Power BI Reporting: Getting Stakeholder-Specific Views Without Building Reports From Scratch

A production's numbers rarely have just one audience. Producers, financiers and broadcasters all have a stake in how the money is being spent, and each tends to want the answer framed around their own priorities. They are all looking at the same ledger, but each wants it in a different shape.

For finance teams, that can mean rebuilding the same figures in a new format for every recipient. Microsoft Power BI, connected to your production accounting data, offers a different approach. This post looks at how it works, what it replaces, and why a single dataset behind every view matters when your figures are checked.

Why stakeholder reporting takes so much effort in film and TV

UK production is busy. According to the BFI's official statistics, film and high-end television production spend in the UK reached £6.8 billion in 2025, across 193 films and 168 high-end TV shows. Each of those titles needs financial reporting, and each has its own mix of people waiting for it.

On a single production, the finance team might be reporting to:

• Producers, who want to see spend against budget and where costs are moving.
• Financiers, who want to see how their money is being used and what is left to spend.
• Broadcasters, who want to see how the production they have commissioned is progressing financially.

Tax relief adds another layer. HMRC's guidance on Audio-Visual Expenditure Credits asks for core costs split between UK and non-UK spend, a breakdown of costs by category, and details of connected party transactions. That is yet another view of the same numbers, and one where accuracy is essential.

What Power BI changes

The idea at the centre of Power BI is the semantic model. Microsoft describes it as a way to build one data model, publish it, and then "create many different reports from that common data model." Instead of exporting figures and reshaping them in a new spreadsheet for each recipient, you build the model once and design separate reports on top of it.

For CTM clients, the data comes from Dynamics 365 Business Central, the Microsoft platform CTM's finance software is built on. Business Central has built-in Power BI integration, including connectors for pulling data into Power BI and the option to view Power BI reports inside Business Central itself.

Three Power BI features do most of the work for stakeholder-specific reporting:

1. Separate reports on one model. A producer's report and a financier's report can each lead with the figures that audience cares about, while both read from the same underlying data. When the model refreshes, both reports show the same update.
2. Row-level security. Row-level security uses roles to filter which rows of data each viewer can see. For example, you can set it up so a viewer sees only the production that is relevant to them. One detail to plan for: Microsoft notes that it only restricts users with Viewer permissions, not workspace Admins, Members or Contributors.
3. Power BI apps. Apps bundle related reports and dashboards and share them with a chosen audience. Updates reach users automatically, and apps can be opened in a browser or on mobile. No more emailing "Cost Report v7 FINAL (2).xlsx".

The practical shift is where the effort goes. Calculations and mappings are defined once in the model rather than recreated in every spreadsheet. When a stakeholder asks for a different layout, you change one report rather than rebuilding the numbers underneath it.

Power BI is one part of CTM's reporting suite, alongside Cosmos and JET Apps.

Before and after: one finance team, three stakeholders

The example below is a simplified scenario to show the difference in workflow. It is not based on a specific client.

A production company reports on a drama series to three parties each month: the producer, the financier and the broadcaster.

Before: three rebuilds, three chances for the numbers to drift

At month-end, the finance team exports figures from the accounting system into spreadsheets. From there:

• Producer report: someone maps the accounts to the budget structure and builds a table of spend against budget.
• Financier report: a separate workbook reworks the same figures into the financier's preferred template.
• Broadcaster report: the figures are regrouped again to match the broadcaster's format.

Each report is built by hand, and each one starts from an export taken at a particular moment. If a late cost is posted after the first report is sent but before the last is finished, the reports no longer agree. Someone then has to work out which version is right and explain the difference to the stakeholder who noticed it. Every hour spent reformatting is also an hour not spent analysing what the numbers mean.

After: one model, three views

The team connects Power BI to Business Central and builds a single semantic model covering the figures all three stakeholders need. Three reports sit on top of it:

• The producer report focuses on spend against budget.
• The financier report focuses on the information the financier has asked for, with row-level security limiting what that viewer can see.
• The broadcaster report presents the figures grouped the way the broadcaster prefers.

At month-end, the model refreshes and all three reports draw on the same data. A late cost either appears in every report or in none of them, so the versions cannot drift apart. The finance team's job moves from rebuilding reports to reviewing them and explaining the story behind the figures.

Why one dataset matters for audit trust

When each stakeholder receives a separately built spreadsheet, every report becomes its own small system, with its own formulas, its own mappings and its own chances for error. Anyone who compares two of them and finds different totals will reasonably ask which one is correct.

A shared semantic model deals with that at the source. Every report traces back to the same data, so the figures one stakeholder sees can be reconciled with the figures another sees, and both can be traced back to the accounts.

Business Central also supports this on the accounting side. Its change log can record who changed data, when, and what the old and new values were, for the tables and fields you choose to track. Together with one consistent dataset for reporting, that gives you a clearer audit trail from each report back to the underlying records.

Consistency matters most where money depends on the figures, such as financier reporting, broadcaster reporting and tax credit claims. When the numbers match across every view, conversations with stakeholders can focus on the production rather than on whose spreadsheet is right.

Where to start

You do not need to change all your reporting at once. One practical approach is to pick the report that takes your team longest to produce, build it in Power BI, and add other stakeholder views from there. A few questions worth answering first:

• Which reports are currently rebuilt by hand each period, and how long do they take?
• Which stakeholders should only see part of your data?
• Have differences between report versions caused queries or delays?

Talk to CTM about Power BI reporting

If your finance team is producing the same numbers in several different formats, it is worth looking at how Power BI could help. Creative Total Media provides finance software for broadcasters, studios, production companies, distributors and independent producers, and Power BI is part of its reporting suite.

Get in touch with CTM to ask about Power BI reporting options for your productions.