Jet Reports V Power BI

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Posted on by Samantha73

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Hi All

I'm trying to figure out if Jet Reports is suitable for our financial reporting purposes. If anyone looked at both Jet Reports and Power BI and compared it would be super helpful to know the opinion.

Thanks

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KTA 1,200 on at

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In my previous experiences we've both for that purpose and that department likes way more BI that Jet Reports also in technical perspective it's way more better

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susanw 5 on at

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We've been using Jet Reports since BC implementation in 2019. We have 7 dimensions (2 global) that can be used for G/L transactions. We're finding that Jet is getting really slow to run reports. We have 15 accountants running reports all trying to meet their reporting deadlines and some reports are taking over 20 mins during busy times. We have setup a couple Power BI reports which help take the load off the Jet Reports. We're contemplating PBI Paginated Reports.

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MahGah 15,529 on at

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Hi Samantha

Jet Report is a great tools for finical reporting but has it's own limitations as well. I have worked and used Jet Report , Jet Analytics , Power BI and Solver.

Jet Report: is really easy to learn and create ad-hoc reports. But since anytime user "refresh" Jet it sends API query to BC it can slowdown BC. Hence, too much usage of Jet Report not recommended. It was an idea submitted to Jet before to let user select read only data part of BC to help with this issue but not implanted yet. But in positive side you have access to all BC tables and fields and user can refresh report anytime and viewer license is not expensive at all.

Jet Analytics: provide extra layer on top of Jet Report. You can create data warehouse then refresh it in slower time of the day. This way users refreshing report will not impact BC. But of course data are not live. In addition, you can utilize Cube reporting and also Power BI with this data warehouse. But is more expensive and technical to start. Then you need Power BI license if you decides to build Power BI.

Power BI: it is great tools to build dashboards, let's user drill down, etc. It is much easier than Jet Report to connect tables and write logic. The downside is each user need license, you cannot refresh it more than 8 times per day, you need to publish ODAT or API for fields and tables, etc.

Solver: it is more close to Jet Analytics but has a different UI and etc.

https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/dynamics-365-business-central/PUBID.solverinc%7CAID.bi360_cloud_d365_bc2%7CPAPPID.1d282026-c17b-48d6-957c-4a3e483725bf?tab=Overview

I think as an end user I prefer to build fixed report with no need to refresh a few times per day on Power BI, then ad-hoc report with Jet. But if I can pay the cost of Jet Analytics I prefer to have that or solver.,

appsource.microsoft.com/.../PUBID.solverinc|AID.bi360_cloud_d365_bc2|PAPPID.1d282026-c17b-48d6-957c-4a3e483725bf

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Valentin Castravet 31,340 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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yes Jet Reports is suitable for financial reporting and thats its main purpose. If account schedules/financial statements in Business Central are too basic. Its typically used for that and for reports you would want in excel. For example, you would have your financial statements in jet reports so you can then send the excel file to someone that needs to see your cash flow statement etc.

Power Bi is more suitable for operational reporting or visualizations rather than tabular data. Its also not suitable if you need to send the financial reports to external users. As others have noted though Power Bi is a lot faster

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Inge M. Bruvik 1,105 Moderator on at

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In my experience Power BI is a lot faster at least if you have a high transaction volume.

It is also easier to combine Business Central data with data from other data sources in Power BI.

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Samantha73 3,247 on at

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Power BI is not the best tool for financial reports as it is not easy to build a "P&L" type report with add-hoc sub totals and % as PowerBI relies on a predefined structure. BC chart of account structure as a hierarchy is difficult to convert to a table for reporting. Hence reporting tools such as Jet come into play however for optimum performance read only replica or DW is required.

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YUN ZHU 95,329 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi, just to add some new info.

Microsoft disclosed the in-client analysis function to the public at last year's BC Tech Days Antwerp (Belgium) 2022. I haven't seen the release plan for this feature in the 2023 release plan, but I think it might be better to use this feature in the future.

Hope this helps as well.

Thanks.

ZHU

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