Live Business Central Data in Excel: No Warehouse, No VM, Five Minutes from AppSource

The short answer

You do not need a data warehouse, an Azure SQL replica, a virtual machine or a gateway to report on Business Central in Excel. Excel can query Business Central directly through the Business Central API, with the permissions you already have, and the number in the cell is as fresh as the last time you pressed refresh. That is the architecture behind Exsion Reporting, and it installs from AppSource in about five minutes.

There are cases where a warehouse is still the right choice, and this article says where. But for most controllers the question is simpler than the vendors make it sound: do you want to own a copy of your data, or do you want to ask Business Central for it when you need it?

Two architectures for Business Central reporting

Every Business Central reporting tool answers one design question first: where does the data live at the moment the report is built? There are two honest answers.

Copy first

The first category copies your Business Central data somewhere else before you report on it. That can be a full warehouse, an Azure SQL database provisioned per tenant, or a replicated model that refreshes on a schedule. A prebuilt data model sits on top, and reports read from the copy rather than from Business Central.

Cosmos is the clearest current example in the Business Central market. Its own site describes moving Business Central data into a dedicated reporting database on Microsoft Azure for each customer tenant, promises setup in 30 minutes or less on a prebuilt model with out-of-the-box reports, and in August 2026 added six pre-built Power BI packs. It is a reasonable architecture with real advantages, which we will come to. The trade is that every number is as old as the last sync, and the refresh interval is not disclosed on the pages we reviewed.

Query live

The second category skips the copy. Excel connects to Business Central through the API, and refresh runs the query against the live database. Nothing sits in between: no VM, no Azure database on your invoice, no data model to maintain when a consultant adds a field, and no user setup on the Business Central side. Exsion Reporting works this way.

Velixo also connects Excel to several ERPs, of which Business Central is one; the question of whether a tool is Business Central specific is a separate article. Here the question is only copy or live.

Copy first versus query live: a decision table

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Criterion | Copy first (warehouse or per-tenant Azure database) | Query live (Exsion Reporting)

Data freshness | As of the last scheduled sync; interval varies by vendor and is not always published | As of the last refresh; press refresh and the query runs against Business Central now

Moving parts to maintain | Sync job, reporting database, data model, credentials for the copy, sometimes a gateway or VM | The Excel add-in and the Business Central extension; nothing in between

What happens when a field is added | The field exists in Business Central but not in the copy until the model is extended and resynced | The field appears in the query builder on the next refresh, including extension tables

Permissions model | A second security layer on the copy, maintained separately from Business Central | Business Central permissions, inherited; no user setup on the BC side

Setup time | Typically stated in tens of minutes to days depending on model and history to load | About five minutes from Extension Management to a trial licence, timed in demos

Best fit | Very large history, many source systems, a heavy Power BI estate, cross-system analytics | Finance reporting from Business Central itself, month-end packs, multi-company reporting, teams without a data engineer

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The rows on freshness and new fields decide most evaluations. Ask any vendor two questions: how old is the number on my screen, and what happens on the Monday after a partner installs a new app?

What "direct" actually means in practice

A direct connection is only worth having if it reaches everything. Exsion queries every Business Central table, including the tables that extensions add, and every field, including flowfields. The flowfield calculation itself is written into the workbook next to the query definition, so a colleague can see that a Balance column is a sum of Amount from G/L Entry (table 17) filtered by account and date, not a mystery number from a model someone built two years ago.

That reach matters more than it sounds. When your partner installs a new app in Business Central, its tables appear in the query builder on the next connection. With a copy-first tool that same app is invisible to your reports until someone extends the model, which is often a change request with a cost attached.

Permissions work the same way. Exsion inherits Business Central user permissions through the API, so a controller with access to three companies sees three companies in Excel and nothing else. There is no parallel user list on a reporting database to keep in step with joiners and leavers. Microsoft documents the API surface this all runs on at Business Central web services and API.

Installation, five minutes timed

The install has been timed at about five minutes in demos, and it has four steps.

First, in Business Central open Extension Management, go to AppSource, search for Exsion and install the extension. The listing is on Microsoft AppSource.

Second, search for Exsion inside Business Central, open the Exsion info page and download the Excel add-in. Install it.

Third, in Excel add a new connection, paste the URL of your Business Central environment and sign in with your normal Microsoft account.

Fourth, request a trial licence with an email address. It arrives within about a minute, and the 30-day trial starts.

Two items may need an administrator. On a locked-down laptop the Excel add-in install may require admin rights, and the first connection from Excel to Business Central may require a one-time consent from a tenant admin. Neither involves provisioning a database, opening a firewall or scheduling a load.

Multi-company and multi-environment without a warehouse

Copy-first tools often justify themselves with multi-company reporting: pull all the companies into one database and report across them. A live connection does the same thing without the database. In the Exsion grid you select the companies you want, and the result set includes a company column so a pivot can slice by entity. The same works across environments, which is how partners report for several customer tenants from one workbook, and how a group with separate production and consolidation environments reads both.

For a group P&L across companies this is usually enough. For eliminations, currency translation and a proper group close, Exsion Corporate is the separate product, and the pillar on Jet Reports alternatives for Business Central explains where the line sits.

