Jet Analytics for Business Central: What UK Finance Teams Need to Know
Jet Analytics for Business Central explained: what it does, how it compares to Jet Reports, and what UK implementation looks like via an authorised partner.
Jet analytics is a pre-built data warehouse and OLAP cube solution designed specifically for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. For UK finance teams that need more than standard Business Central reporting but find Power BI difficult to maintain without specialist support, Jet Analytics sits in a well-defined gap in the reporting stack.
This article explains what Jet Analytics does, how it differs from Jet Reports — a related but distinct product from the same publisher — who it is the right fit for, and what a UK implementation via an authorised partner looks like.
What Jet Analytics Is — and What It Is Not
Jet Analytics is not a report builder and it is not a dashboarding tool in the conventional sense. It is a data warehouse layer that extracts, transforms, and loads your Business Central data into a structured analytical model — pre-built cubes, dimensions, and measures that are ready for reporting on day one.
The pre-built model covers the areas most finance teams query most often: general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, sales orders, purchase orders, inventory, and cash flow. Because the model is built specifically for Business Central, the relationships between entities are already defined. You do not need a data engineer to model your chart of accounts or figure out how open invoices connect to payments.
The output is accessible in Excel via a pivot interface, in Power BI via a certified connector, or through SQL Server Analysis Services-connected tools your team already uses.
Jet Analytics Versus Jet Reports
The two products share a publisher — Jet Global, now part of insightsoftware — but solve different problems. The confusion between them is understandable: both are Excel-familiar, both are sold through the same partner network, and both appear in searches for Business Central reporting tools.
Jet Reports connects directly to the live Business Central database and produces formatted management reports in Excel. A monthly P&L, a debtor ageing report, a budget variance table — these are Jet Reports use cases. The tool is well-suited to teams that want formatted, structured outputs from BC data in a familiar spreadsheet environment.
Jet Analytics takes a different approach. Rather than querying the live BC database, it maintains a separate data warehouse that is refreshed on a schedule. Queries hit the warehouse, not the transaction database, which means large analytical queries do not slow Business Central and do not depend on BC's own query performance.
The practical test is simple: if you need to slice three years of general ledger data in seconds, build multi-entity consolidated views without writing DAX, or analyse GP by product family across four trading companies, Jet Analytics is the right tool. If you need a formatted month-end P&L or a debtor ageing report in Excel, Jet Reports is the right tool. Many mid-market UK companies run both.
Who Jet Analytics Is For
Jet Analytics is the right fit when three conditions exist simultaneously.
Data volumes are large. Organisations with three or more years of transactional history in Business Central — and particularly those running consolidations across multiple companies or entities — find that live-query reporting becomes slow and fragile as data grows. Jet Analytics addresses this by moving the analytical workload off the live BC database entirely.
Reporting consumers are non-technical. Power BI is capable, but it requires someone who understands data modelling, DAX, and Power Query to maintain it properly. In most UK mid-market finance teams, that person does not exist in-house. Jet Analytics offers a pre-built model: the data engineering has been done by the product, not your internal team. Finance users access analysis through familiar Excel pivot tables or a published Power BI report and do not need to understand how the underlying model works.
The organisation needs multi-dimensional analysis. Budget versus actuals across departments, gross profit by customer by product category, cost centre trend over 24 months — this type of analysis requires an OLAP-style model. Running these queries against live Business Central transaction tables is technically possible but practically unreliable at scale. The Jet Analytics cube makes it natural.
A typical UK Jet Analytics customer is a £20m–£200m manufacturer, distributor, or professional services firm with Business Central as their ERP, a finance team of three to twelve people, and a Finance Director or management accountant who currently exports data to Excel each month and builds reports manually.
A Concrete UK Example: Multi-Entity GP Reporting
Consider a UK manufacturing company with four trading entities, all running Business Central. Each month the Group Finance Director needs gross profit by entity, by product family, and by sales territory — with actuals versus the current-year budget.
