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Get started with financial reporting

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This article describes where to access financial reporting and how to use the financial reporting capabilities. It also includes a description of the default financial reports that are provided.

Note

Financial reporting is now available through an add-in. Therefore, the default availability of Financial reporting through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance has changed. If you're an existing customer, Microsoft provides the new Financial reporting add-in in your Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services environment. If you're currently using the Financial reporting module, there's no impact on your environments or your organization's ability to run financial reports.

Install the Financial reporting add-in

The Financial reporting add-in lets financial and business professionals create, maintain, deploy, and view financial statements. Financial reporting includes dimension support. Therefore, account segments or dimensions are immediately available. No additional tools or configuration steps are required after installation.

  1. In Lifecycle Services, confirm that the Power Platform integration is configured and available. For more information, see Configure Microsoft Power Platform
  2. Select Install a new add-in, and search for Financial reporting.
  3. Agree to the terms, and then select Install.

Uninstall the Financial reporting add-in

Important

If you uninstall the Financial reporting add-in, you remove resources that have been used for Financial reporting. This action permanently deletes any previously created reports, report designs, and configurations. Recovery isn't supported.

  1. In Lifecycle Services, find the Financial reporting add-in in the Environment add-ins section under Power Platform Integration.
  2. Select Uninstall and then Agree.

Accessing Financial reporting

You can find the Financial reporting menu in the following locations:

  • General Ledger > Inquiries and reports
  • Budgeting > Inquires and reports > Basic budgeting
  • Budgeting > Inquiries and reports > Budget planning
  • Budgeting > Inquiries and reports > Budget control
  • Consolidations

To create and generate financial reports for a legal entity, you must set up the following information for that legal entity:

  • Fiscal calendar
  • Ledger
  • Chart of accounts
  • Currency
  • Post a transaction to at least one account
  • MainAccount is listed in the Selected column on the Financial reporting setup page (General ledger > Ledger setup > Financial reporting setup)

Granting security access to Financial reporting

The financial reporting functions are available to users who have the appropriate privileges and duties assigned to them through their security roles. The following sections list these privileges and duties, together with the associated roles.

Duties

Duty label Description AOT name
Maintain financial reporting security Maintain Financial reporting security and perform administrative tasks. FinancialReportsSecurityMaintain
Maintain financial reports Design and maintain financial reports. FinancialReportsMaintain
Generate financial reports Generate and refresh financial reports. FinancialReportsGenerate
Review financial performance Review and analyze financial performance. FinancialReportsPerfReview

Privileges

Privilege label Description AOT name
Maintain financial reporting security Maintain Financial reporting security and perform administrative tasks. FinancialReportsSecuritySystemMaintain
Maintain financial reports Design and maintain financial reports. FinancialReportsMaintainReports
Generate financial reports Generate and refresh financial reports. FinancialReportsGenerateReports
View financial reports View financial reports. FinancialReportsView

Roles

Privilege label Duty Roles
Maintain financial reporting security Maintain Financial reporting security Security administrator
Maintain financial reports Maintain financial reports Accounting Manager, Accounting Supervisor, Financial Controller, Budget Manager
Generate financial reports Generate financial reports CEO, CFO, Accountant
View financial reports Review financial performance None assigned

After a user is added or a role is changed, the user should be able to access Financial reporting within a few minutes.

Note

The sysadmin role is added to all roles in financial reporting.

Report deletions and expirations

Users who generate a report can delete their own reports. Users with the Maintain financial reporting security duty can delete other's reports.

In release 10.0.8, the concept of expiration dates was introduced. A new required feature is enabled in the All page within the feature management workspace. The Financial report retention policies feature contains the following changes:

  • Newly generated reports will automatically be marked as having an expiration date of 90 days from when they're generated.

  • Any existing reports from before the feature was installed will be given a 90-day expiration period. The date might show as blank for a short period of time until the Financial reporting service is running, a report is generated, and the service performs the update to existing reports with a blank expiration date.

