Finance teams are under pressure to produce reporting that is accurate, timely, and useful for decision making. In a recent webinar, “Elevate Financial Reporting in Business Central With Solver,” professionals from Forvis Mazars unpacked how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Solver can help organizations improve financial reporting, strengthen visibility, and modernize extended financial planning and analysis.
The following takeaways are based on the webinar content and contain applicable lessons for ongoing financial reporting considerations.
Native ERP Reporting Can Create Inefficiencies
Business Central provides useful out-of-the-box reporting, including financial reports, lists, trial balances, aging reports, and invoices. These tools support straightforward needs and allow users to drill into balances and activity. However, there are limitations that create inefficiencies as reporting requirements become more complex.
Creating reports often requires maintaining row definitions, column definitions, account categories, and report definitions. Adding accounts may require manual updates so they appear in the right section. In addition, printed reports may need to be exported, run by dimension, and cleaned up in Excel before they are ready for management, auditors, or other stakeholders.
How to Utilize Tools for Advanced Financial Reporting & Planning
Solver Suite is a feasible extended financial planning and analysis (xFP&A) option that can combat the above challenges. The tool extends Business Central and other enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems by bringing data into an Azure-based data warehouse for reporting, planning, budgeting, and analysis. Once loaded into Solver, data can be used regardless of source, supporting consolidations, multi-entity and multi-currency reporting, dimensional analysis, and reports that combine ERP, budget, statistical, or historical data.
Solver also supports report packages, allowing users to group income statements, balance sheets, cash flows, schedules, and other reports instead of running them individually. For planning, Solver can support input templates, departmental budget entry, spreadsheet imports, and consolidated budget reporting.
Why Faster Access to Insights Helps With Decision Making
Modernization is not only about presentation, but it is also about speed, efficiency, and stronger business decisions. Solver lets users design reports in an Excel-based environment while avoiding repeated exports, formatting, and cleanup. Reports can be published, run with parameters, filtered by entity or scenario, and distributed by email or link.
Moreover, users can drill down into transactions and, when data originates in Business Central, drill back to source records such as purchase invoices. Ad Hoc reporting further improves access to information by allowing licensed users to query warehouse data, adjust filters, export to Excel, and create charts without building a full template.
How Can Quick Start Templates Support Reporting Modernization?
Solver’s Quick Start process and template marketplace were positioned as practical accelerators. For Business Central, Quick Start guides users through authentication, data mapping, integration creation, dimension setup, and import jobs.
To that end, reports can be made available soon after data is loaded into the tool. The marketplace includes prebuilt general ledger reports, trial balances, P&L reports, forecasts, and dashboards that can be installed and adapted to an organization’s needs. The vast capabilities of Quick Start are a game changer for getting things done.
Practical AI Use Cases for Finance Teams
Keeping up with the speed of artificial intelligence (AI) and work may feel like a never-ending race. However, it doesn’t have to be one. Finance teams know that AI is moving from exploration to practical finance use cases. Teams can test the waters with Solver Copilot as an analysis agent, since it can review report data, identify the expense item with the largest increase over 12 months, generate a line chart, summarize results, highlight trends, identify outliers, and support root-cause analysis. As with any AI output, human oversight and review is necessary for maintaining integrity, trust, and factual results.
How Forvis Mazars Can Help
Finance teams can strengthen their financial reporting with help from innovative tools. Business Central offers a solid reporting foundation, but Solver can help finance teams reduce manual effort, expand reporting capabilities, access insights faster, and prepare for a more AI-enabled future. For organizations seeking to modernize finance, the opportunity is to pair reliable ERP data with agile reporting, planning, and analysis tools that support better decisions.
For more information on how technology can help modernize your financial reporting, please reach out to a member of the Microsoft Solutions & Services team at Forvis Mazars.