Power BI Pro is NZ$22.60 per user per month on Microsoft's NZ list, and a 10-person firm needs it for the two or three people who build or open reports, not for everyone. It reads Dataverse and SharePoint lists directly, and Xero alongside them, which makes it the natural replacement for the Access reports and SQL views a migration leaves behind. Build three reports first: jobs and margin, cash and debtors, and the one the owner looks at on Friday. Everything else can wait.
The NZ price, and who actually needs it
| Licence | NZD per user per month, paid yearly | Who needs it in a 10-person firm |
|---|---|---|
| Power BI free account | $0 | Anyone building a report for their own eyes; cannot share it |
| Power BI Pro | NZ$22.60 | The report builder and each person who opens reports in the Power BI service or Teams: typically the owner and the office lead |
| Power BI Premium Per User | NZ$38.80 | Larger datasets and paginated reports; not a small-firm need |
| Nobody else | $0 | Staff who see a number inside the Power App, get a Teams post from a flow, or receive an emailed PDF |
Source: microsoft.com/en-nz Power BI pricing, September 2026. Power BI licensing is separate from Power Apps licensing; a Dataverse app user on Power Apps Premium still needs Pro to open a shared report, and a Pro user still needs Premium to open the app. Two people at NZ$22.60 is NZ$542 a year, which is the whole reporting bill for most firms this size. What that licence actually caps, the 1 GB model and the 8-a-day refresh, is in Power BI Free vs Pro: the limits that matter.
Where the data comes from
- Dataverse: the native connector reads tables with the user's security roles applied, so a report shared with a foreman shows the foreman's jobs.
- SharePoint lists: read directly; fine to a few tens of thousands of rows, slow past that, which is one of the signs the list wants to be a Dataverse table.
- Xero: no native Power BI connector. Either a third-party connector from the Xero App Store (Connectorly, CData, Redware and others, priced on their own pages) or a Power Automate flow using a third-party Xero connector (premium, so its owner needs Power Automate Premium at NZ$24.30 a month, plus the connector vendor's own subscription) that lands invoices and payments in a Dataverse table Power BI reads. Either way the join is on invoice number, and it is the report Xero and the job software each show half of.
- SQL Server or Azure SQL: direct, through the gateway if on-premises. If you kept SQL Server for its views, Power BI reads those views as they are.
- Excel: the sheet that is still the source for something, read from SharePoint or OneDrive rather than emailed around.
The Xero side of that list deserves its own page, because the connector everyone assumes exists does not: connecting Xero to Power BI.
The three reports that matter, in order
- Jobs and margin. Every open job with quoted value, hours booked at cost, materials on purchase orders, and the invoice total from Xero. One page, filtered by person. This is the report the old system could not produce because the numbers lived in three places.
- Cash and debtors. Aged debtors from Xero, by job and by client, next to what is still to invoice from the app. Friday afternoon, five minutes.
- The owner's page. Six numbers the owner already tracks in their head: jobs won this month, quotes outstanding, hours this week, cash in, cash due, the one metric the business runs on. On a phone, first thing.
Build these three, live with them for a month, and only then add the fourth. The firms that end up with forty report pages nobody opens started with forty. The job-costing report in particular, and why Xero cannot do it alone, is in Xero job costing for trades; the Excel-versus-Power-BI decision for profitability is in Power BI vs Excel.
After a migration: what the old reports become
Access reports and SQL views do not migrate; they get rebuilt, and Power BI is where most of them land. A view that joined six tables becomes a Power BI query with the same join; a report with a parameter becomes a slicer; the month-end pack becomes a page that is always current. The logic inside a complicated report (a margin calculation, an allocation rule) is rebuilt once as a measure or a Dataverse formula column and then reused everywhere, which is usually the first time the firm has had one agreed definition of margin. That rebuild is part of the migration build, not a separate project; the migration hub lists views and reports under what breaks, and this is where they go.
What it costs to build
Three reports on data that is already in Dataverse or SharePoint, with Xero joined, sit in my $4,000 to $8,000 band over two to three weeks, including the Xero connection, the security setup so people see their own jobs, and a session with whoever will own the reports. If the data is still in a spreadsheet or an Access file, the reports are the second project; getting the data into a list or Dataverse comes first, because a report on a spreadsheet three people edit is a report on a rumour.
Common questions
How much does Power BI cost in NZ?
On Microsoft's NZ price list (checked September 2026) Power BI Pro is NZ$22.60 per user per month and Power BI Premium Per User is NZ$38.80, both paid yearly. There is a free account for building reports for yourself; sharing a report with a colleague needs Pro for both of you. A 10-person firm rarely needs more than two or three Pro licences.
Who in a small firm needs a Power BI licence?
Whoever builds the reports and whoever opens them in the Power BI service. Staff who only see a number inside a Power App, a Teams message or an emailed PDF do not need one. The usual shape for 10 people is two Pro licences: the owner and the person who runs the office.
Does Power BI read Dataverse and SharePoint lists directly?
Yes, both. The Dataverse connector reads tables with security respected, and the SharePoint connector reads lists. Neither needs Power Apps Premium on the Power BI side; the licence is Power BI's own. SQL Server and Excel are standard sources too. Xero has no native Power BI connector: its invoices and payments arrive through a third-party connector from the Xero App Store or a Power Automate flow that lands them in a Dataverse table, and that is how the job-costing report joins the app's data to the accounts.
Can Power BI replace the reports in my old Access or SQL system?
Usually, and better. Access reports and SQL views become Power BI pages that update themselves, filter by person, and open on a phone. What does not move automatically is the logic inside a complicated report; that is rebuilt as a measure or a Dataverse view, which is part of the migration build.
Where to start
Tell me where the jobs live and whether Xero is the ledger. One free 30-minute call and you know how many Pro licences you actually need and what the three reports cost to build.