Without Jet Analytics, the process typically involves exporting transaction data from each Business Central company to Excel, applying a manual lookup to map items to product families, pulling in budget data from a separate spreadsheet, building the pivot manually, and repeating the exercise whenever the Finance Director needs the same view cut by a different dimension — salesperson, region, or quarter.
The process takes two days and produces a report that is already out of date by the time it is distributed.
With Jet Analytics:
- All four Business Central companies feed a single consolidated data warehouse.
- The product family dimension is defined once in the cube — no manual lookup required.
- Budget data is loaded into the same model, so actuals and budget are always in the same place.
- The Finance Director accesses the analysis through an Excel pivot or a published Power BI report.
- The same model surfaces the salesperson cut with a single filter change.
The report runs in seconds rather than days. The model does not need to be rebuilt each time a new view is requested. This is representative of the use case Jet Analytics was designed for, and where UK partners have delivered the clearest and most consistent return on investment.
What UK Implementation Looks Like
Jet Analytics is not a self-service product. It requires installation, configuration to your specific Business Central environment, and an initial data load — work that is carried out by an authorised partner.
A standard UK implementation with an experienced partner covers five phases.
Environment assessment. Confirming the Business Central version, SQL Server access, and server specifications. Jet Analytics requires access to the Business Central database via SQL — standard in on-premise and private cloud BC environments; a specific configuration step in SaaS Business Central running on Azure SQL.
Data warehouse provisioning. Installing the Jet Analytics data warehouse on your SQL Server instance, creating the extract jobs, and running the initial historical load. For most UK mid-market companies, loading three to five years of history takes eight to sixteen hours.
Cube configuration. The pre-built cubes cover standard Business Central areas. If your organisation has customised BC significantly — custom dimensions, bespoke item categories, a specific chart of accounts structure — the partner will configure the cube to reflect those customisations.
User training. Finance users access Jet Analytics through Excel's pivot interface or Power BI. Training a group of four to eight finance users typically takes one day.
Ongoing support. As Business Central is updated and your data volumes grow, the data warehouse requires periodic maintenance. An authorised partner provides this as part of a support arrangement.
Total project time for a standard UK mid-market implementation is four to eight weeks. Data warehouse provisioning is the longest single step; user configuration and training are typically faster than clients expect.
The Role of an Authorised Jet Analytics Partner
Jet Analytics is sold and implemented exclusively through authorised partners. The authorisation requirement exists because the product requires technical configuration specific to each Business Central environment — there is no off-the-shelf installer that works across all BC deployments.
An authorised partner brings three things to the engagement.
Licensing access. Jet Analytics licences are issued through the partner channel. You cannot purchase direct from the publisher.
Implementation capability. The partner has completed SQL configuration, cube setup, and BC-specific troubleshooting in real deployments. This shortens the project significantly compared to attempting a first implementation without prior experience of the product.
Business Central context. An authorised Jet Analytics partner that is also a Business Central partner understands both layers of the stack. When a dimension is missing from the cube or a chart of accounts structure needs reflecting in the analytical model, a partner who knows Business Central can resolve the problem without escalating to a separate vendor.
Next Steps for UK Finance Teams Evaluating Jet Analytics
Jet Analytics is not the right solution for every organisation. If your finance team is small, your data volumes are modest, and your reporting needs are met by formatted Excel exports, Jet Reports or Business Central's built-in reporting may be sufficient. Jet Analytics is a meaningful investment in licences, implementation, and ongoing support, and it delivers its clearest return where reporting problems are complex, recurring, and currently consuming significant manual effort.
If you recognise the pattern described in this article — large data volumes, non-technical users who need multi-dimensional analysis, Power BI that is difficult to maintain without specialist resource — Jet Analytics is worth a structured evaluation against your specific Business Central environment.
Amplio is an authorised Jet Analytics partner and a Microsoft Business Central partner. We work with UK mid-market organisations to assess whether Jet Analytics is the right fit, run proof-of-concept exercises with your actual data, and implement and support the product once a decision is made.