Frequently Asked Questions

Business Central Insights is a suite of 12 Power BI report apps for Dynamics 365 Business Central: Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Finance, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Cash Flow, CRM, Projects, Service, Manufacturing and Warehouse. All of them read data through the Insights Connector, a small extension installed in Business Central. You can subscribe to a single app, several apps or a bundle. See all apps.

Yes. Every app comes with a 30-day free trial so you can evaluate it on your own data. There are no lock-in contracts and you can cancel at any time. Start your free trial.

Each app is a monthly subscription, priced per Business Central environment and in US dollars.

There are two tiers, Standard and Premium, and two price bands:

Tier 1 apps (Finance, Sales, Inventory, Projects, Service, Manufacturing and Warehouse) and Tier 2 apps (Purchasing, Receivables, Payables, Cash Flow and CRM).

The Operations bundle (Sales, Purchasing and Inventory) and the Finance bundle (Finance, Receivables, Payables and Cash Flow) are cheaper than buying the apps separately.

Installation, next-day support and introductory training are included in every subscription. Current prices are on the Pricing page, and How to Buy explains monthly versus yearly billing.

Both tiers include every feature and every report. The differences are in scale and services:

• Standard supports up to 10 Power BI users; Premium supports unlimited users.
• Standard includes 2 introductory training classes and annual development requests; Premium includes 3 classes and quarterly development requests.
• Premium is required for Business Central on-premises installations and for dataset-level customisations.

See the full comparison on the Pricing page.

Yes. Every person who views the reports needs a Power BI Pro license, purchased directly from Microsoft. Please purchase and assign Power BI licenses before installing our apps. The apps are built entirely on Power BI, so there are no additional Azure costs.

No. Power BI reads data from Business Central through a single refresh account that your administrator sets up and assigns permissions to. That is the only account that needs Business Central permissions. Report users need only a Power BI Pro license and access to the Power BI app; they do not need a Business Central license or any Business Central permissions. See Assign permissions in Business Central.

Yes, on-premises installations are supported on the Premium tier.

On-premises software upgrades may be subject to additional fees. See the on-premises installation guide.

Yes, installation is included with every subscription. Most customers install the apps themselves in a few minutes by following the installation guide.

If you prefer, book a session and we will install and set up the apps for you at no extra cost.

The Insights Connector is the prerequisite for all our Power BI apps.

Install the Insights Connector for Power BI from Microsoft AppSource, then follow the installation guide to configure it.

To open the connector in Business Central, follow these steps.

Each Power BI app is installed into its own workspace; for example, the Business Central Projects Insights app lives in a Business Central Projects Insights workspace. The workspace holds one semantic model, which is the single source of truth for your whole organization: everyone sees the same data, refreshed on the same schedule.

Power BI administrators work in the workspace to configure scheduled refresh and to grant users access to the app. End users should access reports only through the app and should not have workspace permissions or install their own copy.

Share the Power BI app with them. Once shared, the app appears in each user's Power BI account and they need nothing else beyond a Power BI Pro license.

Step-by-step instructions: Share the Power BI app. Review access whenever employees join, change roles or leave.

Configure scheduled refresh in Power BI as soon as the app is installed and connected to Business Central: Schedule automatic data refresh.

Refresh runs on the schedule you choose, signing in to Business Central with your refresh account.

Turn on refresh failure notifications in the same settings so Power BI emails you if a refresh fails, and check the refresh history after the first few runs.

Our Power BI apps are fully extensible, at both report and semantic-model (dataset) level.

• Report extensions: connect to our standard semantic models via live connection and build your own reports in Power BI service, Power BI Desktop or Excel.
• Semantic-model extensions: extend our standard semantic model by combining it with your own custom data. Book a session and we will walk you through the options.

Yes. All our semantic models support an unlimited number of Business Central companies, so you can build cross-company reports and consolidated views.

For example, you can run an income statement or balance sheet across several companies in a single report.