Live formulas and files you can share

A query returns a set of rows: every G/L entry in scope, downloaded to a worksheet or straight into a PivotTable data model with no rows on any sheet. Excel does the arithmetic, which is why a report that took about 20 minutes in Jet Reports ran in about 20 seconds in a recent demo, and why 700,000 rows from G/L Entry came back in under five seconds. The speed argument is its own post: why Jet Reports is slow and Excel freezes, and what to do about it.

Alongside queries there are 16 built-in financial functions that return a single value live from Business Central: account balance, account name, customer balance, dimension name and so on. They take Business Central's own filter syntax, so a date range is written 01-01-26..31-03-26 and a wildcard is an asterisk, exactly as documented in Microsoft's filter criteria reference. One honest limit: performance of live cell formulas falls off around 40,000 to 50,000 formula calculations in one workbook. A 360-account by 12-period trial balance is about 4,320 formulas, well inside that range; a block bigger than that belongs in a query.

Sharing does not need a warehouse either. The full query definition travels inside the workbook. A recipient with a licence can change a filter and refresh. A recipient without one can read the definition and work with a pivot-only file, and the Formulas to Values command converts every Exsion formula to a static number so the file opens as a normal spreadsheet anywhere, including at your auditor.

A currency example that shows the difference

Take a US parent with a Canadian entity. The management pack wants Canadian revenue in USD at the daily rate. In a copy-first model that conversion is either built into the data model (and locked there) or done by hand each month.

With a live query you pull the CAD amounts from the ledger, and the daily rate from the Currency Exchange Rate table (table 330) in a second query joined on currency code and date. Multiply the two in a normal Excel column. When someone updates the rate table in Business Central, refresh and the pack is right. The join mechanics, including how Exsion proposes the key and the four join types, are covered in how to join Business Central tables in Excel.

Scheduled reports without a warehouse

The one thing a live connection cannot do by itself is run while nobody is at the keyboard. That is the strongest practical argument for a scheduled sync, and it deserves a plain answer.

ExsionTime is the scheduling companion. It uploads a workbook to Business Central and runs it on a schedule, emailing the pack to a distribution list. It needs a machine to run on, so it is a step up in infrastructure from the add-in alone, though still not a database. Our advice is to start with the add-in, get the month-end reports stable, and add scheduling once the layout stops changing. ExsionTime is listed on the add-ons page.

When a warehouse is the right answer

A decision framework that only ever points one way is a pitch. There are three situations where a copy of the data is the better choice, and you should recognise yourself in them before you decide.

The first is very large history analysed across many sources. If the question is ten years of transactions from Business Central, a legacy ERP, a CRM and a web shop, joined and aggregated for analysts rather than for a finance pack, that is what a warehouse is for. A live query answers a question about Business Central; it does not merge four systems.

The second is a heavy Power BI estate. If the business already runs dozens of Power BI reports on a curated semantic model, with a data team maintaining it, then a per-tenant reporting database or warehouse is the natural feed for that estate. Adding Excel on top of Business Central directly is still useful for finance, but it will not replace the model.

The third is cross-system reporting where Business Central is one input among several and the reporting layer needs a single security model over all of them. In that case a separate permissions layer on the copy is a feature, not an overhead.

If none of those describe you, and your reporting is finance reporting from Business Central, then the warehouse is a cost you are carrying for a benefit you do not use. That is the honest version of the choice.

Try it against your own Business Central

The fairest test is not a demo dataset. Install the extension from AppSource, add the connection in Excel, and rebuild one monthly report you already produce. When it refreshes, compare the number on your screen with the number your current tool showed this morning, and note which one is newer. Then open Exsion Reporting for the full feature list, or the pricing page for the 30-day trial and what it costs after that.

Frequently asked questions

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Can I report on Business Central in Excel without a data warehouse? | Yes. Excel can query Business Central directly through the Business Central API, which is what Exsion Reporting does. There is no Azure SQL replica, VM, gateway or scheduled load, and refresh runs the query against the live database with your existing Business Central permissions.

How fresh is the data in a live Business Central Excel report? | As fresh as the last refresh. Because the query runs against Business Central itself rather than a copy, a refresh at 09:14 returns what was posted by 09:14. With a copy-first tool the number is as old as the last scheduled sync, and the interval is not always published.

What happens when a new field or app is added to Business Central? | With a direct connection the new table or field appears in the query builder on the next connection, including extension tables and flowfields. With a replicated model the field exists in Business Central but not in the copy until the model is extended and resynced, which is usually a change request.

How long does Exsion Reporting take to install? | About five minutes, timed in demos: install the extension from AppSource through Extension Management, download the Excel add-in from the Exsion info page in Business Central, add a connection in Excel and sign in, then request a trial licence, which arrives within about a minute. Admin help may be needed for the add-in on a locked-down laptop and for a one-time consent.

Is Exsion a Cosmos alternative for Business Central? | For finance reporting from Business Central in Excel, yes, with a different architecture. Cosmos copies Business Central data into a per-tenant Azure reporting database with a prebuilt model; Exsion queries Business Central live with no database in between. Cosmos is US based; Exsion is based in the Netherlands and serves European and US customers.

When is a data warehouse the right choice for Business Central reporting? | When you need very large history across many source systems, when you already run a heavy Power BI estate on a curated model with a data team behind it, or when the reporting layer must apply one security model across several systems. For finance reporting from Business Central alone, a live Excel connection is usually enough.

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