Epicor to Power BI, done for you
Epicor records every job, part, receipt and shipment — then makes you run a BAQ to see any of it together. A senior US-based engineer builds the connection, the model and the scheduled refresh, so margin, job cost and on-time delivery sit on one page that updates itself.
Representative dashboard — sample data
Epicor reporting, rebuilt
Manufacturers and distributors running Epicor Kinetic — or an older Epicor ERP 10 install — tend to hit the same wall. The data is complete and the reporting is not: job cost sits behind one Business Activity Query, part quantities behind another, shipment dates behind a third, and month-end becomes whoever knows which BAQ to run.
A custom Epicor Power BI dashboard replaces that assembly line with one governed model. We stand up the connection your instance supports, land the records, shape them into a star schema, write the DAX and set scheduled refresh — so the executive summary, the job margin view and the on-time delivery number all come from the same source.
What we build from Epicor
Buy a block of prepaid Flex hours and, if you're unhappy within the first 4 hours, we refund you in full — no questions asked. We scope each task and quote the hours before work starts, hours deduct only for work you approve, and your banked hours never expire.
Why teams hire this out
Nobody stalls on choosing a chart. ERP projects stall on getting clean, refreshable data out of the system — which is where a senior engineer earns the hours.
Power BI ships no first-party Epicor connector. We read through Epicor REST services, a read-only database replica, or a reporting data mart your team already maintains — whichever route your deployment and your administrator can actually give us.
Your part numbers, job structure, operations, warehouses and vendors become proper dimensions. Estimated versus actual cost lands at the right grain, so a margin number on the summary page drills to the job, the operation and the material transaction under it.
A Business Activity Query is a fine answer to one question, once. We move that logic into a model that pulls only changed rows on each run and refreshes on a schedule, so nobody's Tuesday starts with an export.
Kinetic in Epicor's cloud, an Azure-hosted instance, or ERP 10 on your own servers all work. Where the data sits on your network we configure an on-premises data gateway and document it, so refresh survives a server reboot or a password rotation.
One engineer with 20+ years on the Microsoft platform does the extract, the model and the DAX. Prepaid Flex hours never expire, there is no project minimum, and ERP work like this is exactly what they are for.
Because the ERP's reporting layer answers one question at a time, for one person. A BAQ returns exactly the rows you asked for; someone still has to trend them, join them to another BAQ and reconcile the two by hand. The workbook that results becomes the real reporting system — unversioned, owned by one person, and quietly wrong in ways nobody can audit.
The symptoms are consistent across shops. Job margin is known only after the job closes, too late to act on. Two people quote different on-time percentages because one measured the promise date and the other the request date. Production reporting stops at the plant and never reaches the leadership meeting. A semantic model fixes this at the root: one set of facts and dimensions, one definition of margin and of on-time, and visuals that recompute themselves — the discipline described on our Power BI data modeling and DAX page.
The six areas buyers ask for most: an executive summary for leadership, job costing and margin for finance and operations, inventory and material review for the stockroom, production tracking for the floor, vendor scorecards for purchasing, and on-time delivery for customer service. Each is a page in one model rather than six disconnected reports.
The executive summary opens with booked and shipped revenue, gross margin, open jobs and backlog, trended against prior periods. Job costing puts estimate against actual for labor, material and burden, ranks jobs by margin variance and drills to the transactions underneath. Inventory and material review shows on-hand by warehouse and bin, aging stock and shortages against demand. Production tracking compares scheduled and reported quantities by operation. Vendor scorecards rank suppliers on lead time and receipt performance. On-time delivery measures shipments against the promise date and the customer request date separately, because they are different questions. Manufacturers who want the wider plant-floor picture should read Power BI for manufacturing and logistics, and our Power BI dashboard examples gallery shows the layouts we build.
Every page above maps to records your Epicor instance already holds. This is the mapping we walk through on the demo call, described at a general level — the exact tables or endpoints depend on your version, your modules and how your team has configured them.
| Dashboard area | Epicor data it surfaces | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Executive summary | Sales orders, invoices, open jobs and backlog | Are we booking, shipping and earning what we planned? |
| Job costing & margin | Job headers with estimated cost, plus labor, material and burden transactions | Which jobs are running over estimate, and where? |
| Inventory & material review | Part master, on-hand quantities by warehouse and bin, issues and receipts | What do we hold, what is aging, and what is short? |
| Production tracking | Job operations, scheduled versus reported quantities, labor by resource group | Is the floor keeping to the schedule? |
| Vendor scorecards | Purchase orders, receipts and supplier records | Which suppliers deliver on time, complete and at the agreed cost? |
| On-time delivery | Customer shipments against promise and request dates on the order line | Are we hitting the date we gave the customer? |
Through whichever supported route your deployment allows: Epicor REST services, a read-only replica of the database, or a reporting data mart your IT team already stages. We land the records, shape them into a star schema, write the measures, and schedule the refresh — so nothing depends on a person remembering to export.
For Kinetic in the cloud, REST services are usually the route: your administrator issues a scoped, read-only service account, and we pull the records behind each report on a schedule. On-premises or Azure-hosted, a read-only database replica is generally better for volume — it lets us pull years of job and transaction history incrementally instead of asking a live production system for it. If your team already maintains a data mart fed from Epicor, we build on that first; it keeps one version of the extract logic rather than two. Scheduled BAQ exports remain a fallback for small, stable extracts, but they do not scale to years of transactions.
