Salary data scattered across payroll, HR, and ERP systems? See how Dynamics 365 with Power BI or Qlik builds audit-ready EU pay transparency reporting.

Building a Data Foundation for EU Salary Transparency with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power BI, and Qlik

Key Takeaways

The EU Pay Transparency Directive introduces new transparency and reporting obligations for employers.
Reliable reporting begins with connected, accurate, and auditable data.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 Finance provide a strong operational foundation for workforce reporting.
Power BI and Qlik enable organizations to consolidate ERP, payroll, HR, and third-party data into interactive dashboards and automated reports.
A modern analytics platform supports not only regulatory compliance but also better workforce planning and executive decision-making.

Why Salary Transparency Matters

The objective of the EU Pay Transparency Directive is to strengthen the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value by increasing transparency around compensation practices and reducing unjustified gender pay gaps.

Depending on national implementation, employers may be required to:

Provide salary ranges to job applicants before employment.
Give employees greater visibility into pay levels and pay-setting criteria.
Produce regular gender pay gap reports.
Maintain documentation supporting compensation decisions.
Demonstrate that pay differences are based on objective, gender-neutral criteria.
Respond to employee requests regarding compensation information.

For organizations with more than 100 employees, reporting obligations become significantly more comprehensive, including calculations of mean and median gender pay gaps, pay quartiles, variable compensation, and comparisons across categories of workers performing work of equal value.

Companies with unexplained pay gaps above defined thresholds may also need to perform joint pay assessments with employee representatives.

Meeting these requirements is not simply an HR exercise - it requires close collaboration between HR, Finance, IT, and business leadership.

The Challenge: Data Exists - but it's everywhere

Most organizations already possess the information required for salary transparency reporting.

The challenge is that it resides in different systems, including:

Payroll providers
HR software
ERP system
Recruitment platforms
Time and attendance systems
Excel spreadsheets
Other third-party business applications

Preparing reports often requires exporting information from each system, manually matching employee records, validating calculations, and consolidating results into spreadsheets. As organizations expand across multiple legal entities, departments, or countries, these manual processes become increasingly complex and prone to error. Without a centralized reporting strategy, producing accurate and auditable reports becomes both expensive and resource-intensive.

As organizations expand across multiple legal entities, departments, or countries, these manual processes become increasingly complex and prone to error.

Without a centralized reporting strategy, producing accurate and auditable reports becomes both expensive and resource-intensive.

Common Reporting Challenges

Organizations preparing for salary transparency frequently encounter similar issues:

Employee, payroll, and organizational data are stored in separate systems.
Compensation data is inconsistent across departments or legal entities.
Reporting relies heavily on spreadsheets and manual calculations.
Historical salary changes are difficult to analyze.
HR and Finance spend weeks preparing recurring reports.
Executive leadership lacks visibility into compensation trends.
Existing reporting tools cannot easily support evolving regulatory requirements.
Data governance and audit trails are insufficient.

Many organizations discover that compliance is less about collecting new data and more about improving the quality, consistency, and accessibility of the data they already have.

Building a Reliable Reporting Foundation

Technology alone does not guarantee compliance, but it provides the foundation for consistent, transparent, and repeatable reporting.

Organizations using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or Dynamics 365 Finance already manage many of the business structures required for compensation analysis, including:

Organizational hierarchies
Departments
Cost centers
Financial dimensions
Employee-related financial transactions
Budgets
Approval workflows
Historical records

Payroll is often managed by specialized HR or payroll solutions, while ERP remains the central source of organizational and financial information. The next step is connecting these systems into a single analytics environment. By integrating ERP, payroll, HR applications, and other business systems into Power BI or Qlik, organizations can establish a single source of truth for workforce reporting. Both platforms enable businesses to consolidate data from multiple sources, automate recurring reports, create interactive dashboards, and provide secure self-service analytics for HR, Finance, and executive teams. Rather than spending valuable time preparing spreadsheets, organizations can focus on understanding compensation trends and making informed decisions.

Why Analytics Matters Beyond Compliance

Salary transparency is not just about meeting legal obligations.

Organizations that invest in modern analytics gain better visibility into their workforce while reducing manual reporting effort.

Combining Microsoft Dynamics ERP with Power BI or Qlik enables organizations to:

Consolidate ERP, HR, payroll, and external data
Automate reporting and reduce manual work
Improve data quality, governance, and auditability
Deliver secure self-service analytics for HR and Finance
Support faster, data-driven decision-making
Adapt reporting as regulations evolve

Interactive dashboards provide real-time insights into:

Gender pay gap analysis
Mean and median salary comparisons
Pay distribution and quartiles
Bonus and compensation trends
Workforce costs by entity, country, or business unit
Salary progression and workforce diversity metrics

One important consideration under the Directive is the ability to compare employees performing work of equal value. This requires consistent job structures, standardized employee classifications, and reliable organizational data—areas where integrated ERP and analytics solutions provide significant advantages.

Looking Beyond Compliance

Many organizations view salary transparency as another regulatory obligation.

In reality, it represents an opportunity to improve data quality, strengthen governance, and build greater trust with employees.

A modern reporting platform provides benefits that extend well beyond regulatory reporting. It enables leadership to understand compensation trends, identify workforce risks, improve budgeting, and support strategic HR initiatives using reliable, connected data. Once this reporting foundation is in place, it can be continuously expanded to support new business requirements, additional data sources, future regulations, and more informed decision-making. Organizations that prepare early will be better positioned to respond as reporting requirements continue to evolve across EU member states.

How BE-terna Can Help

At BE-terna, we help organizations connect Microsoft Dynamics 365, payroll, HR, and other business systems into a unified analytics environment.

As both a Microsoft Solutions Partner and a Qlik Elite Solution Provider, we design reporting solutions using Power BI and Qlik, enabling organizations to choose the analytics platform that best fits their business, governance, and reporting needs.

Our consultants help customers:

Integrate ERP, payroll, HR, and third-party systems.
Build centralized reporting and analytics solutions.
Improve data quality and governance.
Automate recurring compliance reporting.
Create executive dashboards and workforce analytics.
Prepare for evolving salary transparency requirements.

The EU Pay Transparency Directive is more than a compliance exercise - it is an opportunity to create a more transparent, data-driven organization.

With the right ERP foundation and modern analytics, businesses can reduce reporting effort, improve decision-making, and confidently adapt to future regulatory requirements.

Salary Transparency in the EU: Is Your ERP Ready for the New Reporting Requirements?

Key Takeaways

Why Salary Transparency Matters

The Challenge: Data Exists - but it's everywhere

Common Reporting Challenges

Building a Reliable Reporting Foundation

Why Analytics Matters Beyond Compliance

Looking Beyond Compliance

How BE-terna Can Help

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Dragana Krčum Klepić

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