Forum Discussion
Doing simple accounting type reports
We are just starting the Power BI adventure. Our existing reports are all accounting list types of reports. There is not much analysis in them. The reports come either from Cognos or from Excel. Our users would like to have the exisitng reports converted to Power BI. We will add analysis and true BI as we go along.
I am having trouble doing the conversions for several reasons:
- The current reports are all lists or dumps of records and show with many columns of data, sometimes up to 60 or more columns.
- The users are comfortable with Excel, and while they want ad hoc reporting given by Power BI, I think to replace all of their Excel style reports with Power BI would potentially shutdown our accounting department, at least in the beginning.
- End users that are not glued to their computers, i.e. floor managers, shop personnel, etc., currently received emailed Excel type reports, with long lists of records, which they review. For example, they would use this type report to see which tasks they have for a day for which customers. Or they might use such a report to confirm inventory items for a job.
There are many more similar issues I run into.
I need some help figuring out how to do these reports in Power BI. I am very comfortable with true BI analysis, charts, drilling, etc. What I cannot figure out is an efficient way to do these list type reports.
Are there any good refernces on how to do this?
Any help would be appreciated.
Anonymous
1). Seems you have mostly excel type reports, or large tabular reports in excel and you distribute or users have access to these reports.
Report Builder/paginated report can fulfill your requirement with dynamic extraction, sharing etc option.Please see this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/paginated-reports/paginated-reports-report-builder-power-bi#:~:text=Paginated%20reports%20are%20designed%20to,their%20report%20page%20layout%20exactly.
Please read this thread also for excel solution: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Traditional-Financial-Statements/m-p/7223
2). The type of report you require is paginated report, so report builder is the option, it's free tool, will require premium license to publish it to the workspace, or you can have on-premise report server.
There are automatic way of moving paginated reports published to the workspace to the excel, for e.g subscription where end user will get email as per scheduled date/time. PowerAutomate solution etc.
So basically PowerBI Ecosystem can fullfill your requirement and sometimes you will require to use combination of paginated reports and powerbi report/dashboard.If you have a fairly large budget then go for premium, it can help you to build the enterprise level of reporting system.
Hope above helps. Feel free to share more questions.
6 Replies
- mhossain
Solution Sage
Anonymous
If you are using Premium per user/ Premium license then as per your pointers, paginated reports can be a great solution.
Please read this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/paginated-reports/paginated-reports-report-builder-power-bi#:~:text=Paginated%20reports%20are%20designed%20to,their%20report%20page%20layout%20exactly.
If you are using Pro license:
You can import data and build your table and then publish, share with users, users can export the data in excel/csv format. And they can filter data in powerbi report itself.
Powerbi is a great tool for analysis, slicing and dicing the data. Please share more details or specific questions.
Thanks for the quick reply.
You mentioned exporting to Excel, but it is really an export to csv. The main point being this will not give us any formatting from Power BI to Excel, will it?
It seems hard to believe that Power BI reports cannot be exported with formatting to Excel. Or can they?
Thanks again for the post.
- mhossain
Anonymous
At the moment export from powerbi will not have report format.
Paginated report/report builder is the solution at the moment, here you will have excel, word, pdf many other options while exporting.