What’s Available To You For Financial Reporting ?

There are many tools out the for Financial Reporting for Sage 300 - some of them are dinosaurs and some of them are great for your reporting needs. Because we know that the search for the perfect Financial Reporting Solution is far from over, we’ve created two basic Financial Reporting Templates for you - one using Excel and on using Power BI.

Free Excel Reporting Template

The Excel Reporting Template that you can download here>> has the advantages of giving you full control of Financial Reporting for Sage 300, all in your favourite environment - Microsoft Excel.

Free Power BI Reporting Template

The Power BI Reporting Template that you can download here>> has the advantages of giving you full control of your Financial Reporting on the world’s most popular Business Intelligence Platform - Power BI.

Using the Excel Financial Template

Step 1: Connect To Your Data

To point this workbook at your database click: Data -> Get Data -> Data Source Settings -> Change Source. Alter the Server Name and Database. Following that you MUST alter the credentials by clicking:  Data -> Get Data -> Data Source Settings -> Edit Credentials. If you do not know which set of credentials to use, contact your IT department for a read-only set of credentials to your SQL server

Step 2: Using The Excel Report

There are 4 reports, all driven by slicers at the top of each page. Select a combination of Period and Year to alter the data shown. All YTD numbers are up-to and including the selected period. The Balance Sheet has a check that will tell you if your numbers are out of whack. With limited Excel skills you can copy existing reports and augment them, create charts of your data and easily drag fields in and out of your reports to change the report layouts.

Using the Power BI Financial Template:

Step 1: Connect To Your Data

To point this workbook at your database, from inside the free Power BI Desktop, click: Home -> Edit Queries DropDown -> Data Source Settings -> Change Source. Alter the Server Name and Database. Following that you MUST alter the credentials by clicking: Data -> Edit Queries DropDown -> Data Source Settings -> Edit Credentials. If you do not know which set of credentials to use, contact your IT department for a read-only set of credentials to your SQL server.

Step 2: Using the Power BI Report

There are 4 reports, all driven by slicers at the top of each page. Select a combination of Period and Year to alter the data shown. All YTD numbers are up-to and including the selected period. The Balance Sheet has a check that will tell you if your numbers are out of whack. With limited Excel skills you can copy existing reports and augment them, create charts of your data and easily drag fields in and out of your reports to change the report layouts.

Some Benefits Gained From These Templates

Easy To Setup

For both the Excel and Power BI Financial Reporting Solution for Sage 300 (downloadable above), the deployment of the base model can be done by somebody with basic to intermediate Excel/Power BI skills and in under 20 minutes (assuming you have data access).

No Additional Software Investment Required

For the Excel Financial Reporting Solution for Sage 300 (downloadable above), Only MS Excel is required and most business already have this licensing.

For the Power BI Solution all that is required is the free download of the Power BI Desktop and optionally, a free account with Power BI.

Self-Serve Analytics

Excel and Power BI both afford organisations the benefit of Self-Serve Analytics, which means that data is accessible to business folk and that they have the tools and skills to create the reports that they need without waiting for business analysts to create the reports.

Conclusion:

The search for the ideal Financial Reporting solution for Sage 300 is one that many people are familiar with.

From experience in guiding our partners to success in this area I have found that there are 2 main challenges with Financial Reporting - 1) Access to data for Analysis AND 2) The high degree of customisation required by most companies for their Financial Reporting.

If your team has the time to invest in deploying and customising the free report templates above then any any one of these free templates may be a great fit for your Financial Reporting needs for Sage 300. The free Excel Template is great if your needs lean toward a highly customizable, Excel based solution that offers sufficient ad-hoc analysis of your data. The free Power BI Template is great if your needs lean toward less customisation of the layout of your reports but a high need for Data Visualization, Organisation-Wide Distribution and an Interactive Mobile experience..

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Operating throughout USA and Canada, FreshBI is a boutique Microsoft Partner using Power BI to unlock the value trapped in your data so that your business can succeed.