You Need SSRS Help. Now What?
Something isn’t working with your SSRS reports. Or your ERP doesn’t produce the report you need and someone told you SSRS can fix that. Or you’ve been running the same reports for years and the person who built them left the company six months ago.
Whatever the situation, you’re now looking at options — hire someone full-time, find a freelance SSRS developer, work with an SSRS company, or figure it out yourself.
This post gives you the honest answer to that decision. We’re an SSRS consulting company so we obviously have a stake in it — but we’ll tell you when not to hire us too.
This post gives you the honest answer to that decision. We’re an SSRS consulting company so we obviously have a stake in it — but we’ll tell you when not to hire us too. If you want the broader case for hiring any kind of reporting consultant, not just SSRS specifically, see our complete guide to what a report consultant does.
What SSRS Actually Is (The Short Version)
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based reporting platform from Microsoft that lets you design, manage, and publish reports extracted from SQL databases. It generates paginated, formatted, print-ready reports — financial statements, aging schedules, pick lists, operational summaries, investor packages — and delivers them automatically via scheduled email subscriptions.
It comes free with SQL Server. If your organization runs SQL Server, you already have access to it.
SSRS makes it easy to deliver the right information to the right users.
You can view reports in a web browser, on a mobile device, or receive them via email.
What it’s not: an interactive dashboard tool (that’s Power BI). Not a data warehouse. Not a replacement for your ERP. It’s the report-generation and delivery layer that sits on top of your existing data.
The 4 Situations That Bring People to an SSRS Company
After 19 years, we see the same situations over and over. If yours is on this list, you probably need outside SSRS help.
1. Your ERP’s built-in reports don’t do what you need
Every ERP ships with a standard report library. Most of them are generic. They don’t combine data across modules, they don’t apply your specific business rules, they don’t deliver automatically. You need a custom SSRS report built on top of your ERP’s database.
We do this for Sage, Epicor, Viewpoint, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Prophet 21, and dozens of other ERP systems. If it has a database, we can build reports on top of it.
2. Someone left and took the reporting knowledge with them
A report developer or IT person built your SSRS reports 4 years ago. They’re gone. Now the reports are breaking, nobody knows how to modify them, and nothing is documented. This is one of the most common calls we get.
3. You need reports delivered automatically but nobody knows how to set up SSRS subscriptions
SSRS subscriptions are the mechanism that makes report delivery automatic — a report generates on a schedule and lands in the right inbox without anyone running it manually. Setting them up correctly, especially data-driven subscriptions that send different data to different recipients, requires someone who’s done it before.
4. You’re migrating from Crystal Reports and need SSRS equivalents
Your ERP used Crystal Reports. The newer version doesn’t. Or you’re simply tired of maintaining Crystal Reports templates that nobody else can touch. Crystal to SSRS migration is one of our most common engagements.
In-House vs. SSRS Consultant vs. SSRS Company: The Real Comparison
In-House SSRS Developer
When it makes sense:
- You have 10+ reports that change frequently
- You need someone who can sit in meetings, understand the business context immediately, and iterate daily
- Budget allows a full-time hire ($70,000–$110,000/year for an experienced SSRS developer in the US)
When it doesn’t:
- You need 2–5 reports built and then occasional modifications
- The volume of SSRS work doesn’t justify a full-time headcount
- You can’t find someone with the right ERP-specific experience in your market
The honest math: Rather than hire someone full time to build reports, companies can use ReportingGuru as needed with 70% cost savings. If you don’t need daily SSRS development, a full-time hire is expensive overhead.
Freelance SSRS Developer
When it makes sense:
- Short-term, well-defined project (3–5 reports, clear requirements)
- You have internal technical oversight to review the work Budget is tight
The risks:
- Availability gaps — freelancers juggle multiple clients
- No accountability when something breaks at 8 PM before a board meeting
- Documentation varies wildly — some freelancers are excellent, some leave you with undocumented spaghetti SQL
SSRS Company (like ReportingGuru)
When it makes sense:
- Ongoing reporting needs that don’t justify full-time headcount
- ERP-specific SSRS knowledge is required (knowing Viewpoint’s database schema is very different from knowing SQL generally)
- You need a team with project management, not a single developer
- You want no minimums — use us for 10 hours this month, 0 hours next month, 15 hours the month after
What you get with a dedicated SSRS company:
- A team — not one person who gets sick or leaves
- ERP-specific experience across dozens of platforms
- Project management and daily updates
- No up-front cost, no retainers, no minimums
- US-based developers who communicate clearly
What “Custom SSRS Reports” Actually Means
When a business asks for custom SSRS reports, they’re asking for one or more of these things:
New reports their ERP can’t produce A job cost summary that shows committed costs alongside actuals. An AP aging report with GR/NI accrual. An investor statement that pulls from a fund accounting system and delivers to 200 LPs simultaneously. None of these exist natively — they have to be built.