  • Users with Maintain financial reporting security have access to this functionality. Any user in the Maintain financial report duty granted the Maintain financial report expiration privilege will also have the ability to modify the expiration period. Currently there are two retention options available:

    • An expiration of 90 days.
    • An option to set the report to never expire.

When an expiration, such as 90 days, is selected, it's applied 90 days from today. This is different behavior than the 90 days from the original generation date set when the report was generated.

Additional options will be considered in future functionality. The expiration of 90 days will be the default, and users with appropriate permissions can override the default on the Financial reports list page.

Default reports

Financial reporting provides 22 default financial reports. Every report uses the default main account categories. You can use these reports as is or as a starting point for your financial reporting needs. In addition to the traditional financial statements, such as Income statement and Balance sheet, these default reports include reports that show the different types of financial reports that you can create.

Default report Description
12 Month Rolling Single Column Income Statement – Default View an organization's profitability for the past 12 months in a single column.
12 Month Trend Income Statement – Default View an organization's profitability for each of the last 12 months. These 12 months can span more than one fiscal year.
Actual vs Budget – Default View detailed balance information for all accounts for the original budget, and compare the revised budget to actuals that have a variance.
Audit Details – Default View detailed balance information for all accounts. This report shows debit and credit balances in the reporting currency and the local currency, together with additional transaction information, such as the user ID, the user who last modified the data, the date of the last modification, and the journal ID.
Balance List – Default View detailed balance information for all accounts. This report shows opening and closing balances, and debit and credit balances for the current period and year to date, together with additional transaction information, such as the voucher.
Balance Sheet – Default View the organization's financial position for the year.
Balance Sheet and Income Statement Side by Side - Default View the organization's financial position and profitability for the year side by side.
Cash Flow – Default Gain insight into the cash that's coming in to and going out of the organization.
Detailed JE and TB Review – Default View opening balance and activity information for all accounts.
Detailed Trial Balance - Default View balance information for all accounts that have debit and credit balances, and the net of these balances, together with the transaction date, voucher, and journal description.
Expenses Three Year Quarterly Trend – Default Gain insight into expenses for the past 12 quarters over the previous three years.
Financial Captions JE and TB Review – Default See an overview of the balances and activity for the asset, liability, owner's equity, revenue, expense, gain, or loss financial captions.
Income Statement – Default View the organization's profitability for the current period and the year to date.
Ledger Transaction List – Default View detailed balance information for all accounts. This report shows debit and credit balances, together with additional transaction information, such as the transaction date, journal number, voucher, posting type, and trace number.
Ratios – Default View the solvency, profitability, and efficiency ratios for the organization for the year.
Rolling 12 Month Expenses – Default Gain insight into expenses for each of the last 12 months. These 12 months can span more than one fiscal year.
Rolling Quarter Income Statement – Default View the organization's profitability on a quarterly basis for the past year and the year to date.
Side by Side Balance Sheet – Default View the organization's financial position for the year. This report shows assets and liability, and shareholder equity side by side.
Summary Trial Balance – Default View balance information for all accounts that have opening and closing balances, and debit and credit balances together with their net difference.
Summary Trial Balance Year Over Year – Default View balance information for all accounts that have opening and closing balances, and debit and credit balances together with their net difference for the current year and the past year.
Weekly Sales and Discounts - Default Gain insight into sales and discounts for each week in a month. This report includes a four-week total.
Budget Funds Available - Default View a detailed comparison of revised budget, actual expenditures, budget reservations, and budget funds available for all accounts.

Opening financial reports

When you select the Financial reporting menu, the list of default financial reports for the company is shown. You can then open or modify a report. To open one of the default reports, select the report name. The first time that a report is opened, it's automatically generated for the previous month. For example, if you open a report for the first time in August 2019, the report is generated for July 31, 2019. After a report is opened, you can start exploring it by drilling down on specific pieces of data and changing report options.

