Clients ask for "a report" without specifying, and choosing the wrong tool means building the same thing twice. This lesson exists so that choice takes under a minute.
Financial Reporting Center: formatted statutory statements from ledger balances — balance sheet, P&L, cash flow. It reads the balances cube. Smart View: spreadsheet-based ad-hoc analysis against the same cube, for the analyst who wants to slice. Operational analytics: transaction-level, real time, self-service — "show me open invoices by supplier". Pixel-perfect reporting: documents with an exact layout — customer invoices, cheques, remittance advice, statutory forms.
The flowchart: a formatted financial statement from balances goes to Financial Reporting Center; an analyst who wants to explore in Excel goes to Smart View; transaction detail in real time goes to operational analytics; and must-print-exactly-like-this, going to a third party, goes to pixel-perfect.
Balances versus transactions is the dividing line that matters most. The first two read summarised balances; the second two read transactions. So ask whether the report needs invoice-level detail, and the answer falls out.