Multi-Entity Reporting with Business Central Insights and Binary Stream MEM
Deliver secure, consolidated, and scalable reporting across multiple entities within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central using Power BI.
Multi-Entity Management (MEM) by Binary Stream
MEM enables organisations to manage multiple legal entities, business units, or operational structures within a single Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central company. This approach reduces the complexity of maintaining multiple databases while supporting centralised governance, consistent master data, streamlined intercompany processes, and consolidated visibility across the organisation.
Business Central Insights
BCI is a suite of purpose-built Power BI applications and semantic models designed specifically for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It provides ready-to-use analytics across finance, sales, purchasing, inventory, projects, and operations, while remaining extensible and adaptable to each customer’s data model.
Together, MEM and Business Central Insights provide a robust foundation for enterprise-grade multi-entity reporting, analytics, and governance.
The Importance of Proper Multi-Entity Reporting and Security
Multi-entity organisations face inherent complexity in financial consolidation, operational reporting, and compliance. Without a structured reporting and security approach, organisations often experience:
Fragmented reporting across entities
Manual consolidation processes and spreadsheet dependency
Limited transparency across business units
Increased risk of data exposure and non-compliance
Effective multi-entity reporting enables leadership teams to compare performance across entities, consolidate results reliably, and analyse data consistently across the organisation.
Equally important is data security: users must only access data relevant to their role and responsibility, particularly in environments where multiple legal entities coexist within the same system.
Business Central Insights is designed with these requirements in mind, offering native support for extensibility, dimensional modelling, and row-level security to support secure, scalable multi-entity analytics.
Features That Fully Support Multi-Entity Management
1. Extension Fields – Native Support Without Additional Development
Business Central Insights supports Business Central Table Extensions, allowing additional fields from Business Central, including MEM-specific customisations, to be exposed directly in reports and datasets without bespoke development.
This includes support for MEM custom fields originating from the Entity Setup (Dimension Value) table, enabling organisations to report on entity attributes, classifications, and metadata alongside operational and financial data.
This approach allows organisations to:
Add any MEM custom field to Power BI reports
Use custom entity attributes as filters, slicers, and analytical dimensions
Maintain flexibility as the MEM data model evolves
More information is available here: https://businesscentralinsights.com/table-extensions
https://businesscentralinsights.com/table-extensions#dimension-table-extension-setup
2. Security by Entity – Full Row-Level Security (RLS)
Business Central Insights provides comprehensive Row-Level Security (RLS) capabilities within Power BI, enabling access control based on organisational rules such as entity, dimension, or user role. This is particularly important in MEM environments, where multiple legal entities coexist within a shared dataset.
By applying RLS based on Dimension 1 (commonly used to represent entities), organisations can ensure that:
Users only see data for the entities they are authorised to access
A single central dataset can be safely used across the organisation
Reporting aligns with internal governance and external compliance requirements
Security is a critical foundation for multi-entity reporting. Without strong access controls, organisations risk exposing sensitive financial and operational data across legal boundaries.
Further details are available here: https://businesscentralinsights.com/rls
3. Multi-Dimensional Analysis
Business Central Insights supports advanced multi-dimensional analysis, enabling organisations to analyse data across all standard and custom Business Central dimensions, including support for:
Multiple dimensions simultaneously
Dimension hierarchies
Totals and aggregations
Custom dimension attributes and extension fields
For MEM customers, this means that analysis is not limited to entity alone. Users can analyse performance across entities, departments, regions, cost centres, projects, or any other organisational structure defined within Business Central.
More information: https://businesscentralinsights.com/analyze-data-by-dimensions
4. Cubes – Ad-Hoc Analysis Across Any Parameter
Business Central Insights provides cube-style reports optimised for flexible, high-performance analysis. These cubes allow users to explore data across any available field, dimension, or measure without requiring redesign of the underlying model.
For multi-entity organisations, cubes enable:
Ad-hoc analysis across entities and organisational structures
Rapid exploration of performance trends and exceptions
A single analytical model supporting Power BI reports, Excel analysis, and self-service reporting
This empowers finance and operational teams to move beyond static reports toward truly interactive, exploratory analytics.
More information: https://businesscentralinsights.com/cubes
5. Financial Reporting Row Definitions – Integrated Financial Analytics
Business Central Insights integrates Business Central Financial Reporting (Row Definitions) directly into its reporting models. This enables organisations to use the same financial statement structures they rely on in Business Central (such as Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Cash Flow statements) directly within Power BI.
For MEM customers, this provides significant value:
Multi-entity analysis of financial statements using familiar structures
Consolidated and entity-level financial views within the same model
The ability to filter financial statements by dimensions, periods, and organisational structures
Interactive drill-down from financial statements into underlying transactions
This bridges the gap between statutory financial reporting and analytical reporting, delivering consistency and transparency across the organisation.
More information: https://businesscentralinsights.com/financial-reporting
Conclusion
Business Central Insights is architected to support sophisticated multi-entity environments such as those enabled by Binary Stream MEM. Through extensibility, security, dimensional modelling, cubes, and integrated financial reporting, organisations gain a scalable, secure, and future-proof analytics platform.
The result is improved visibility across entities, stronger governance, reduced manual effort, and better-informed decision-making across the entire organisation.