Yes. We already work with resellers in the UK, Europe, Australia, Canada and the US, and with technology partners who integrate with our apps.

See Implementation Partners and Technology Partners, or book an introduction session.

Learn more about our commitment to protecting and respecting intellectual property in our Notice of Intellectual Property Rights.

The reports do not read live from Business Central. Data is copied into the Power BI semantic model on a schedule, usually overnight, so a report shows Business Central as it was at the last refresh; anything posted after that appears after the next refresh.

You can see the last refreshed date and time in three places: next to Data updated in the report header, under Last Refreshed in the left panel of the report Home page, and in the Refreshed column of the workspace.

If you need newer data now, a workspace administrator can start a manual refresh with Refresh now. Full steps: How to check when your data was last refreshed.

Open the workspace in Power BI, select the semantic model, then Settings > Refresh > Refresh history, and click Show on the failed run to read the error message.

A single temporary failure usually needs no action; repeated failures should be investigated. The most common cause is a version mismatch between the Insights Connector in Business Central and the Power BI app, fixed by upgrading both to the latest version.

Step-by-step instructions and links for the most common error messages: Find refresh error details. If the cause is not clear, send the full error details to support@eknowtion.com and we will investigate.

This error means the Business Central account that Power BI uses for refresh can no longer sign in, typically because its password changed or the account was disabled or lost permissions.

First confirm the account can sign in to Business Central and still has the required permissions.

Then, in the workspace, open the semantic model Settings > Data source credentials > Edit credentials, enter the account's credentials again and run Refresh now.

Full steps with screenshots: Fix invalid credentials. To avoid this in future, use a dedicated refresh account that is not tied to an individual employee.

Three routine tasks, all managed by your own team: monitor scheduled data refresh and act on failures, review who has access to the reports when staff join, change roles or leave, and read the release notes and plan upgrades when a new version is published.

A monthly check that refresh history shows no failures and that the refresh account is still active and licensed covers most of it. The Administration and Maintenance Guide sets out who does what, the one-time setup tasks, a maintenance checklist and when to contact us.

No. When a new version of the Insights Connector or a Power BI app is released, your existing version keeps working, so plan the upgrade for a time that suits you.

If a release needs urgent action or contains a compatibility change, we say so in the release notes and in the product update email we send to customers. Every release is listed in the Release Notes Hub; upgrade steps are in the upgrade guide.

An upgrade updates your existing workspace; do not install the new version as a separate app. If you administer the apps and are not receiving our product update emails, contact us and we will add you.

Yes. Your data stays entirely within your own Power BI environment, under your control, and eKnowtion has no access to it. Our role is solely to provide the apps, which are installed directly into your Power BI environment.

• The apps are built exclusively with Power BI and Business Central, with no external components, so everything is secured by standard Microsoft security.
• Data moves only between your Business Central environment and your Power BI environment, through the Business Central API.
• Business Central data is read by the single refresh account you set up, with the permissions you assign to it.
• Who can see the reports is controlled entirely by your organization through Power BI app access, workspace permissions and licenses.

If you ask us to help with setup or support, we only access what you choose to share, and we have no ongoing access afterwards. More detail: Data security and Microsoft's Power BI security overview.

The Tutorials page has step-by-step guides for installing and upgrading the apps, assigning permissions in Business Central, scheduling data refresh and sharing the Power BI app with users.

The Troubleshooting page covers the most common errors, and the Release Notes Hub lists what changed in each version.

To see the reports in action, watch our webinars or book a demo.

Inside each app, every report and measure also has its own description and definition.

Email support@eknowtion.com or book a call with our team; next-day support is included in every subscription.

To help us resolve your request quickly, include the full refresh error details from Power BI for refresh issues (how to find them); for other issues, the exact error message, screenshots and the affected report, page and Business Central environment; and anything that changed recently, such as an upgrade, an environment change or a permission change.