A report definition is the final building block for financial reporting features in Finance and Operations. You use other building blocks, such as a row definition, a column definition, and a reporting tree definition to build a report definition. It also provides additional options for output and distribution, as well as other settings for defining the headers and footers of the report:

As shown in the preceding screenshot, the report definition is the binder of all the building blocks, bringing together the row definition, column definition, reporting tree, and the various run attributes of your financial information.

We recommend that every initiative involving financial reporting in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations should leverage the financial reports application available out of the box. These financial reports are closely and natively integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. This tool is highly flexible, supports interactive viewing and drill-down capabilities, and is also extremely user-friendly.

This covers our topic of operational reporting options in Finance and Operations. Now, let's learn about what's available in Finance and Operations for analytical reporting.