Jet Reports work with Business Central?
Yes. Jet Reports has a native connector for Microsoft Business Central that pulls GL data, dimensions, and transaction detail directly into Excel. We are a certified Insight Software partner and implement Jet Reports for Business Central customers across Australia and New Zealand. We build the initial report templates — P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, budget vs actual — and train your finance team to build and modify reports independently.
How does Power BI connect to Business Central or NetSuite?
Power BI has a native connector for Microsoft Business Central that pulls data from the Business Central API. For NetSuite, we use the SuiteAnalytics Connect ODBC driver or a REST API connection depending on data volume. For high-volume environments or where multiple data sources need to be combined, we recommend a data warehouse layer — typically Azure Synapse or a lightweight SQL database — so that Power BI queries run against a pre-aggregated dataset rather than hitting the ERP directly on every refresh.
How long does a budgeting and reporting implementation take?
A Jet Reports implementation for Business Central — covering P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and budget vs actual templates — typically takes 3–5 weeks. A Solver BI360 implementation covering a single-entity budget model and standard financial reports typically takes 4–8 weeks. A Power BI implementation connecting to one or two data sources and building an initial dashboard set typically takes 3–6 weeks. Multi-entity or multi-source implementations take longer. We confirm a realistic timeline after our discovery session.
Do you implement these tools for businesses outside Australia?
Yes. We implement Solver BI360, Jet Reports, and Power BI for businesses across Australia, New Zealand, the USA, India, China, and South Africa. Our delivery is primarily remote — discovery, configuration, and training are all conducted via video conference and collaborative tools — which works well for BI projects where the deliverable is a configured software environment rather than an on-site installation.
Ready to replace spreadsheet reporting?
Book a free reporting assessment and we will recommend the right budgeting and reporting platform for your ERP, team, and reporting requirements.