Whatever the route, we do not point Power BI at production and hope. We land the extract, run it incrementally so each refresh moves only changed rows, and let the report query a modeled copy. Refresh then runs inside Power BI's documented limits — Microsoft's data refresh reference (opens in new tab) explains the cadence available on each licence — and where the source sits on your own network, an on-premises data gateway (opens in new tab) carries the connection. We fix breakages out of your banked hours.
It depends on your deployment, how much history you need, and what your administrator is willing to open up. This is the honest comparison behind the scope estimate you approve before any hours are spent.
| Access path | Best for | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| Epicor REST services | Cloud and Kinetic instances; scoped, scheduled pulls | Needs a service account and read permissions from your administrator |
| Read-only database replica | On-premises or Azure-hosted instances; long history, incremental loads | Requires DBA cooperation and usually a gateway |
| Existing reporting data mart | Teams already staging Epicor data for reporting | Only covers what has been staged; gaps still need filling |
| Scheduled BAQ export | Small, stable extracts and quick proofs of concept | Does not scale to years of transactions; stays semi-manual |
| Landed copy + star schema | Every production build, on top of any route above | Adds a storage layer — which is the point, not a cost |
Discrete manufacturers, job shops, make-to-order and mixed-mode plants, and distribution businesses running Epicor — usually with a controller or operations leader who is tired of assembling the same workbook. You buy prepaid Flex hours that never expire: Starter $2,500, Growth $4,600 or Power $8,000, with rates from $100/hour on the largest block.
Most tasks ship in 3–5 business days once you approve the scope estimate; a first full ERP build is larger and gets a clear timeline up front. The usual pattern is a Growth or Power block for the connection, the model and the first pages — that work is front-loaded — then the remaining hours spent on extra views, DAX changes and refresh care. There is no project minimum and no retainer: you send a request, we reply with a scope and the hours it needs, and hours deduct only for work you approve. The mechanics are laid out on how prepaid Flex hours work. If you run more than one system, our NetSuite Power BI dashboard and Business Central Power BI dashboard pages describe the equivalent builds. Architecture and engineering firms on Deltek's project ERP have their own version on our Deltek Vantagepoint Power BI dashboard page. Wholesale distributors on Epicor’s other ERP have theirs on the Prophet 21 Power BI dashboard page. Plants running Infor instead — SyteLine on-premises or CloudSuite Industrial in Infor’s cloud — should start at our Infor SyteLine Power BI dashboard page, which works through the extraction routes out of CSI and the job-costing traps specific to that schema.
Everything. The Power BI file, the semantic model and DAX, the extraction logic, the refresh schedule and the service account all live in your tenant and your Epicor instance. There is no black box, no licence to us and no lock-in — if you never send another request, the dashboards keep running.
We publish to your workspace, document the access route and the records we pull, and walk your team through the model so someone internal can maintain it. Most clients then keep a few banked hours for the requests that follow: a page for a new plant, a measure that has to track a changed costing method, or a refresh that broke when credentials rotated. That is post-launch support without a retainer — the same hours, spent when you need them.
business days, typical
hours, never expire
own everything
Connection, modeling, DAX and refresh care all draw from the same banked hours. See Flex pricing →
How it works
Tell us your Epicor version, whether you are cloud, Azure-hosted or on-premises, which modules you run, and the pages you need first. We reply with a scope and an hours estimate before any work begins — hours deduct only for builds you approve.
A senior US-based engineer sets up the access route with your administrator, lands the records incrementally, builds the star schema and the DAX, and ties totals back to the reports your team already trusts before anyone sees a chart.
We publish to your workspace, configure the gateway and scheduled refresh, document the connection and the model, and hand everything over. You own it outright; we keep the refresh healthy from your banked hours whenever you want us to.
Representative perspective
We had a BAQ for everything and a spreadsheet that stitched four of them together. Now job margin is on a page that updates overnight, and the estimator can see the variance while the job is still open.Controller, mid-market job shop
Representative perspective
Our on-time number depended on who you asked. Agreeing one definition against the promise date, and one against the request date, was worth more to us than any visual on the page.Operations director, discrete manufacturer
Tell us your Epicor version, your deployment and the reports you need. We'll confirm the access route, scope the task and quote the hours before any work begins — drawn from prepaid Flex hours that never expire, with no project minimums.
FAQ
No first-party Epicor connector ships with Power BI, so we build the pipe ourselves. Depending on your deployment we read from Epicor REST services, a read-only database replica, or an existing reporting data mart, then land that data where Power BI can refresh it on a schedule. We confirm which route your instance supports before any hours are spent.
Usually a read-only service account scoped to the tables or endpoints behind the reports you want, plus whatever credentials your Epicor administrator issues for that account. If the instance runs on your own network we also need an on-premises data gateway. The exact list goes in your scope estimate first.
That is usually the point. A Business Activity Query answers one question for one person on request; we move the same logic into a modeled dataset that refreshes on a schedule, so the numbers are waiting each morning instead of being exported, pasted, and emailed around by hand.
Yes. Kinetic in the cloud, an Azure-hosted instance, and an older on-premises Epicor ERP 10 install all hold the same kinds of records, so the model looks similar in each case. What changes is the access route and whether a gateway is required, which we settle during scoping.
No. We are an independent, US-based Power BI practice and claim no Epicor or Microsoft partnership. Our engineers are Microsoft-certified, and we build only with documented, supported tooling: the access route your Epicor administrator approves, plus Power BI's published refresh, gateway, and semantic model features.
Book a free demo
Tell us the task. We scope it, you approve, and a senior consultant delivers — typically in 3–5 business days. Prepaid hours that never expire.
The fastest way to reach us is the form — tell us the task and we'll reply within one business day.