Doing simple accounting type reports

[Anonymous]

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:

1. The current reports are all lists or dumps of records and show with many columns of data, sometimes up to 60 or more columns.
2. 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.
3. 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.

[mhossain]

@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-b....

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Here is my quandary: 1.) how to handle the extraction of data in an automated fashion and 2.) how to handle the dissemination of long accounting type reports and how to deal with data that needs to go into Excel reports for formatting and manual manipulation.

As to number 1.) above, management wants to use Power BI to replace all of our reporting.  They want to eliminate Cognos which is our main way to automatically extract data and place it into Excel files.  This would leave us in the position to have to use Direct Query as we would have no way to automate the generation of Excel or csv files in overnight runs.  Or as an alternative, use Excel and data connections to build Excel files for import.  But how would you automate these for unattended updating every night?

As to number 2.), I will try the pagination approach once we are fully set up.  The export of data to Excel via csv seems less than desirable.  We would have to build the Power BI report then turn around and build the Excel report.  I can’t believe as long as Power BI has been around that there is no automatic way to move a Power BI report to Excel.  Are there any third party products that would do this?

I am beginning to suspect that a Power BI environment, along with associated products, like Desktop Pro and Premium, Power BI Services, Gateway,etc., is not sufficient to be the sole reporting tool we need.  I am including in this the various components such as Desktop Pro and Premium, Power BI Services, etc.  Please tell me I am wrong.

If you had a fairly large budget, what apps would you buy to serve all of the reporting needs, including overnight automation of data for including in Power BI reports and automated dissemination of PDFs and Excel files after the Power BI report has been updated?  Are there any references to building a very powerful, all encompassing Power BI environment to meet all of our reporting needs?

Thanks for all of your replies,

James

[mhossain · Accepted solution]

@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-b....

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.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the post.

After reading the material, I downloaded Report Builder and played with it some.  It does look like the solution we need.

Thanks again.