Modifications to existing SSRS reports Adding a new column, changing a calculation, adding a new parameter, improving performance on a slow report, or fixing a broken report that was working fine until the ERP was upgraded.
SSRS setup and architecture Installing and configuring the SSRS Report Server, setting up the web portal, configuring security, building the SQL Server data model, creating subscriptions — the infrastructure work that has to happen before any reports can be built.
SSRS and Power BI integration Connecting Power BI dashboards to the same SQL Server data model that drives SSRS reports, so the executive team gets interactive dashboards while the operational team continues getting scheduled SSRS reports. Both tools, one data foundation.
What Good SSRS Help Looks Like in Practice
Here’s what a realistic engagement looks like:
A CFO at a manufacturing company calls us. Their Epicor ERP produces basic financial reports, but the CFO needs a budget vs. actual report by department, formatted for board meetings, emailed automatically on the first business day of each month to six people.
Epicor doesn’t produce this. Excel is taking two hours every month to build manually.
We:
- Connect directly to the Epicor database
- Build the stored procedures and data model
- Build the SSRS report with the exact layout the CFO needs
- Set up an SSRS subscription that emails it automatically on the first business day of each month
- Document everything and hand it over
Timeline: 2–3 weeks. Cost: a fraction of a month of a full-time developer’s salary. Ongoing effort: zero — it runs itself.
That’s what SSRS consulting services should look like.
The Questions to Ask Before Hiring SSRS Help
Whether you hire a freelancer, a company, or a full-time developer, ask these:
Do you know our specific ERP?
knowledge is not the same as knowing Sage 300 CRE’s database schema or Prophet 21’s table structure. ERP-specific experience cuts the time and the errors significantly.
Are you US-based?
Not a requirement, but communication matters enormously in report development. Gathering requirements, reviewing drafts, explaining what’s wrong — all of this is harder with communication barriers and time zone gaps. Our entire team is USbased and this is one of the things clients mention most often.
What’s your process for gathering requirements?
Anyone can write SQL. Not everyone can translate a business user’s description of what they need into an accurate report specification. Ask how they handle this.
What does handoff look like?
Will you own the reports when they’re done? Is there documentation? Can your team modify them? Good SSRS help leaves you more capable, not more dependent.
What are the terms?
Retainers, minimums, and prepayments are red flags for a small-tomid-market engagement. You should pay for work done, not for the option to use someone.
FAQ
What is SSRS and who needs SSRS help?
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is Microsoft’s server-based reporting platform — included free with SQL Server — that generates formatted, paginated reports and delivers them automatically via scheduled subscriptions. Any organization running SQL Server that needs formatted financial reports, operational summaries, or automated scheduled delivery to multiple people needs SSRS — and most need help either setting it up, building reports, or maintaining an existing library. Visit our SSRS consulting services page for more on what we build.
How much does it cost to hire an SSRS developer or consultant?
A full-time in-house SSRS developer in the US typically costs $70,000–$110,000/year in salary plus benefits and overhead. A freelance SSRS developer typically charges $75–$150/hour. An SSRS company like ReportingGuru charges based on actual hours worked — no minimums, no retainers, no prepayments. For businesses that need SSRS work episodically rather than constantly, the company model typically costs 60–70% less than a full-time hire when measured against actual utilization.
Can SSRS reports be built on top of our existing ERP without replacing it?
Yes. SSRS connects directly to your ERP’s SQL Server database — reading data without modifying anything in the ERP itself. You do not need to replace your ERP, migrate to a new system, or change your existing processes. We connect to your existing database and build the reports on top of it. This is the standard approach for custom SSRS reports on Sage, Epicor, Viewpoint, Dynamics, NetSuite, and every other major ERP.
What is the difference between SSRS and Crystal Reports?
Both produce formatted, paginated report outputs — financial statements, operational reports, invoices. Crystal Reports (owned by SAP) is embedded natively in many older ERP platforms. SSRS (from Microsoft) integrates natively with SQL Server and offers better scheduled delivery infrastructure. Many organizations are migrating from Crystal Reports to SSRS as their ERP vendors move away from Crystal. For a full comparison, see our Crystal Reports vs SSRS breakdown.
Is SSRS still relevant in 2026?
Yes. Starting in SQL Server 2025, on premises Reporting Services is being consolidated under Power BI Report Server — but paginated reports, the format SSRS produces, continue to exist in that ecosystem as Power BI Paginated Reports. The report format and delivery concepts are the same.
Existing SSRS implementations continue to function, and the migration path to Power BI Paginated Reports is straightforward for organizations that want to modernize. The skills and reports built in SSRS today are not obsolete.
What is the difference between SSRS and Power BI?
SSRS generates formatted, paginated, print-ready documents delivered on a schedule — financial statements, aging reports, formal packages. Power BI generates interactive dashboards where users explore and filter data in real time. Most organizations that need both use SSRS for scheduled document delivery and Power BI for interactive analytics — connected to the same SQL Server data model. Full SSRS vs. Power BI comparison here.