Atlas Connects to Fabric for Fast, Flexible Reporting in Excel
If you’re moving finance data into Microsoft Fabric to unify data management and analytics, are you able to quickly get the reports you need for real-time enterprise-wide collaboration and decision-making? You can if you’re using Atlas from insightsoftware to wrangle all that data and reporting.
Atlas gives your team the ability to build and refresh the core reports they need—financial statements, reconciliations, line-item analysis—without waiting for IT, exporting to spreadsheets, or reworking formulas every month. With a live connection to Fabric, Atlas lets you access all your enterprise data quickly for real-time Excel-based reporting.
Atlas is built for Dynamics AX and Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (F&SCM). It is designed for finance users who need to access live data, drill down, and create or adjust reports without coding.
Making the Most of Atlas and Its Fabric Connection
Some of benefits you’ll find when you combine the ease of Atlas reporting with Fabric’s enterprise analytics platform:
- A live connection to the Fabric platform
- The ability to adapt reports for changing business needs
- Practical ways to cut manual work, drill to subledgers, and speed close
- Fast access to cohesive, accurate data in Excel
As your needs change, you can customize pre-built Atlas reports rather than waiting in the queue for IT to develop new reports for your finance team.
Going Beyond Fabric for Flexible Finance Reporting
Microsoft Fabric brings data engineering, warehousing, and Power BI under one umbrella. It’s a smart move for organizations standardizing analytics across ERP, CRM, and operational systems. But finance reporting needs more than a great data platform and attractive dashboards:
- Financial statements require structured layouts, period logic, and nuanced groupings that are cumbersome in BI-only tools.
- Month-end and audit work demand fast drill-down from GL to subledgers and transaction lines.
- Static exports from Power BI or Dynamics 365 reintroduce silos, rework, and risk of error.
Fabric strengthens your data foundation. Atlas builds on that foundation by giving you the ability to create refreshable, governed spreadsheets your team can trust.
Atlas + Fabric: How They Solve Problems Together
Atlas connects to your Dynamics data whether you read it directly from D365 via optimized OData (read and write) or from your Fabric environment through SQL endpoints.
This helps you because:
- Your finance team can keep using the same Atlas-powered Excel templates as IT evolves the backend from direct D365 to Dataverse, Synapse, or Fabric. The front-end report-building experience in Atlas stays the same.
- You choose the best path for performance and modeling. Use Fabric for unified data from multiple sources and large volumes. Use Atlas to consume that model in Excel with live refresh and drill-down.
As insightsoftware’s Senior Solutions Engineer Jason Carter said in a recent webinar, “It’s about being able to have a report and in the middle of the day, just hit refresh and see the last invoice that’s been posted or the last payment that’s been applied.” Then you can act on that data in real-time.
Introduction to Real-Time Reporting in Dynamics
Download NowYour payoff is one governed dataset with multiple best-in-class experiences:
- Power BI for visuals and storytelling.
- Atlas for Excel-based financial reporting and analysis.
Let’s look at some of the common challenges this solves.
ERP Data Structures Complicate Your Reporting
Dynamics has hundreds of interrelated tables. Even experienced analysts spend hours combining data for a single report. Atlas includes ready-to-use data models and friendly field selection in Excel so you can build reports without deciphering raw table relationships or writing SQL.
In other words, you can:
- Create profit and loss, balance sheet, and trend reports with pre-built templates.
- Pull data across entities and companies in a few clicks.
- Use familiar Excel formulas alongside Atlas functions, without waiting for IT coding.
Manual Exports Carry Risks of Errors and Delays
When you rely on manual exports, you’re breaking your data connection. Every refresh is a new file, a new copy and paste, and a fresh risk of mistakes. Atlas keeps Excel reports live. Click refresh and your template pulls current figures from D365 or Fabric. Your mapping, groupings, and formats stay intact.
The results you can get using Atlas are:
- Shorter close cycles, from weeks to days
- Less time wrangling files, more time analyzing results
- Stronger confidence in numbers for leadership reviews and audits
BI Dashboards Don’t Meet All Your Needs
Power BI is excellent for visuals, KPIs, and slicing. But you can build a cash flow statement, assemble a disclosure-ready balance sheet, or perform transaction-level reconciliations faster in Excel. Atlas gives you that flexibility while making sure you have connections to accurate, up-to-date data.
With Atlas, you can:
- Drill from GL balances to subledgers and down to transaction lines
- Tie out variances with clear, auditable paths
- Bring line-item detail into your work papers without static exports
IT Report Building Can Slow You Down
Waiting weeks for a new dataset or Power BI change is not practical at month end. Atlas enables self-service reporting for finance, with governed access. You can adapt layouts, add fields, change periods, or introduce new calculations without a dev cycle.
Bonus: Atlas also supports secure bulk uploads back to D365, reducing manual data entry when you need to append or update data at scale.
Use Cases Finance Leaders Care About
Using Fabric and Atlas together can save time, reduce manual reporting and upload hassles, and streamline your processes for better cost efficiency and team morale.
Financial Statements You Can Refresh on Demand
Build income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow in Excel with Atlas. Apply your account groupings and rollups, then refresh any time for the latest posted transactions, whether your source is D365 directly or Fabric.
- Consolidations across entities or business units
- Side-by-side actual vs. budget vs. prior period
- Trend and variance with drill to detail
Month-End Reconciliations and Audit Support
Start in the GL balance, drill to subledger, and continue to transaction line items to tie out balances. No exports. No rework. Atlas preserves the link to source data while you investigate.
- AR and AP aging with drill into invoices and payments
- Inventory and project subledger tie-outs
- Fast variance research during close
Ad Hoc Analysis Without Bottlenecks
Leadership asks a new question. Instead of opening a ticket, your finance analyst adds a field, changes a filter, or builds a quick slice in Excel using Atlas. You keep governance and control over data access while enabling self-service.
Data Uploads That Save Hours
Use Atlas to securely bulk upload adjustments or operational updates back into D365. Choose from templates or create your own. This reduces manual entry and keeps your system the source of truth.
Why Finance Teams Pick Atlas Alongside Fabric and Power BI
By adding Atlas along with Fabric and Power BI, you can experience:
- An Excel-first experience built for D365 F&SCM. With no steep learning curve, finance can quickly own their reports.
- Live, accurate data. Eliminate static extracts and manual refreshes.
- Drill down to source. Move from summary to transaction in seconds.
- Faster close. Compress cycles and shift time from preparation to analysis.
- A lower IT burden. Pre-built models and self-service tooling reduce dev tickets.
- Future-proofing with Fabric. Keep your Excel templates while IT modernizes the backend.
Maximize Your Fabric Investment
Fabric unifies your data. Atlas turns that data into live, trustworthy Excel reports that fit how finance works. You’ll cut manual steps, reduce errors, and get answers faster, without adding to the IT backlog. Keep your dashboards in Power BI for executives and analytics, and empower your finance team with Atlas to build, refresh, and drill into the reports they need every day.
When finance owns reporting in Excel—backed by Fabric’s unified data—you move from firefighting to forward-looking analysis.
To learn more about how Atlas integrates with Microsoft Dynamics AX and Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management for financial reporting ease, download our white paper.
Transforming Dynamics Financial Reporting With Atlas
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