Creating and modifying financial reports

From the financial reports list, you can create a new report or modify an existing report. If you have the appropriate permissions, you can create a new financial report by selecting New on the Action Pane. A report designer program is downloaded to your device. After the report designer starts you can then create the new report. After you save the new report, it appears in the financial reports list. The list shows only reports that were created for the company that you're using in Dynamics 365 Finance.

Reporting tree definitions

One of the components that's used to build financial reports is a reporting tree definition. A reporting tree definition helps define the structure and hierarchy of your organization. It's a cross-dimensional hierarchical structure that's based on the dimensional relationships in your financial data. It provides information at the reporting unit level and at a summary level for all units in the tree.

You can create an unlimited number of reporting trees to display your organization's data in various ways. Each reporting tree can contain any combination of departments and summary units, but a report definition can link to only one reporting tree at a time.

Update the Financial reporting version through slipstreaming

Finance and operations apps are updated every month. However, Financial reporting isn't necessarily updated on that cadence. Moreover, customers have more options about when they implement updates for finance and operations apps. Financial reporting updates are automatically installed. Financial reporting has a designated version that's consumed in a customer environment when a service update is implemented, when downtime is initiated, or when a customer's environment is in Maintenance mode. This process is known as slipstreaming or true-up, because all customer implementations are set to the same version of Financial reporting.

Changes that are released in each version can be found in What's new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance. Platform updates and bug fixes can be found in the "Additional Resources" section at the bottom of the page for each release.

The selected slipstreamed version is a reviewed and validated version of Financial reporting that's ready for production. It's compatible with any previous or future version of Dynamics 365 Finance. For example, Financial reporting can be on the latest 10.0.19 build while the customer is still on application version 10.0.16.

Note

The only circumstance where customers can move to a previous version (a downgrade scenario) occurs if Microsoft stops a true-up rollout because of an issue. As soon as a fix is available, it will be applied automatically.

The slipstream process is fully automated and doesn't require any customer action. Three topologies consume slipstream, each in a slightly different way:

  • On-premises – On-premises deployments don't support slipstream and true-up.

  • Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) – The slipstream logic is applied during any operation that tries to update Financial reporting. It includes binary updates or broadcasts that contain binary updates.

  • Self-service – Any operation that requires Financial reporting downtime applies the slipstream logic:

    • Binary updates or broadcasts that include binary updates
    • S patching or other infrastructure downtime
    • AOT package deployments

Troubleshooting issues opening Report Designer

There are a few common issues that can cause problems when you open Report Designer. Those issues and the steps to resolve them are as follows.

Issue 1: Report Designer doesn't start when you select New or Edit.

  • Open the Windows control panel, then select Network and Internet. Select Internet options. The Internet properties window opens. Open the Security tab. Select Trusted sites and then select the Sites button. In the Add this website to zone field, enter "*.dynamics.com" (without quotation marks), and then select Add. Finally, in the area labeled Security level for this zone, change the slider to Medium-low. Select OK.

  • Disable the pop-up blocker in your browser.

  • Workstations are required to install Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher. This version of the Microsoft .NET Framework can be downloaded and installed from the Microsoft Download Center.

  • If you're using a Chrome browser, you must install a ClickOnce extension in order to download the Report Designer client. If you're running Chrome in incognito mode, make sure the ClickOnce extension is enabled for incognito mode. For more information about the Chrome ClickOnce Extension, see System requirements for cloud deployments.

  • If you're using Microsoft Edge with a Chrome browser, you don't need to install a ClickOnce extension for Edge Chromium. However, you must enable the ClickOnce option in order to download the Report Designer client. If you're running incognito mode, make sure the ClickOnce extension is enabled for incognito mode.

    1. Open a new browser in Microsoft Edge.
    2. Enter edge://flags and select Enter.
    3. Search for the ClickOnce Support option or use this direct link: edge://flags/#edge-click-once.
    4. Set the drop-down menu option to Enabled.
    5. Select Restart Browser.

