Top Best Practices for Integrating Business Central with Power BI

Discover expert-recommended best practices for integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Power BI.

For organizations relying on Dynamics 365 Business Central as their core ERP solution, the ability to visualize and act on data in real time is a strategic advantage. Integrating Microsoft Power BI with Business Central enables businesses to move beyond transactional reporting and convert operational data into actionable intelligence.

For technical teams, this integration isn’t just about connecting two systems, it’s about ensuring secure, scalable, and performant data analytics that empower users across finance, sales, and operations.

In this article, Sebastian Alexander, Director of Professional Services at Kwixand Solutions, shares his insights on best practices for integrating Power BI with Business Central to transform business operations, covering everything from setup to performance tuning, security, and how to get started.

We'll cover:

• What Are the Key Benefits of Power BI and Business Central Integration?

• 5 Best Practices for a Successful Power BI and Business Central Integration

• Client Success Story: Data-Driven Supply Chain Optimization

• Getting Started: How to Integrate Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Power BI

• Key Takeaways: Empowering Business Decisions Through Data Integration

  
  

What Are the Key Benefits of Power BI and Business Central Integration?

The advantages of connecting Power BI with Business Central are immediate and substantial. The integration creates a seamless flow of data between business operations and analytical tools. Alexander outlines three major benefits that companies typically see:

✔️Real-Time Decision-Making

Access to live data enables immediate insight into business performance. This allows teams across departments to make timely, informed decisions rather than waiting for static reports or manual data exports. “Pulling live Business Central data in real time empowers your users to make data-driven decisions related to their business units. For example, sales, planning, financials,” Alexander explains.

✔️ Enhanced Data Visualization

Integration lets you leverage Power BI’s advanced data visualization tools. “This allows users to create interactive and customized reports tailored to their Business Central data requirements,” notes Alexander. By designing dashboards that reflect how individual teams operate, organizations can encourage adoption and strengthen data literacy across the company.

✔️ Embedded Insights

Embedding Power BI reports directly into Business Central role centers provides employees with real-time visibility, all within the application. Embedding Power BI reports in Business Central in the role centers themselves allows access to real-time insights without having to leave the Business Central application,” says Alexander. This embedded experience eliminates context switching, ensuring users can act on insights immediately, enhancing both productivity and decision-making speed.

🔎 Read More: 11 Benefits of Power BI For Businesses

5 Best Practices for a Successful Power BI and Business Central Integration

1️⃣ Prioritize Access Control in D365 Business Central

“Security would be number one,” Alexander said, emphasizing it as the foundation for any successful Power BI and Business Central integration. “You want to enable Azure Active Directory authentication and make sure that you’ve got role-based access to manage report visibility and data security.”

Implementing Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication ensures that access to data is managed consistently across Microsoft’s ecosystem. By defining role-based permissions, organizations can control who sees what data, maintaining compliance and minimizing risk.

In addition to authentication and access control, Alexander recommended configuring the correct permissions within Business Central itself. “You want to make sure you configure the correct permissions in Business Central so that you allow your users to have the ability to view the underlying data,” he noted.

2️⃣ Configure Security Management in Power BI

In addition to securing Business Central, organizations must also properly configure Power BI workspaces and permissions to ensure data integrity. “On the Power BI side, you want to take advantage of the Power BI workspace permissions,” says Alexander. “That controls who can view, who can edit, and who can publish reports.”

Beyond workspace-level security, Alexander recommended implementing role-level security (RLS). This feature restricts users from viewing data not relevant to their role. “This is really useful when you have multiple users accessing the same dataset for their own reporting needs,” he explains. “It restricts any risk of data bleed or a user seeing another’s data they shouldn’t have access to.”

He also underscores a basic but vital security practice: never hard-code credentials (usernames, passwords, or tokens) into your API calls, queries, or data sources.

3️⃣ Don’t Overlook Documentation & User Adoption

Effective integration isn’t just about connecting systems; it’s also about maintaining clarity, supporting users, and enabling adoption. Maintaining comprehensive documentation is an often-overlooked but valuable habit for long-term maintenance, according to Alexander. He explains that keeping a record of which Business Central tables, fields, and OData feeds are being used in each report helps with troubleshooting and onboarding:

“If you have that sort of summary for each report, it’s really going to help with troubleshooting or support for users. It’s also a really effective tool for new hire onboarding in the IT department.”

He also stresses the importance of user training to maximize adoption and reduce IT support overhead. “You want to make sure your users know how to filter, how the drill-through functions work, and maybe even slicers,” Alexander says. Proper training empowers end users to explore data independently and strengthens the overall value of the Power BI deployment.

4️⃣ Optimize Performance for Larger Datasets

When working with large data sets, performance tuning becomes a critical part of any Power BI–Business Central integration. Alexander recommends using the OData version 4 endpoint when connecting Power BI to Business Central. This is essential for handling larger data volumes and improving report responsiveness. Older endpoints, such as OData v3, impose stricter limits on data retrieval and can lead to timeouts or sluggish report performance.

