Financial Data to Your Happy Place
We hear over and over, just let me get my data to Excel
I once worked with a Microsoft Dynamics GP consultant who would utter the same phrase at every demo: Yes, we can offer you built in KPIs, dashboards, and visual analysis tools – I know you just want to know how easy it is go get your data to your happy place, Excel.
I too, am guilty of this. Just let me get my data to Excel and then I can figure out what I am trying to see.
Sure, with Microsoft Dynamics GP it is super easy to get the only the data you want to see to Excel. But once you get it to Excel, are you using its full capabilities?
So, when I saw this on the Excel Blog – it was enough to get my inner data geek excited.
Profit and loss data modeling and analysis with Excel
In the blog post, the author writes of a scenario that describes how Finance professionals at Contoso Ltd. create a PowerPivot data model, Excel PivotTables, and Power View reports to analyze budget, forecasting, and other profit and loss account metrics.
He goes on to describe some of the metrics, such as:
- Aggregate, or value measures such as sums and averages for currency and headcount.
- Comparison measures such as year-over-year, year-to-date, and variance for cash flow and headcount.
- Performance, or ratio measures such as percentage, cost per head, and rate and volume variances–all of which calculate on different combinations of value and comparison measures.
Interested? To learn more, download the whitepaper.