Is it possible to report across multiple Dynamics 365 Business Central companies in one view?
Yes. Every Dynamics 365 Business Central company can be read into OneLake and combined in a single Power BI semantic model, with company as a dimension rather than a separate report per entity. Business Central's API and OData surface makes the extraction straightforward. The real work is conforming the chart of accounts across companies and handling intercompany entries, not moving the data.
- 01Business Central online is read over its REST API and the OData web services published from its pages and queries, with company carried in the request scope — so one parameterised pipeline iterates a list of companies rather than fifteen copied pipelines, and adding a sixteenth company becomes a row in a config table. Where the Dataverse integration is configured, some entities can be read there instead. Business Central on-premises is a different job: the data sits on SQL Server inside your network and is reached through an on-premises data gateway, which makes an outbound connection, so no inbound firewall port is opened.
- 02Incremental refresh keys off the system fields Business Central maintains on every table — SystemCreatedAt, SystemModifiedAt and SystemId — so after the first load only changed rows move. Two things bite. Ledger tables are append-mostly and cheap to delta, but master data is edited and occasionally deleted, so customers, items and dimension values need a periodic full reconcile rather than a pure watermark, or deleted records linger in the group view indefinitely. And the service enforces request limits per environment, so a loop across many companies is paced and windowed rather than run in parallel at full tilt.
- 03Conforming the chart of accounts is the project, and it drives the quote far more than the number of companies does. Fifteen companies on one shared chart is close to a single-company build; four companies with four locally grown charts is four mapping exercises. The deliverable is a versioned mapping from each company's G/L account numbers to a group account, plus the same for dimension values — Business Central's Global and Shortcut Dimensions carry cost centre, department and project, and they are rarely defined identically across entities. Sequencing that works: one reference company first, then the entity whose chart differs most, to prove the mapping, then the rest in batches. A straightforward group lands a first module in four to six weeks; eliminations plus multi-currency plus a disputed chart of accounts is a six-to-eight-week build.
- 04Naive group totals are wrong twice over. Intercompany sales, purchases and loan balances sit in both companies' ledgers, so summing entities overstates revenue, receivables and payables until those entries are identified — by intercompany partner code, or by a dedicated range of eliminating accounts — and excluded from group measures while staying visible in each company's own view. Separately, each company posts in its own local currency, so group figures need a rate per period: by convention an average rate for income statement lines, a closing rate for balance sheet lines, and the difference carried as a translation adjustment rather than quietly absorbed.
- 05One model serves every audience, because row-level security filters on the company dimension and is driven by Entra ID group membership. A subsidiary controller opens the group dashboard and sees their own entities; group finance opens the same report and sees all of them. Fabric workspace roles are a separate, coarser control over who reaches the workspace at all. Both are configured inside your own Azure subscription, where your existing Entra ID policies already apply.
- 06Honest limit: nobody can build the account mapping for you. If no single person owns a group chart of accounts, and two controllers disagree about which accounts are cost of sales, this stops being an integration project and becomes a finance policy decision we will hand back rather than guess at — and the pre-built KPI library cannot land until it is settled. The group view is also management reporting, not a statutory consolidation: it is not audit-signed, and it does not replace Business Central's own consolidation company or a corporate performance management tool where a filing is the output.
Where to go deeper
Related questions, answered
Do we need an on-premises data gateway to read Business Central?
Business Central online does not need one — a Fabric pipeline reaches its REST and OData endpoints over the public service with tenant authentication. A gateway is needed when something behind the firewall feeds the same consolidation: Business Central on-premises, an older NAV database, a payroll system, or a subsidiary still on a local SQL Server. That gateway makes an outbound connection, so no inbound port opens.
What happens if two companies use different charts of accounts?
A mapping table becomes the first deliverable rather than an afterthought. Each company's G/L account numbers map to a shared group account, and dimension values — Business Central's Global and Shortcut Dimensions — map to a common set of cost centres and regions. The mapping is a finance decision owned by your controller, and we build and version it in the pipeline rather than inferring it from account names.
How are intercompany transactions removed from group figures?
Intercompany sales, purchases and loan balances appear twice across a group, once in each company's ledger. Summing companies without removing them overstates revenue, receivables and payables. Elimination needs those entries identified, usually by intercompany partner code or by a dedicated range of eliminating accounts, then excluded from group-level measures while staying visible in each entity's own view. Where nothing marks them, finance has to tag them first.
Can each subsidiary be stopped from seeing the other companies?
Yes, through row-level security on the company dimension, applied in the semantic model and driven by Entra ID group membership. A subsidiary controller opening the group dashboard sees only their own companies; the group finance team sees all of them from the same report. Fabric workspace roles control who can reach the workspace at all, which is a separate and coarser control. Both are needed.
How is multi-currency handled across countries?
Each Business Central company posts in its own local currency, so a group view needs translation at a rate per period — conventionally an average rate for income statement lines and a closing rate for balance sheet lines, with the difference carried as a translation adjustment. Converting history at today's rate restates closed months and destroys comparability. The rate table is sourced and versioned, not retyped each month.
When are separate reports per company genuinely better?
When the companies are genuinely unrelated — different industries, no shared customers, no group close — a conformed model costs more than it returns, and per-company reporting on the same KPI set is the cheaper answer. Also when the output is a statutory consolidation for filing: that belongs in Business Central's own consolidation or a corporate performance management tool, with the group model used for management reporting alongside it.
Sources
- On-premises data gateway — installation and outbound connectivity · checked 2026-10-06
- OneLake overview — the tenant-wide data lake Fabric pipelines write to · checked 2026-10-06
- Direct Lake overview — semantic models reading Delta tables in OneLake · checked 2026-10-06
- Fabric workspace roles — who can reach a workspace and its items · checked 2026-10-06
Figures on this page: 4–6 weeks · 200+ · an on-premises data gateway · data stays in your tenant
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