SAP Business One to Power BI, done for you
Skip the connector shopping and the half-finished B1 reporting project. A senior US-based engineer picks the connection path your install actually supports, models sales, inventory, cash and margin into one report, and keeps the refresh running. Prepaid hours, no contracts, most builds in 3–5 business days.
Representative dashboard — sample data
Custom B1 reporting builds
SAP Business One holds everything a small or mid-sized company needs to run: orders, invoices, stock, purchasing, production and the ledger behind them. Getting all of that into a single Power BI dashboard is where teams get stuck, because B1 ships no first-party Power BI connector. We build that layer for you — a governed model on your live B1 data, senior-led and US-based, so sales, inventory, cash and margin finally sit in one place.
This is a done-for-you build, not a product you install. Most of what the market sells around B1 reporting is a pre-built pack: a fixed bundle of reports from a partner or a driver vendor, priced per seat, shaped around someone else's assumptions about your item groups and warehouses. That is fine until the first question your team asks falls outside the pack. What we deliver instead is a dashboard modeled on your data, maintained by the person who built it.
Reports we build from Business One
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. Hours are deducted only for work you've reviewed and approved, there's no project minimum, and your banked hours never expire.
Why teams pick us
You describe the decisions you need to make; a senior engineer handles the connection, the model, the refresh and the maintenance around your actual Business One install.
Pre-built packs assume a standard chart of accounts, standard item groups and standard warehouses. We build to what you actually posted last month, including the local conventions every B1 install accumulates over the years.
There is no first-party Power BI connector for B1. The real options are a direct database read, ODBC, the OData Service Layer, or a licensed third-party connector — and we confirm which one fits before any hours are spent.
Where B1 runs on your own network, the connection goes through an on-premises data gateway. We install or register it, bind the data source, set the schedule, and stay responsible for it after go-live.
One US-based engineer with 20+ years on the Microsoft platform does the whole build — no offshore handoffs and no junior guesswork on the numbers your board and your bank see.
Buy a block of Flex hours, get a scope and hours estimate before any work starts, and hours deduct only for approved builds. No project minimum, no retainer, and a full refund inside the first 4 hours.
It is a reporting layer we design, build and maintain on your Business One data. We select and stand up the connection, write the queries or views that read your tables, shape them into a semantic model with proper date, item, business-partner and warehouse dimensions, write the DAX behind the measures, then publish to your workspace with refresh configured. You review the numbers against B1; we keep the thing running.
The distinction that matters is ownership. A connector product hands you a pipe and leaves the modeling, the measures and the breakage to you. A report pack hands you finished visuals but not the freedom to change them. We hand you both: a report you own outright, in your own tenant, plus a senior engineer who still answers when a new warehouse appears.
Business One has no first-party Power BI connector, so the first real decision is how the data gets out. There are four practical paths, and the right one depends on where B1 is hosted, which database it runs on, and how fresh the numbers need to be. The table below is the comparison we walk clients through before scoping anything.
| Connection path | Data freshness | Setup effort | Gateway needed? | What we own for refresh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HANA or SQL Server direct | Scheduled import, or near-live reads if the model is left in DirectQuery | Read-only credentials plus network access to the database behind B1 | Yes, whenever B1 sits on your own network | The queries and views, the semantic model, the gateway data source, the schedule |
| ODBC | Scheduled import; cadence set in the Power BI service | Driver installed on the gateway machine and a DSN configured to match | Yes for on-premises B1 — the driver lives with the gateway | The DSN definition, query folding checks, the model, the schedule |
| OData / Service Layer API | Scheduled import, with pull windows sized to what the Service Layer returns comfortably | Service Layer endpoint, a service user, and HTTPS/certificate setup | Usually, unless the endpoint is safely published outside your network | Entity selection, paging and incremental logic, the model, the schedule |
| Third-party connector | Scheduled import; cadence bounded by what the vendor's product supports | Lowest hands-on setup, but adds a licensed component and a vendor account | Depends on the product and where B1 is hosted | Configuration and the model — the vendor owns the connector itself |
None of these is universally right. A direct read is the most flexible, because we can write exactly the query the report needs. ODBC is the middle ground where a DBA prefers a driver-mediated connection. The Service Layer fits best when IT wants no database credentials issued at all. A third-party connector trades a licence fee for setup time. If you want the trade-off between live reads and scheduled loads explained properly before we scope, our guide to choosing between DirectQuery and import mode covers it in plain language.
We start from decisions rather than modules. The reports below are the ones B1 users ask for most, and each one exists in Business One already in some form — as a query, a form, or an export. What changes in Power BI is that they become one connected model you can slice, trend and drill instead of a stack of separate outputs.
| Dashboard area | Where the data sits in B1 | What the Power BI version adds |
|---|---|---|
| Sales & margin | Sales — A/R: quotes, orders, deliveries, invoices | Margin by item, customer and rep, trended, with drill to the invoice line |
| Inventory & stock cover | Inventory: item master, stock postings, warehouse balances | Stock cover against recent demand, slow movers, value by warehouse |
| A/R aging & cash | Business partner balances and open A/R documents | Aging buckets, DSO trend and per-customer follow-up flags in one view |
| Purchasing & A/P | Purchasing — A/P: purchase orders, goods receipts, supplier invoices | Open commitments, supplier lead time and price movement over time |
| Production & BOM | Production: bills of material and production orders | Planned versus actual component usage and cost per finished item |
| Executive KPI board | Spread across every module above | A single auto-refreshed page tying revenue, margin, stock and cash together |
Which of these lead depends on the business. For a manufacturer, production and component cost usually sit at the front, alongside the operational reporting we describe on our Power BI for manufacturing and logistics page. For a distributor running B1 as the whole back office, stock cover, fill rate and item margin matter more, which is the ground our wholesale distribution dashboards cover in depth. Where a division has moved off B1 onto an open-source ERP, the equivalent build is on our Odoo Power BI dashboard page, which covers cost of goods taken from inventory valuation rather than the product record. We scope only what you need first, so a first engagement stays small.
