Case Study · Executive Intelligence
From Manual Spreadsheets to an Automated Power BI Dashboard
A repeatable financial-reporting pipeline that standardizes monthly exports, applies governed measures, and produces board-ready Power BI reporting from one canonical model.
Manual rebuild → repeatable refresh
5-page executive report
1 canonical data model
Role, scope, and measurable outcome
My role
Analytics and reporting architect responsible for transforming recurring QuickBooks reporting into a governed Power BI model and executive reporting experience.
Alignment
Worked across Finance, executive leadership, and operational stakeholders to define the canonical metrics, reporting hierarchy, refresh expectations, and decision requirements.
Key tradeoff
Prioritized one governed data model and a repeatable refresh process over recurring spreadsheet customization. This improved consistency, maintainability, and executive trust.
Time-to-value and outcome
Replaced a manual rebuild process with a repeatable refresh, producing a five-page executive report supported by one canonical data model.
The Problem
A long-established B2B data company relied on monthly QuickBooks exports for executive financial reporting. File structures changed from month to month, reports depended on manual copy-and-paste assembly, and definitions were inconsistent. Every close required rebuilding the same reporting process, making reliable month-over-month and year-over-year comparison unnecessarily difficult.
The actual Power BI report has tooltip display and interactive reports.
What I Built
- A canonical data model: monthly exports standardized into four fixed tables with locked schemas for current-versus-prior revenue, actual-versus-budget performance, AR aging, and production volume.
- A reusable DAX measure library: revenue, year-over-year, budget variance, and aging measures written once and reused across the report.
- A five-page executive report: a governed visual system covering revenue trend, budget performance, receivables, production, and leadership summary.
- Accrual-versus-cash reconciliation: logic that explains why two valid views of the same month differ.
- A repeatable monthly refresh: export, standardize, refresh, validate, and publish without rebuilding the report.
The Outcome
- Monthly reporting moved from a manual rebuild to a repeatable refresh measured in hours, not days.
- The CEO and CFO gained board-ready dashboards for budget, forecasting, reconciliation, and operating review.
- Definitions and calculations were documented so the reporting system could survive personnel changes.
- The report became a reusable operating asset rather than a recurring manual ritual.
Stack: Power BI · DAX · Power Query · QuickBooks exports · Azure SQL
Portfolio data policy: Every public screenshot and interactive demo for this case study uses dummy data. Actual financials, year-over-year performance, customer information, internal systems, server names, and URLs remain private.