Jet Analytics vs Jet Reports vs Jet Basics: A Reporting Software Comparison

As a customer of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you’re probably heard of Jet Reports as a Microsoft-certified third-party reporting tool designed for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite, including Business Central.

Here Are Some Reasons Why You Should Use Jet Reports WIth Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

However, Jet Reports is one of only three reporting tools under the Jet Global brand. The three products are:

• Jet Analytics
• Jet Reports
• Jet Basics

Because of this, you might wonder; which of these three Jet Global reporting tools would be the best fit for your business’s financial reporting needs?

We’ll be taking a look at three reporting tools from insightsoftware. We’ll also be making comparisons between them to see what each software brings to the table, identify their differences and learn how that makes each of them most suitable, depending on your specific business report generation needs.

A Quick Introduction To The Jet Global Product Offerings

Introduction to Jet Global Product Offerings; Source: Jet Global YouTube

Introduction to Jet Global Product Offerings; Source: Jet Global YouTube

To start with, Jet Analytics provides a corporate analytics and reporting platform that delivers fast, accurate dashboards and reports in Microsoft Power BI on top of Excel and online.

Jet Analytics allows users to create and maintain data warehouses and OLAP cubes, as well as create dashboards for online or mobile consumption without the need for technical expertise.

The next tier of Jet Global solutions is Jet Reports, a comparatively advanced financial and business reporting solution that can generate financial reports online, on top of within Excel.

On top of NAV and GP, Jet Reports is also compatible with Business Central and Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations.

Compared to the barebone functionalities available with Jet Basics, Jet Reports comes with a robust set of features and automation options, making it a truly complete reporting and analytics tool by comparison.

Stay Up-to-date With The Latest Updates To Jet Reports Here.

Last but not least, Jet Basics is exactly as it says on the tin; it’s a free reporting tool that comes as an extension for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, as well as Dynamics GP.

It uses data generated by your business processes to provide real-time financial reporting, and you can use it to create basic financial reports within Microsoft Excel.

Now that we’ve covered what each of these Jet Global products bring to the table, let’s talk about how they are individually most suitable for different sets of business needs.

What is Jet Analytics: Get Enterprise-level Reporting and BI

Integrate multiple data sources for fast, reliable reporting/analytics with Jet Analytics; Source: insightsoftware

Of the three Jet Global offerings, Jet Analytics comes with the most extensive set of features for your analytics and reporting needs.

Designed as a corporate analytics and reporting platform, Jet Analytics delivers fast, accurate dashboards and reports within Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, as well as online for easy data comparison and analysis.

It comes with more than 60 pre-built templates for financial reports and dashboards in both Excel and Power BI formats.

Features of Jet Analytics

On top of what Jet Reports already brings to the table are the following features that are available only with Jet Analytics;

• Business dashboards that display trends, relations and issues for easy viewing.
• Master data management with data warehouse automation to provide a single source of truth.
• Instant business intelligence (BI) and key performance indicators (KPIs) with pre-defined OLAP cubes.
• Drag-and-drop BI customisation.
• Advanced security that gives you more control over who can access your data.

Jet Analytics comes with the Jet Data Manager. This is a back-end solution that allows end users to create and maintain data warehouses and OLAP cubes to enable a greater understanding of their data.

In addition, it also comes with the Jet Dashboard Builder to allow your end users to create dashboards that display your business data for easy consumption without requiring technical expertise on the part of the end user.

What Type Of Business Should Use Jet Analytics?

As its feature set might indicate, Jet Analytics is most suitable for large-scale enterprises that require robust financial reporting, data comparison and analytics capabilities to manage the extensive amounts of data generated by their processes.

Because it also supports Power BI, Jet Analytics can also serve as the primary BI reporting tool for large-scale enterprises keen on acquiring insights from their data to inform their business decisions.

Of course, with such a robust set of features and functionalities, Jet Analytics has the highest price point of all Jet Global solutions, which is best accommodated by the greater budgets of large enterprises.

