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Crystal Reports and Navision Financials
We use Navison Financials as our accounts package. We have difficulties with the reporting side of Navision, and wondered if anyone had experience of using another package (Crystal Reports has been mentioned) to do e.g. management reporting from Navision.Malcolm Edge
Number of comments: 4
AccountingWEB.co.uk 5-Jul-2006
Categories: Management Reporting, Any Answers, Software, IT, Practical Tips
Times read: 1990
I agree with the above comments that ODBC is the way to go.
I used this method extensively a few years ago to dump Navision data direct into a series of Excel spreadsheets to produce management accounts, cash flow forecasts, etc.
Once you've taken the time to learn where certain data is stored (Navision is, or at least was, built on an Access database) it is easy and quick.
MAKE SURE THAT YOUR ODBC SETTINGS ARE "READ ONLY" OTHERWISE YOU WILL OVERWRITE YOUR SOURCE DATA!
Dependant upon the reports you require the latest versions of Navision provide for XBRL reporting, better use of the account schedules, dimensions for analysis of GL entries.
With ODBC connectivity you can download the data from the underlying Navision tables straight into excel spreadsheets without using an interim solution. The difficulty is trying to find the table that contains the data you want to look at.
To set this up you need to set up an ODBC connection to the data, this may already be present when the client software is installed on the computer you are using. If Navision is running on a SQL database the process is easy enough but you will need a user name and password for the database. Look at start/settings/control panels/(administration depending on version)/ODBC data sources and see if a connection has been set up. In Excel look at toolbar Data/Get External Data/New Database Query.
Crystal Reports uses the ODBC connectivity as well and is a relatively inexpensive tool to do any reporting. It allows you to rename the tables in a data to make reporting easier once the dictionary has been set up. Busines Objects is much more expensive option but easier to use.
Access can be set up with linked tables again using ODBC, these can then be reported on using the normal Access query tools. For safety reasons the connection to the database should be read only.
A quick look on the Navision web site implies that there is support for C/ODBC. Assuming you have got the ODBC driver you should be able to use any backend from ACCESS upwards. If your requirement is fairly basic I would consider using something like Monarch to create Excel files out of existing reporting and handle the output in Excel. If you are looking to hold more data / more complex reports use ODBC to dump the raw data to Access and write the reports in VB. If you are looking for an all singing / dancing solution consider a business objects universe linked to the database and build your own dynamic reports.
Your biggest issue will be intepreting the underlying database, the reporting is largely down to personal preference / resources or budget.