Issue 2: The user hasn't been assigned the required permissions to use Financial reporting.

  • To verify if the user doesn't have permission, select Yes on the error, "Unable to connect to the Financial reporting server. Select Yes if you want to continue and specify a different server address." Then select Test Connection. If you don't have permission, you see a message that says, "Connection attempt failed. User doesn't have appropriate permissions to connect to the server. Contact your system administrator."

  • Required permissions are listed above in Granting security access to Financial reporting. Security in Financial reporting is based on these privileges. You won't have access unless these privileges (or another security role that includes these privileges) are assigned to you.

  • The Company Users Provider to Company integration task (which is also responsible for and known as user integration) runs on a 5-minute interval. It might take up to 10 minutes for any permission changes to take effect in Financial reporting.

    If another user can open Report Designer, select Tools, and then select Integration Status. Verify that the integration map, "Company Users Provider to Company," has run successfully because you were assigned permission to use Financial reporting.

  • It might be possible that another error has prevented Dynamics user to Financial reporting user integration from finishing. Or it's possible that a datamart reset has been initiated and not yet completed, or that another system error has occurred. Try running the process again later. If the problem persists, contact your system admin.

Issue 3: You can proceed past the ClickOnce Report Designer sign-in page, but are unable to complete sign in within Report Designer.

  • The time set on your local computer when you enter your login credentials must be within five minutes of the time on the Financial reporting server. If there's a difference of more than five minutes, the system won't allow sign in.
  • If the time on your computer differs from the time on Financial reporting server, we recommend enabling the Windows option to set your computer's time automatically.

Troubleshoot report designer issues with Event viewer

You can use the Event viewer to analyze some of the issues that arise when using Financial reporting.

What happens when you have connections issues with Financial reporting?

Here are some steps you can take to make your conversation with Microsoft support more effective and bring you to a quicker resolution.

The following steps walk through the process of turning on Event viewer messages for Financial reporting. The logs that Event viewer generates will help support engineers to identify the source of the connection issue quickly. Submit copies of these logs together with your ticket when contacting support.

  1. Copy the RegisterETW.zip file to the client workstation (preferably the Desktop) and extract RegisterETW.zip.

  2. Make sure Windows Event viewer is closed.

  3. Open an Administrator PowerShell command prompt and go to the directory where RegisterETW.ps1 is located.

  4. Run the following command: .\RegisterETW.ps1

    A successful output in PowerShell will be verified with the message, Competed RegisterETW script.

    Reopen Event viewer, and you now see these logs under Microsoft > Dynamics:

    • MR-Client
    • MR-DVT
    • MR-Integration
    • MR-Logger
    • MR-Reporting
    • MR_SchedulerTasks
    • MR-Sql
    • MR-TraceManager

  5. Reproduce the issue in the report designer.

  6. Export the MR-Logger events using the Event viewer.

Troubleshoot issues connecting to Financial reporting

Issue: You receive the error "Unable to Connect to the Financial reporting server."

  • Determine if the issue occurs in Chrome and Edge internet browsers.
  • If the issue occurs only in one browser, it could be ClickOnce issue.
  • When you get the connection error message, select Test to test the connection to see what message appears.
  • The issue could be the result of another user not having access to Financial reporting. If a user doesn't have access, they'll receive a message stating they don't have permission.
  • If the issue occurs on multiple browsers, make sure the time clock on your workstation is set to Auto.
  • Work with a user that has security administrator's rights in Dynamics 365 Finance, and admin rights to the network domain, to sign in to your workstation to see if they're able to connect. If they're able to connect, the issue might be related to network permissions.
  • On the workstation, temporarily disable the firewall. If you're then able to connect to Report Designer, the issue is with your firewall. Work with your organization's IT department to resolve the issue.

Additional resources