It would make a lot of sense to connect Management Reporter (MR) to Business Central. As a long time user I can tell you that native Account Schedules, while similar, are lacking in fundamental and important ways. We are getting push back about migrations from GP clients and even new prospects that specifically ask for a simple cost centre report that can be distributed to cost counter managers with transaction drill-down and security so that only the manager can only see their respective cost centre details. This is a no brainer in MR using its tree-based security. In addition MR would allow the report to be scheduled and the report consumers just need a url to a access thee report. The main advantages would be:
1. Report consumer user experience. Logging in to BC and looking at Account Schedules and using native drill down is not as good as simply clicking on a url and accessing the report, including drill-down in MR.
2. MR consolidations - the ability to consolidate financials in the MR data warehouse is superior in cases where there are sub-consolidations. Frankly in every case its superior because the consolidation report can drill down the the specific underlying transaction.
3. Report Designer experience has more options - this includes over-all formatting. Compared to BC static formatted Account Schedules MR has more options and can produce better Board quality financial statements.
4. Migrations from GP - it is going to be a lot easier to migrate GP clients who have user bases and report catalogues built out using this tool.
5. We know its possible - it is still used in D365 Finance as Financial Reporter so why not build it out for BC? D365 Finance uses the one segment chart supported by financial dimensions - no difference here. I expect you would even be able to simply port existing account schedules into MR so there is no loss for those NAV and BC customers that extensively use account schedules.