create date table in excel and not in power query or DAX?

[Chris_Cools]

Hello, 

still new with Power Bi and slowly getting to the point starting to migrate our reporting in Qlikview to Power BI.

I have a question about date table best practice:

instead of creating a date table through power query and/or DAX when refreshing data

(which you read most of the time in PowerBI books and tutorials), why not set up a Date table in Excel?

It might be much easier to create in excel all those extra columns belonging to a fiscal year that does not start in januari because you can immeadiately validate if they correct.

You could prepare a futureproof date table in excel spanning allready much more years than needed now, then importing that table into power query and only adjust start and end date based on parameters created in power query.

Is this something that is done? And what might be good reasons to do this or not do this?

thanx a lot!

Chris

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

Spot on.  Calendar data is immutable. There is no good reason to calculate this over and over again in Power Query or DAX.  Put your Excel reference table on a SharePoint and never worry about this again.

[Chris_Cools]

ok, thanx for the comment!!

Chris