Exact Online MCP and Power BI: ask questions of your own figures

Your bookkeeping lives in Exact Online and your reporting in Power BI. Yet every question from the bank, your shareholders or your management team still ends up in Excel. An Exact Online MCP connection changes that. You ask, for example: “Why did gross margin drop in August?” and within a minute you get an answer, including the entries that explain the difference.

In this article you will learn what Exact Online MCP is, how Oakhill’s MCP tooling works, how it works together with Power BI and how we keep your figures secure and auditable.

What is Exact Online MCP?

Exact Online MCP is a connection that links Exact Online to AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol. An MCP server turns the capabilities of Exact Online into tools the AI is allowed to use, such as “get the trial balance” or “show outstanding receivables”. The AI picks the right tool for each question and gets the answer straight from your books.

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard Anthropic introduced in late 2024. The protocol defines how an AI assistant talks to other software, with fixed permissions and rules.

Think of MCP as USB-C for AI. Instead of building a separate, complex API integration for every software package, one standard connection works with every assistant that supports MCP. The MCP server is the secure bridge between the AI and your accounting.

The difference with a regular integration matters. A classic connector moves fixed tables into a report at fixed times. With MCP, the AI decides per question which data it needs. That means you can ask questions no report exists for yet, and the AI can do work instead of only showing data.

What can you do with Exact Online MCP?

• Ask questions in plain language. Instead of running reports or exporting spreadsheets, you ask: “What was our net profit across all entities last month?” or “Which customers have invoices more than 60 days overdue?”
• Live figures. The AI fetches the numbers securely in real time through your own Exact Online login, not from an outdated export.
• Consolidation across divisions. The AI combines data from multiple companies or entities in one answer. For groups with many administrations in Exact Online, that is a major advantage.
• Have work prepared. With Oakhill’s MCP tooling it goes beyond questions: the AI runs checks and prepares journal entries, which only reach Exact Online after your approval.

How does Oakhill’s Exact Online MCP tooling work?

Oakhill has developed its own MCP tooling for Exact Online. It lets you ask questions about one or more administrations, runs fixed checks automatically and prepares journal entries, with every change submitted for approval first.

Because we develop the tooling ourselves, we decide what the AI may do, how controls work and how the figures connect to our dashboards and our controlling work.

The key components:

• Read and write in Exact Online. From trial balance and open items to journal entries, bank transactions and sales invoices.
• Every change previewed first. An entry or adjustment always appears as a proposal first. Only after confirmation does it go to Exact Online.
• Tailored permissions. For each client we decide what the AI may view and change.
• Multiple administrations and years. Analyses and comparisons across multiple entities and financial years in one answer.
• Built-in checks. Such as a month-end close check, intercompany reconciliations and consolidation across multiple entities.
• Audit log. Every action is recorded, so you can always see afterwards what was requested and changed.

What does the Power BI MCP server do?

Microsoft provides two MCP servers for Power BI: a remote server that lets an AI assistant query published semantic models, and a local server that lets an AI assistant build and modify models. Neither creates report visuals.

According to Microsoft’s documentation, the remote server is meant for querying data from existing models, while the local server builds and modifies models. A semantic model is the layer in Power BI where you define tables, relationships and calculations such as revenue and gross margin.

How does Exact Online MCP work together with Power BI?

Exact Online is the source, the Power BI model holds the fixed definitions of your figures and the AI assistant reaches both through MCP. Trends and totals come from Power BI, live details and actions from Exact Online through Oakhill’s MCP tooling.

You can think of it as three layers, each with its own job:

1. Exact Online is the source. This is where the entries, relations and documents live.
2. Power BI is the controlled truth. The model fixes the definitions, for example exactly what you mean by gross margin or DSO. Because dashboard and AI work with the same figures, the answers match.
3. The AI assistant is the question-and-answer layer. Through MCP it reaches both systems and combines the results.

A practical example. Your dashboard shows days sales outstanding (DSO) rising. You ask the AI which customers drive the increase. The AI then pulls their open invoices from Exact Online through Oakhill’s MCP tooling and prepares a draft reminder. You decide whether it goes out.

How do your figures stay secure and auditable?

Through strict permissions, a mandatory approval step for every change, a full audit log, one fixed definition of your figures and answers that can always be traced to their source. AI speeds up the work, but control stays with you and your controller.

• Permissions. The AI only gets access to the administrations and modules it needs.
• Four-eyes principle. No entry without preview and confirmation, so the AI never posts anything on its own.
• Audit log. Every request and change can be traced afterwards.
• API limits. According to the Exact Online Knowledge Base, an app may make at most 60 API calls per minute and 5,000 per day per administration. Oakhill’s tooling is set up so that analyses over large amounts of data do not burden your administration.
• One version of the truth. Dashboard and AI use the same data and definitions, so you never get two different answers.
• Traceability. Every number in an answer can be traced to account, period and administration.
• Privacy (GDPR). Relation data is personal data. We agree on processing terms and keep only what is needed.

What does an Exact Online MCP connection deliver?

Management and controllers get answers within minutes to financial questions that used to take an export and a day of digging. The month-end close goes faster because checks run automatically, and the controller spends time on analysis and advice.

Take a wholesaler with three entities in Exact Online and a Power BI dashboard. Without MCP, the managing director asks the controller for an analysis, who exports, searches and comes back a day later. With MCP, the director asks the question directly, immediately sees the main causes and only involves the controller for the real exceptions.

At month end, the MCP tooling runs fixed checks across all three entities: which suspense accounts are not zero, whether intercompany positions reconcile and which purchase invoices are still waiting in the inbox. Correcting entries are prepared as proposals. Also read what Power BI can and cannot do for finance teams and how AI financial dashboards and MCP servers change reporting.

How do you get started with Exact Online MCP and Oakhill?

We start with a check of your administration, connect Exact Online to Oakhill’s MCP tooling with read-only access, build your Power BI model with fixed definitions and then expand step by step to checks and prepared journal entries.

1. Clean books. We review the chart of accounts, VAT codes and cost centres. AI does not make bad data better, it only makes it visible faster.
2. Connect read-only. Your Exact Online administrations are connected, initially without write access.
3. A Power BI model per client. In Oakhill Insights, our financial dashboard in Power BI, we define revenue, margin, DSO and other KPIs once.
4. Ask questions. You and your team ask questions about your figures in plain language.
5. Expand to actions. Only once everything runs smoothly do we switch on checks and prepared entries, always with approval.

Combine it with controlling as a service, so a finance specialist also reviews the results and turns deviations into actions.

Frequently asked questions about Exact Online MCP

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This article is general information, not financial or IT advice. Limits and product information were checked in October 2026 and may change. For advice on your situation, contact Oakhill Financial Services.