Executive overview

Prepared for Chris Black. Each panel is built from native Power BI visuals and a Business Central star schema, so what you see here is what the production report can do.

Sample data: illustrative Business Central distributor, not your figures
Slicers apply to every sales and receivables visual. Inventory uses its own snapshot and responds to Region only, as it would in the production model.
Line and clustered column

Net sales by month vs prior year and budget

ActualPrior yearBudget
Clustered bar

Region vs budget

Smart narrative / text box

What the numbers say

Each line pairs what is working with where to focus next. These recalculate with the slicers.

Matrix with drill-down

Customer group crosstab by month

Clustered bar

Item category sales and gross margin

Clustered bar

Salesperson attainment vs budget

Table with conditional formatting

Top 10 customers

Clustered column

Open receivables by invoice age

Line

Days sales outstanding by month

Table with drill-through

Customers carrying balances over 60 days

Clustered bar

Inventory value and turns by category

Table with data bars

Slow-moving items (no sale in 90+ days)

How today's TARGIT habits carry into Power BI

Left: the ways teams commonly use TARGIT, to be confirmed in discovery sessions with your users. Right: the Power BI feature that replaces each one. Line color shows how direct the move is.

Direct equivalentRebuilt in the modelPartial or a different approach

Semantic model: Business Central star schema

One shared model feeds every page. Fact tables sit in the center; each dimension filters them through a single relationship.

Core DAX measures

Defined once in the model, reused by every report.

Net Sales =
SUM ( 'Sales Lines'[Sales Amount] )

Net Sales PY =
CALCULATE ( [Net Sales],
  SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR ( 'Date'[Date] ) )

Gross Margin % =
DIVIDE ( [Net Sales] - [Cost of Sales],
  [Net Sales] )

Sales vs Budget % =
DIVIDE ( [Net Sales] - [Sales Budget],
  [Sales Budget] )

DSO =
DIVIDE ( [Open AR],
  CALCULATE ( [Net Sales],
    DATESINPERIOD ( 'Date'[Date],
      MAX ( 'Date'[Date] ), -3, MONTH ) ) )
  * 91

Refresh, governance, and maintainability

  • Import mode with scheduled refresh. The Business Central connector works in Import mode, and Pro workspaces allow up to 8 scheduled refreshes a day (48 on Premium, PPU, or Fabric capacity). This is near-current reporting, not real time.
  • Incremental refresh on the ledger tables so each refresh only pulls recent postings. Where standard API pages are slow on large ledgers, custom API pages or a small Azure SQL staging layer keep refresh times predictable.
  • One certified semantic model, with thin reports on top, so a measure is fixed in one place instead of in every report.
  • Row-level security by region or salesperson if users should see only their own book.
  • Separate Dev and Production workspaces, with a deployment pipeline where licensing allows.
  • A short measure dictionary and a model diagram handed to your internal team at the end of each wave.

Where Power BI works differently

  • Licensing: each person viewing shared reports needs Power BI Pro or PPU, unless the content sits on Premium or Fabric capacity at F64 or above.
  • Alerts: Power BI data alerts run on dashboard tiles (cards, KPIs, gauges). Richer rule-based alerting uses Fabric Activator, which requires Fabric capacity.
  • Export: users can export visuals to Excel, but row limits apply. For large extracts, Analyze in Excel against the shared model is the better path.
  • Printable, paged reports such as statements or invoice-style layouts are built as paginated reports in Report Builder, a separate authoring tool.
  • Reports are read-only. Entering budgets or comments back into the data needs Power Apps or a third-party visual.
  • Phone layouts are designed per page and are worth scoping for any user who reports on the road.

Migration approach

Built in waves so users see working pages early and numbers are reconciled before TARGIT is retired.

  1. Inventory and usage auditCatalog TARGIT dashboards and analyses, who opens them, and which ones drive decisions. Retire what nobody uses.
  2. Model buildConnect Business Central, shape the star schema in Power Query, and write the certified measures.
  3. Report wavesWorking sessions with each user group, rebuilding and improving their views rather than copying them one to one.
  4. Parallel runReconcile Power BI totals against TARGIT and Business Central for a full period before cutover.
  5. Cutover and handoffWorkspace permissions, refresh schedules, documentation, and knowledge transfer to your team.

Questions for our first working session

  • How many TARGIT dashboards and analyses are in active use, and which user groups rely on them most?
  • Is Business Central online or on-premises, and which dimensions (Global Dimension 1 and 2, shortcut dimensions) do reports slice by?
  • Where do budgets live today: Business Central item or G/L budgets, Excel, or inside TARGIT?
  • What Power BI or Microsoft 365 licensing is already in place?
  • Do any TARGIT alerts or scheduled emails need to keep running from day one?