Your controller pulls a fresh report from Business Central in seconds, updated with a single click. Two desks over, a colleague is still copying a Business Central export into Excel. Same company, same licence, a completely different way of working. The fix is simpler than it looks: an Exsion workbook can be shared with the whole team, colleagues with a licence refresh it themselves, colleagues without a licence read it, move the pivots and drill into the numbers, and the query behind the report is written into the workbook where anyone can see it. This article explains how to get an Exsion report off one desk and into the hands of everyone who needs the figures.
In many organisations, Exsion first arrived through one person: a controller who got the hang of it, built smart reports, and sped up their month-end work considerably. Great, except it often stays parked on that one desk.
The rest of the team does not quite know what is possible, or assumes it is complicated. So colleagues keep exporting, pasting, and waiting, while the solution is already within reach, on the same licence you are paying for anyway. Microsoft's own guidance on exporting Business Central data to Excel describes a manual step that repeats every time the numbers change; the whole point of Exsion is that the step disappears.
Having the knowledge sit with just one person works fine, until that person goes on holiday, gets too busy, or leaves. Then there is no one to run the report, and the work grinds to a halt. You end up depending on a single colleague for figures the whole team needs. That is a weak link in your process. The person is not doing anything wrong, but knowledge that lives in only one place is easily lost.
As long as Exsion stays with one desk, you are only getting a fraction of its value. Colleagues who want their own numbers still have to ask for them every time, which keeps them dependent. Meanwhile, the overview you could be sharing stays locked in one person's head.
A shame, because it does not have to be this way. Exsion Reporting is built so that colleagues without technical knowledge can work with existing reports too. They do not need to build anything, just open it and refresh. And because the add-in inherits Business Central user permissions, a colleague who refreshes a shared report only ever sees the companies and data they are allowed to see in Business Central itself. There is no second security model to set up before you share a file.
An Exsion report is a normal Excel workbook. What makes it different is a readable grid inside the file that holds the query definition: which table, which companies, which fields, which filters, which joins, which flowfield calculations. Anyone who opens the workbook can read that grid, so the logic is never hidden in one person's head or in a macro nobody dares to touch.
Who can do what with that workbook depends on one thing: whether they have an Exsion licence.
[[TABLE_START]]
Colleague | Licence | What they can do with a shared report
Controller who built the report | Yes | Edit the query grid, add fields or companies, refresh, share
Finance colleague | Yes | Refresh with one click, change filters, use Show Details to open Business Central at the exact account and date range
Manager or project lead | No | Open the workbook, read the last refreshed figures, move pivots, double-click a pivot cell for the underlying rows
External accountant or auditor | No | Receive a Formulas to Values copy with static numbers and no connection to Business Central
[[TABLE_END]]
Any licensed colleague can open a shared workbook and press refresh. Exsion connects to Business Central through the API, runs the query in the grid and replaces the data. A refresh of 700,000 G/L Entry rows (table 17) takes under five seconds and Excel stays responsive while it runs. The same colleague can also edit the grid, for example to tick an extra company or add a dimension column, because the definition is plain text, not code.
A colleague without a licence opens the same file in ordinary Excel. They see the figures from the last refresh, they can slice and move the pivots, and if the report was built as a PivotTable they can double-click a cell to see the underlying rows, as long as that subset stays under about a million rows. Show Details, the drill-down that opens Business Central filtered to the exact account and date range behind a cell, is what licensed users get on top. For most managers, the pivot is enough.
Sometimes you want to send a report to someone who should not have a live line into Business Central at all: a bank, an auditor, a shareholder. Formulas to Values converts the workbook to static numbers. The layout stays, the formulas and the query grid go, and the recipient gets a plain Excel file.
Big reports are easier to share when they are built as pivot-only workbooks. Exsion can load data straight into the PivotTable data model, with up to 25 million Business Central rows in one pivot. A pivot-only workbook at one million rows is 6 to 7 MB, where the same data on a worksheet is 30 to 40 MB. That is the difference between a file that opens from a SharePoint link on a laptop and a file that times out in Outlook.
Start small. Share the reports you already have with the colleagues who need them, and show them how to refresh those themselves. That way, they no longer have to wait for an export. Also plan a short half-hour session where you walk through one report together.
A practical order that works in most finance teams:
You do not need to turn everyone into an expert. The point is that more people can pull their own figures, and the knowledge stops sitting with just one person. If you want a step-by-step build of a shareable report, see how to build Business Central management reports in Excel in 7 steps.
N+P Group started with 7 Exsion licences and grew to 50 in four years, reporting across 45 entities without a single export. The growth did not come from a rollout project; it came from colleagues seeing a shared workbook, refreshing it themselves and asking for their own. AASK went a similar way and now saves over 20 hours per month on reports that used to be assembled by hand. You can read the full story in the N+P Group case.
Want your team to work more broadly with Exsion? Take a look at who is using it now and who else would benefit. Often, a few shared reports and a short walkthrough are enough to noticeably get more out of Exsion. Additional licences are on the public pricing page, and a colleague who wants to try refreshing before you buy can use the 30-day trial on the same reports. We are happy to think along with you about how to put the tool to further use across your organisation; get in touch for a short session.
[[FAQ_START]]
Do colleagues need an Exsion licence to open a shared report? | No. Anyone can open the workbook in Excel, read the last refreshed figures, move the pivots and double-click for underlying rows. A licence is only needed to refresh the data from Business Central or edit the query.
Can a colleague without Business Central rights see data they should not? | No. Exsion inherits Business Central user permissions, so a licensed colleague who refreshes only gets the companies and tables they are allowed to see in Business Central.
How do I send an Exsion report to an auditor or bank? | Use Formulas to Values. It converts the workbook to static numbers and removes the live connection, so the recipient gets a plain Excel file.
Why are shared Exsion files so large and how do I shrink them? | Worksheet data at one million rows is 30 to 40 MB. Build the report as a pivot-only workbook on the data model instead and the same data is 6 to 7 MB.
Can a shared report refresh automatically without a controller? | Yes. ExsionTime uploads the workbook to Business Central and runs it on a schedule, so the figures are fresh every morning without anyone pressing refresh.
[[FAQ_END]]