How do I get the reports or information that I need from NAV? This is a great question. The fact that NAV is owned by Microsoft and runs on Microsoft’s SQL server means that there are more options than you have time in the day.
As you may or may not know, the latest versions of NAV are becoming more .NET centric. What this means is that there are more tools available and they are industry standard type tools. Here is a “small list” of tools that are available for reporting purposes.
- Role Tailored Client. As most of you know, the role tailored client screen can provide a wealth of information. It is your own personal dashboard with list of actions needed to be taken by you. Also, it is a place to list and display charts or reports that are the most important to you.
- Analysis Views. Create new analysis reports for sales, purchases, and inventory, and set up analysis templates. You can find more information here.
- NEW — Microsoft Word. Ever wish you could more easily create or change the look of your invoice? Now you can by simply using MS Word and MS Word templates.
- NAV reporting. The NAV reporting still initiates in the same designer area of NAV but the actual report design is now down in MS Visual Studio. This opens up the reports for NAV greatly to many other features such as charts, etc. This is a very powerful tool. NAV reports of course can be emailed, exported to other formats, and sent by email on a specific schedule.
- Jet Reports. As you know Jet Reports comes with NAV for free (Jet Express). Jet is a very powerful user friendly tool. For those of you that like to use MS Excel, you will love Jet Reports. Jet Reports comes in a few different versions. Jet Express, Jet Essentials, Jet Enterprise. Jet Enterprise is an enterprise level data warehouse solution providing predefined and custom defined data cubes. Get to know Jet it can be a very valuable asset to your business.
- SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). This is something that comes included with every version of MS SQL server. The report designer is also free (included). This is a very powerful tool that you can use to build custom reports. These reports can be accessed on your SQL server and run from there via a web browser. These reports can be exported to other formats such as MS Word, MS Excel, PDF, etc. The reports you create can also be emailed to users on a specific schedule. You can schedule them for the middle of the night and everyone will think you are up all night creating reports… your secret is safe with us!
- Other. Because NAV runs on MS SQL server you can also use other tools that are compliant with SQL. Maybe you have a favorite tool such as MS Access or Crystal reports. If you are familiar with these tools, they should work as well. You will not find as many people to help with these other tools so this could be an issue.
