Key Features
Advanced Spreadsheets and Reporting extends Business Central's Financial Reports with powerful capabilities. This page summarizes the main features available.
Spreadsheets
A full spreadsheet editor running inside Business Central — no export, no stale data. Sheets combine familiar mechanics (formulas, formatting, fill handle, copy/paste to and from Excel) with live data:
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Live data regions | Bind areas of the sheet to tables, queries, reports, financial reports, budgets, SQL statements, pivot cross-tabs, date ranges and FlowField aggregates — plus chart, KPI card and page regions for presentation |
| Open as Spreadsheet | One action on Financial Reports opens a report as a wired-up interactive sheet with period and dimension slicers; the same action on G/L Budget Names opens a budget as an editable account-by-period matrix under period and dimension slicers |
| AL formulas | Formulas are AL expressions, plus the familiar SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, PRODUCT and XLOOKUP, G/L functions like GL.GLSum, and your own per-sheet AL procedures |
| Interactive slicers | List, table-lookup, dimension, date and period cells that refilter the whole sheet on every pick |
| Charts & KPI cards | Column, bar, line, area, pie, donut and waterfall charts; stat, trend, target and status cards |
| Write-back | Editable table regions and G/L budget matrices — input is validated through normal business logic |
| Drill-down | Ctrl+click any region cell to open the record or ledger entries behind the number |
| Presentation | Page regions become preview tabs and printed pages; conditional formatting, number formats and colour schemes |
| Sharing | Per-sheet permissions: owner, read-only (with or without print), or budget-entry-only access |
| Templates & scenarios | Reusable dashboard templates and named what-if versions of a sheet's contents |
| Export & import | Move a sheet between companies or environments as a compressed .bcsheet file |
| Role center | A dedicated Spreadsheet Role Center (the Spreadsheet profile) that opens straight onto a chosen sheet |
| AI agent | An optional chat assistant that builds dashboards on your live data while you watch |
See the Spreadsheets Overview to get started, and Common Use Cases for walkthroughs.
AI Reports
Finished, single-page reports that an AI agent writes from your live data, on demand or on a schedule: monthly management reports, collections overviews, board packs.
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Instructions | A reusable prompt plus period date formulas. Last month against the same month last year resolves anew on every run. |
| Live data, read-only | The agent queries ledgers, runs your financial reports and reads your saved spreadsheets, with the rights of the user who runs it. |
| Charts and diagrams | KPI tiles; column, bar, line, area, pie, donut and waterfall charts; sankey flows and Mermaid diagrams, all drawn inside Business Central. |
| Interactive designer | Shape a report in a chat beside a live preview. The agent then writes the instruction for unattended runs. |
| Scheduling | Job queue runs, keeping only the last N reports. |
| Sharing | Owner / Read Only permissions per instruction and per report; download as HTML or print to PDF. |
See AI Reports and the Examples & Walkthroughs.
Indicator System
Custom Indicators
Create indicators that pull data from any table in Business Central. Indicators support multiple calculation methods:
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Lookup | Returns the value from the first matching record |
| Sum | Calculates the sum of all matching records |
| Count | Counts the number of matching records |
| Min | Returns the minimum value from matching records |
| Max | Returns the maximum value from matching records |
| Average | Calculates the average of all matching records |
| Custom | Allows custom calculation logic via events |
Indicator Library
Build a reusable library of indicator definitions that can be applied across multiple financial reports, ensuring consistency and saving setup time.
Dynamic Filtering
Apply filters to indicators based on:
- Static values
- Global Dimension 1 and 2
- Column period (respecting the column layout's date calculations)
- Date formulas for custom date adjustments
Multi-Company Support
Cross-Company Data Access
- Specify a company on individual account schedule lines
- Specify a company on column layouts
- Automatic currency exchange rate conversion between companies
Consolidation
Create consolidated financial statements that combine data from multiple Business Central companies.
Formula Behavior
Control how formulas behave when both row and column are formula-based:
- Default: Standard calculation
- Row Formula × Column Formula = Zero: Returns zero when both are formulas (useful for preventing double calculations)
Report Distribution
Automated Distribution
Schedule financial reports to be generated and distributed automatically:
- Email: Send reports directly to recipients
- SharePoint: Upload reports to SharePoint document libraries
- Zip Download: Package multiple reports for manual download
File Formats
Export reports in multiple formats:
- Excel (XLSX)
- Word (DOCX)
- HTML
- XML
Scheduling
Use Business Central's Job Queue to schedule report generation at regular intervals.
Web Services & API
API Endpoints
Two API families — CalcDate and DateFilter — are available for external integration, each published as a 12-column and a 24-column endpoint (calcDateLines, calcDateLines24, dateFilterLines, dateFilterLines24):
- CalcDate API: Uses date formulas for period selection
- DateFilter API: Uses specific date filters
Power BI Integration
Connect Power BI directly to your financial reports using the provided API endpoints.
OData Filtering
Filter API results by:
- Report name
- Date range
- Dimension values
- Period type
User Interface Enhancements
Account Schedule Extensions
- Company field on account schedule lines
- Company field on column layouts
- Indicator defined indicator
- Formula behavior control
Visual Testing
Test indicators directly from the indicator card with configurable date ranges and see elapsed calculation time.
Security & Licensing
Permission Set
A dedicated permission set, AFR_Hgd (captioned Advanced Spreadsheets and Reporting), grants access to every object in the app. Individual spreadsheets add their own per-document permission layer.
License Management
- License key registration
- Automatic license validation
- License expiration warnings
- Business Central Online sandbox environments (no license required)
Integration Events
Extensibility
Developers can extend AFR functionality through integration events:
OnCustomCalculate: Implement custom indicator calculation methods