Power BI or a custom application: how to choose
Both are good tools. They solve different problems, and mixing them up is expensive.
The question to ask first
After someone reads the figure, what do they do? If the answer is "discuss it", a dashboard is enough. If the answer is "correct it, approve it, assign it or enter something", you need an application.
Power BI fits when
- the data comes from one or two sources, such as an ERP and a few workbooks;
- the audience reads and does not write;
- the figures can be reconciled to a reference your finance team already trusts.
One of our group reporting projects works this way: Business Central read through a gateway, workbooks in SharePoint, one model with access by entity, and every figure reconciled to the board pack before publication.
A custom application fits when
- people enter data, for example quotes, orders or stock movements;
- work moves through approvals, and someone needs to prove who changed what;
- alerts must reach a named owner and be followed up;
- an import must be blocked when the data is wrong.
The usual answer is both
Power BI for the board, an application for operations, fed by the same data. The Business Cockpit is the name we give to the application side when it also reads and controls its own sources. See how it differs from a dashboard.
Cost
Power BI is usually licensed per user. A custom application is hosted on platforms such as Railway and Supabase, often around 50 USD a month whatever the number of users. Which is cheaper depends on how many people need access, and we calculate it with you before you commit.