What is Jet Reports: Sets the Standard for Financial and Business Reporting

Example of Jet Reports' Budget Forecasting Excel Template; Source: insightsoftware

Being the middle-of-the-road offering from the Jet Global brand, Jet Reports offers an advanced financial and business reporting solution inside Excel as well as online. It can handle the needs of most small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

It’s compatible with Business Central, as well as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. But more importantly, what makes it ideal for SMEs is that it also works with older Dynamics products such as AX, GP, and NAV. In comparison to Jet Analytics, it offers firms a cost-effective way to upgrade their reporting tools and capabilities without replacing existing software infrastructure.

Features of Jet Reports

Along with more than 45 pre-built templates for financial reports, Jet Reports comes with a wide range of features that make it a complete financial reporting and analytics tool. Here is what it includes:

• Real-time reporting direct from the database
• Financial reporting from any general ledger (GL) account
• Multi-company consolidation
• Automatic updates and migration of reports to new versions of Microsoft Dynamics products
• Mobile and web accessibility with Jet Hub
• Bizview Integration for controlled, collaborative and web-based planning, budgeting and forecasting
• Operational and business reporting
• Multi-database reporting and comparison that uses consolidated data
• Scheduling and automation of reports
• Report management
• Free-form formatting and designing of Excel-based reports with dynamics formulas
• Permanent clipboard that saves frequently-used Excel and report logic for faster report building

Last but not least, Jet Reports comes with all the tools you need to create reports, including the Report Wizard and the Jet Function Wizard.

With So Much To Offer To Users Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Is It Any Wonder That Jet Reports Makes Our Big List Of Financial, Inventory And Reporting Tools?

What Type Of Business Should Use Jet Reports?

Access to custom Jet Reports' Excel templates for your reporting needs; Source: insightsoftware

Being a complete financial reporting and analytics tool, Jet Reports will be a good fit for most businesses of any size that have implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions, such as Business Central.

It provides all the features you need to customise reports so that they give you exactly the data you need, consolidate data from multiple sources, such as databases from multiple businesses, and schedule them for automated report generation on a regular basis.

What makes it stand out is that Jet Reports also comes at a reasonable price point for the budgets of most businesses, from small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to larger corporations.

Discover how Design Collection Denmark achieved 100% time-saving in consolidated financial reporting and data analysis with Jet Reports below.

What is Jet Basics: Provides the Bare Essentials

Last but not least, Jet Basics is a ‘freemium’ reporting tool that can be used only with Microsoft Dynamics GP or NAV.

Features of Jet Basics

While it offers real-time reporting and financial reporting in Excel with more than 20 pre-built templates, Jet Basics is not designed to be a fully operational reporting or analytics tool.

As such, it lacks all other features that can be found in Jet Reports or Jet Analytics. This key difference between Jet Basics, Jet Analytics and Jet Reports reflects that it is intended more as an introduction to what Jet Global can offer your business than a full solution in its own right.

What Type Of Business Should Use Jet Basics?

In comparison to other Jet Global solutions, Jet Reports might be particularly suitable for startups using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central but otherwise have limited IT budgets for further spending on software solutions.

With Jet Basics, your startup could get a taste of real-time reporting on your business’s financial data without further expenditure, at least until it’s grown large enough to have both the need and the budget for more features and capabilities.

Jet Analytics vs Jet Reports vs Jet Basics: Which is the Right Reporting Tool for Your Business

Comparison chart of Jet Basics, Jet Reports & Jet Analytics; Source: insightsoftware

Whether your business is a large-scale enterprise, an SME, or a startup with a limited budget, Jet Global can provide a software tool best suited for bridging the gap between your business’s reporting needs and budgets.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of what Jet Analytics or Jet Reports has to offer, you might be interested to know that AFON IT is a Gold Partner with insightsoftware.

This means we can help you set up and integrate Jet Analytics or Jet Reports with your instance of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Above all, we can also provide the respective level of additional reporting and analytics capability accordingly.

Just give us a call at +65 6323 0901 or drop us a note here, and we’ll get in touch to help you with anything related to Business Central or Jet Reports.

But should you choose to acquire Jet Reports or Jet Analytics, how can you use the reporting and BI solution to its full potential? Click on the image below to read about the top 10 best practices that make a difference when it comes to business reporting with Microsoft Dynamics.