Xero already provides a standard set of reports in the app itself so why would we want to see our Xero numbers in Excel-based reports?
One simple word: “Customisation”. Pretty much every business that we support needs a slightly different view of their numbers that they just can’t get from the standard Xero reports.
The hospitality industry use measures such as direct wages as a percentage of revenue and food and beverage gross profit percentages; manufacturing need to see cost of goods sold; other businesses may focus on salaries as a percentage of revenue, revenue growth rate or inventory turnover.
Businesses also need to compare performance against budget, forecast and prior year for the current month and year to date. And what about a full year forecast of actual year to date plus forecast?
What if you need to bring in non-financial data alongside your financials? That’s just not happening in Xero.
Put simply, Excel gives your business the flexibility needed to get the insight you need from your Xero based accounts.
Have you tried exporting your profit and loss report from Xero into Excel recently? Hardly ideal is it?
The first time I came across it was when we were helping a client with their management reporting. The Financial Controller walked me through the monthly process ... opening the report in Xero, setting the reporting dates, clicking on a number of options, changing the layout, running, exporting, opening in Excel, laboriously moving each column to get them in order, inserting a few rows to make it line up with last month’s data, copying into the reporting model, realising there is a new nominal account so deleting and then moving some rows about before re-copying in.
I wanted to cry for her… then she realised she needed to post an adjustment. Off we go again…. cue tears…. surely there is a better way…
Fortunately there is – and it’s called DataDear. We liked it so much we became DataDear Experts and now use it at the core of our Xero reporting models.
DataDear is an Excel add-in that imports reports and data from Xero into Excel at the click of a button (it also enables you to post from Excel to Xero but I’ll save that for another post).
Having worked with a large number of clients facing similar issues of trying to report their Xero numbers in Excel, we decided to develop a suite of Xero reporting templates for use with Excel.
The suite includes:
All of our Excel templates are completely customisable, either by you or, if you prefer, with our support. Over the last couple of years we have built a wide variety of solutions including multi entity, multi currency versions with intercompany eliminations and some with some very specific tracking category based reporting requirements. We haven’t yet come across something that we haven’t been able to deliver. Now there’s a challenge for you…