On the design side, Alexander advised keeping data structures simple. OData queries have “limited support for complex joins or complex data aggregation routines,” so creating flat files through Power Query in Power BI helps maintain performance and stability.

5️⃣ Be Mindful of Technical Limitations

Alexander also cautions about API throttling limits within Business Central: “Business Central enforces API throttling limits. If you have too many queries or too many hits against the API, you’ll get something called a 429, ‘too many requests’ error. You want to avoid frequent data refreshes across multiple data sets to mitigate that.” To prevent this issue, organizations should schedule refreshes strategically and avoid excessive, simultaneous queries.

Lastly, he reminds teams to be aware of Power BI licensing limits, especially when working with Power BI Pro subscriptions. “Power BI Pro has a limitation on the number of refreshes a user can do, and that’s eight per day,” Alexander notes. Understanding these constraints ensures the integration meets real-time reporting needs without running into refresh or access issues.

🔎 Read More: Microsoft Power BI Pro vs. Free vs. Premium

Client Success Story: Data-Driven Supply Chain Optimization

The benefits of Power BI and Business Central integration translate directly into measurable business improvements. Alexander shared a recent real-world example of how one Kwixand Solutions client achieved supply chain optimization through integrated analytics.

“We have a customer who is heavily reliant on raw materials to complete finished goods for order fulfillment,” Alexander explains. “We introduced Power BI for inventory and supply chain visibility through a number of dashboards to provide real-time insights to meet aggressive order fulfillment dates.”

The company consumed large volumes of raw materials and needed to monitor supplier performance and stock levels closely. Power BI dashboards provided the transparency they needed to identify inefficiencies and optimize procurement decisions. The client implemented 4 key dashboards:

• Supplier Performance Metrics Report: This allowed the customer to create a preferred vendor list based on who has the shortest lead time or the best quality of product.

• Back Orders and Fulfillment Rates: This report helped identify which raw materials or vendors most frequently contributed to delays. Through drill-down capabilities, the company could trace back orders to specific vendors and adjust procurement strategies accordingly.

  
  

• Inventory Turnover Ratio: This helped the business identify high-velocity raw materials, eliminating guesswork and shortening the learning curve for new hires.

  
  

• Stock Levels and Reorder Points: Dashboards tracking these metrics helped automate replenishment processes. Using insights from Power BI, the organization adjusted item card stock levels and reorder thresholds in Business Central.

The combined effect was powerful: faster fulfillment, fewer back orders, reduced costs, and improved vendor management, all driven by data insights visualized in Power BI.

“Rolling that out and getting feedback on four dashboards that together enabled them to meet aggressive timelines, reduce back orders, achieve quicker fulfillment, and reduce costs, I think that’s a win-win,” Alexander says. “That was the beauty of introducing Power BI and managing cost reduction, preferred vendor lists, and reorder points through data-driven analytics.”

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Getting Started: How to Integrate Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Power BI

Setting up Power BI to work with Business Central involves several configuration steps. As Alexander outlines, the process begins with enabling the Power BI service connection: “You’ll need to enable the Power BI services connection in Business Central. After that, you’d have to install the Power BI Business Unit, that is the specific reports in the corresponding role centers within Business Central, and then you would use the Power BI connector.”

He added that it’s also essential to expose the data through the Power BI connector within Business Central. This ensures Power BI can access the necessary tables and data sets securely and efficiently.

While the initial setup is relatively straightforward, the long-term success of the integration depends heavily on following best practices for security, data access, and performance optimization.

🔎 Read More: How to Integrate Power BI Reports in D365 Business Central

Key Takeaways: Empowering Business Decisions Through Data Integration

Integrating Power BI with Dynamics 365 Business Central delivers a unified platform for data-driven decision-making. By combining Business Central’s robust ERP capabilities with Power BI’s analytical and visualization power, organizations can achieve real-time visibility, enhanced collaboration, and continuous operational improvement.

As Sebastian Alexander’s insights illustrate, success lies not only in the technical setup but also in establishing a strong foundation of security, governance, and user training. From finance and sales dashboards to supply chain analytics, Power BI transforms Business Central from a transactional system into a strategic intelligence hub.

For organizations seeking to optimize performance, improve efficiency, and empower their teams with actionable insights, the integration of Power BI and Business Central is not just a technical upgrade; it’s a catalyst for smarter business.

🔎 Read More: Transforming Financial Reporting in D365 Business Central with Power BI

Ready To Supercharge Your Business Central Data with Power BI? Kwixand Solutions Can Help

Ready to turn your Business Central data into real-time insights that drive smarter decisions? Kwixand Solutions is a Microsoft Dynamics Partner based out of Vancouver, Canada, and we guide businesses across Canada and the US through every step of their data transformation journey - from enabling Power BI services, configuring OData feeds, to deploying role-specific dashboards. Book a free consultation with a Power BI expert to get started.