Business One runs on either SAP HANA or Microsoft SQL Server, and that choice changes the connection details rather than the destination. Power BI has a documented connector for each. The database decides the driver, the syntax of the queries and views we write, and a handful of performance decisions inside the model. The reports look the same either way.
In practice the difference shows up in how we push work down to the source: on SQL Server we lean on views and folded queries, while on HANA we tend to read from calculation views or curated tables. We ask which platform you are on in the first exchange, because it decides who from your side needs to be in the room for an hour. We are not affiliated with SAP; we work only against their documented surface and Microsoft's.
Once the model is published to your Power BI workspace, refresh is scheduled there. Because most Business One installs sit on a private network, the service reaches the data through Microsoft's on-premises data gateway(opens in new tab), which we install or register, bind to your data source, and then keep watching. Cadence is set to match your operating rhythm rather than pushed to the maximum for its own sake.
The gateway is where most self-serve B1 reporting projects quietly die: it gets installed on somebody's laptop, that person leaves, and the dashboard silently stops updating. We put it somewhere durable, document the account it runs under, and treat a failed refresh as our problem rather than yours. If you are setting one up in-house first, our walkthrough of installing and configuring the Power BI gateway covers the same ground we follow. Whether the model imports on a schedule or reads live depends on volume and on how current the numbers must be; Microsoft's notes on DirectQuery in Power BI Desktop(opens in new tab) set out the constraints we weigh when deciding.
You buy prepaid Flex hours that never expire: Starter 20 hours at $125/hour ($2,500), Growth 40 hours at $115/hour ($4,600), or Power 80 hours at $100/hour ($8,000). A first B1 dashboard typically fits inside one block. There is no project minimum and no retainer — you refill only when you want more built.
Hours cover everything: the connection work, the model, the DAX, the visuals, the gateway setup and the ongoing refresh maintenance. You approve a scope and hours estimate before anything is spent, and hours deduct only for work you sign off on. You can read how prepaid Flex hours work in full, including what a typical first block covers. Compared with a per-seat report pack, the economics are different in kind: you are buying build time on an asset you own, not a subscription to somebody else's reports.
It fits companies running Business One as their operational system with no in-house BI team — typically a controller, an operations manager or an owner who already knows which numbers matter and simply cannot get them into one view. If your team currently exports queries into a spreadsheet before every management meeting, this is the gap it closes.
It also suits businesses partway through a B1 reporting attempt that stalled: a connector bought but never modeled, a report pack that answers the wrong questions, or a dashboard that broke when the gateway machine was retired. We are happy to pick up from any of those points. One thing it is not: a replacement for an enterprise BI platform. If the "SAP" you are moving off is BusinessObjects — Universes, Web Intelligence documents and BI Launch Pad rather than a B1 database — that is a rebuild of a semantic layer, and it is scoped on our SAP BusinessObjects to Power BI migration page instead. Contact is form-only — send us the shape of your install and the reports you need, and we will reply with a scope estimate before any hours are used.
business days, typical
hours, never expire
own everything
A first B1 dashboard usually fits inside one Flex block, and hours deduct only for work you approve. See Flex pricing →
How it works
Tell us whether B1 runs on HANA or SQL Server, where it is hosted, and the decisions you need the dashboard to support. We reply with a scope, an hours estimate and the confirmed connection path before any work begins.
A senior US-based engineer stands up the connection, writes the queries or views, builds the semantic model and DAX, and validates every total against Business One itself — most focused builds in 3–5 business days.
We publish to your workspace, register the gateway, set the refresh schedule, and hand over the report and credentials. You own everything, and we maintain the refresh from your banked hours.
Tell us how Business One is set up and the reports you need. We'll scope the task — including the right connection path — and tell you the hours before any work begins, drawn from prepaid Flex hours that never expire, with no project minimums and no obligation.
FAQ
No. There is no first-party Power BI connector for SAP Business One, which is where most B1 reporting projects stall. The workable paths are a direct read against the HANA or SQL Server database behind B1, an ODBC connection, the OData Service Layer API, or a licensed third-party connector. We confirm which one your install supports in the scope estimate before any hours are used.
It changes the connection details, not the outcome. Business One runs on either SAP HANA or SQL Server, and Power BI has a documented connector for each. The database decides the driver, the syntax of the queries and views we write, and some performance choices. The reports, the semantic model, and the refresh setup end up the same either way.
We publish the model to your Power BI workspace and set scheduled refresh there. Where Business One sits on your own network, that refresh runs through an on-premises data gateway, which we register and bind to the data source. Cadence is matched to how your team works rather than pushed to the maximum for its own sake.
Yes, if you want us to. Once the dashboard is live we keep the queries, the gateway data source, the semantic model, and the refresh schedule working, and we fix breakages from your banked hours. You own the workspace, the report file, and the credentials the entire time. Nothing is locked behind our account.
A report pack ships a fixed set of visuals against a fixed assumption about your data. We build against your Business One install: your item groups, your warehouses, your posting habits, and the questions your team actually asks. When the business changes the model changes with it, because someone senior is still maintaining it.
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.