As an accountant, you may find yourself referring to multiple sources to track the performance of your client’s cashflow, profitability, business trends and even bookkeeping cycle. What if you could access those results and comparisons automatically refreshed, on-demand, from your tablet, smartphone, PC, or even wearable device?
Business intelligence and data visualisation systems can provide accountants with – the critical data and organisation summary in a custom format in one (or more) visuals or a dashboard. One of these powerful business intelligence tools is PowerBI.
Power BI is a user-friendly business intelligence interface that helps businesses gather, manage and analyse data from different sources.
PowerBI collects your data from different sources - including Excel spreadsheets, data warehouses, on-premises servers and cloud-based accounting software applications— and consolidates this data into simple graphs and tables.
This helps you analyse and visualise that data to uncover crucial business insights quickly and identify trends that would be difficult to see in complex reports.
The system uses real-time data to help accountants respond quickly to changing business landscapes.
Power BI is available as:
As an accountant, PowerBi will be useful to you in the following ways:
Instead of going through multiple Excel spreadsheets, you can use the Power BI dashboards that implement data visualisation tools - when analysing finance-related KPIs and metrics. Through its efficient visual representation, you can process complex data and arrive at better business decisions.
Power BI allows you to create reports with interactive data visualisations depending on your needs. For example, if you want:
PowerBI has an Automate feature, that works as a workflow engine that simplifies redundant processes. You can use this feature to give everyone at your organisation instant access to the insights they need. For example, you can set up an automated workflow to send PowerBI reports to department managers at the end of each month.
Additionally, PowerBI will help you see data for all your client’s business entities in one place, even if they have some locations with different tax laws or different currencies.
If you spend considerable time and budget analysing data from multiple sources of varying types, the financial dashboard in Power BI will not only save you time but also increase your productivity. PowerBi’s financial dashboard works for multiple data sources and integrates the data components for enhanced clarity and insights.
No more downloading and uploading endless spreadsheets.
The PowerBI Financial dashboards show data trends in crucial business areas like profit and loss statements and sales across divisions or business units. Visualised data can help you identify problem areas at a higher level. PowerBi also allows you to do deeper aggregate levels for more clarity. With this data-driven intelligence, you can come up with working intervention solutions.
You can set automatic updates for your dashboard data on a monthly, weekly, daily, or even real-time basis. Accessing up-to-date information will give you the data to work with and make informed decisions for your client’s business.
Apart from performing the above functions, PowerBi also holds the following advantages:
After setting up your first dashboard, Power BI will take all the technical aspects away from you. You only need to model your information in an easy-to-learn interface.
The PowerBi system is scalable and provides industry-leading data security with “sensitivity classification and data loss prevention capabilities to help keep your data secure and compliant — even when it’s exported.”
Business intelligence solutions using PowerBi are valuable - and costs can range from a few hundred pounds to several thousand, depending on how many users you need.
Power BI can integrate well with your accounting software, CRM, or other business-critical systems. Accountants can access the information they need to forecast the future growth, compile reports for investors and other stakeholders, and improve business finances.
Do you want to see how PowerBI and powerful accounting software can improve results for your business? Schedule a demo of AccountingBi to learn how we will help grow your company.
