Jet reports: the complete guide for UK businesses

What Jet Reports is, how it works with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, what it costs, and whether it is worth the investment for a UK business.

If you run Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and your finance team still exports data to Excel by hand at every month-end, Jet Reports is probably on your radar. This guide covers what it is, how it works, how it is priced and whether it is worth it for a UK business.

Key PointJet Reports keeps your finance team in Excel while the numbers come live from Business Central. No exports, no copy and paste, no reconciling two versions of the truth.

What is Jet Reports?

Jet Reports is an Excel-based financial reporting tool from insightsoftware that connects directly to your Business Central data. Instead of static exports, it pulls live figures into Excel templates, so every refresh gives you current numbers.

The product runs inside Excel as a ribbon add-in. You build a template once, and anyone in the finance team can refresh it without touching Business Central. Our short guide what is Jet Reports covers the basics in more depth.

Key features

Excel-native interface: reports are ordinary Excel workbooks, so there is no new tool to learn.
Live refresh: one click pulls the latest figures from Business Central.
Report designer: analysts add G/L accounts, dimensions and date ranges without writing SQL.
Budget against actual: Jet reads posted entries and budget entries, so variance analysis is straightforward.
Drill-down: select a figure and drill to the Business Central entries behind it.
Scheduled distribution: reports can run on a schedule and be emailed to the people who need them.

Jet Reports vs Power BI

Section 2 card: Jet Reports compared with Power BI

Both tools are common in Business Central businesses, and many end up using both.

Finance teams that live in Excel tend to prefer Jet, because they keep working where they always have. Power BI is stronger for visual dashboards and operational KPIs shared across the business.

The clearest difference is the output. Jet produces Excel workbooks that accountants can adjust to their own standards, while Power BI produces browser dashboards. Our Jet Reports vs Power BI guide and Power BI for Business Central article go further.

Key InsightIt is rarely Jet or Power BI. Most Business Central businesses that do reporting well use Jet for finance packs and Power BI for operational dashboards.

How does Jet Reports connect to Business Central?

A Jet setup has three parts:

The Business Central side: an extension for online tenants, or a service for on-premises installations, that handles authentication and queries.
The Excel add-in: installed on each reporting user's machine, it adds the Jet ribbon to Excel.
The connection: holds the Business Central environment details. Most modern setups sign users in with their Microsoft 365 account.

Once connected, Jet's Excel functions read Business Central data live. The most used are =GL() for general ledger figures and =NL() for lists and values from any table. Our guide to the GL, NL and NF functions explains each one, and the install guide walks through setup.

How Jet Reports is priced in the UK

insightsoftware does not publish a list price, so you need a quote from a UK partner. The options usually fall into three tiers:

Jet Basics: a free extension for Business Central, covering a limited set of standard reports. insightsoftware explains how to get the most out of Jet Basics.
Jet Reports: licensed per named user. It unlocks the full designer, custom templates, drill-down and scheduled distribution.
Jet Analytics: a data warehouse layer for organisations that want to combine Business Central with other data sources, usually with an implementation project.

Our Jet Reports pricing guide sets out what moves the quote and what buyers often miss.

Watch OutBe wary of any fixed per-user price quoted without a conversation. The quote depends on users, modules and contract length, and the template build often costs more than the licence.

Is Jet Reports right for your business?

Jet Reports is a strong fit when:

your finance team is comfortable in Excel and wants to stay there;
you need flexible P&L, balance sheet or cash-flow reports from live Business Central data;
month-end currently involves manual exports, pivot tables and reconciliation;
your board pack or management accounts are built in Excel.

It is less compelling when:

you already use Power BI and want one reporting platform across the business;
your team needs mobile-first dashboards rather than workbooks;
Jet Basics and the standard templates already cover what you need.

Getting started

The main effort in a Jet project is building the first templates, usually a P&L, balance sheet and cash-flow statement, and aligning them with your chart of accounts and dimensions.

A UK reporting specialist can speed this up. They will know how statutory formats under FRS 102 map to Business Central account structures, and will have template libraries for the standard reports.