Mastering reporting and gaining insights at AccountsIQ

Experts from AccountsIQ and Accord Business Solutions provide practical guidance on how to effectively utilise the reporting features of AccountsIQ.

November 26, 2025
Duration:
1:01:59
share icon
Share
Danielle Cahill
Head of Partnerships

Reporting and analytics are where your finance system proves its value.

In this on-demand AccountsIQ reporting webinar, you’ll see how to move beyond basic exports and spreadsheets to build real-time, multi-dimensional, board-ready reports from within AccountsIQ – and how to extend them with Excel, OData and Power BI.

Hosted by Danielle Cahill, Head of Partnerships at AccountsIQ, the session brings together:

  • Stephen Laurie, Business Development (and former Managed Services Director) at Accord Business Solutions & Envoy Group
  • Helen (Presales, AccountsIQ)
  • Zaina (Presales, AccountsIQ)

Stephen shares how Accord and the wider Envoy Group use AccountsIQ reporting across multiple P&Ls, entities and business units, and how they’ve combined:

  • AccountsIQ (core finance, consolidation, reporting)
  • Flow (their project/job costing ERP)
  • Other operational systems
  • Power BI (for visual, mobile-friendly dashboards)

to give P&L owners live insights and reduce month-end from 4–5 days to a much leaner process.

Inside the webinar you’ll see:

1. Getting your data model right: chart of accounts & dimensions

  • Why robust dimensional analysis (up to six BI codes) is the foundation of powerful reporting
  • Examples of dimensions: department, location, project, revenue stream, business unit
  • How Accord uses chunked P&Ls and dimensions to empower local P&L leaders
  • The impact of good setup on GL Explorer, dashboards, ageing and board packs

2. Core reporting tools inside AccountsIQ

Hands-on walkthrough of built-in reporting features, including:

  • GL Explorer
    • Instant P&L, Balance Sheet and Trial Balance
    • Actual vs Budget/Revised Budget comparisons
    • Slicing by project, department, location, revenue stream
    • Drill-down to transaction level and export to Excel/PDF/Word
  • Grid screens & Transaction Browser
    • Customisable column layouts per user
    • Filtering and grouping by supplier groups, customer groups, dimensions, status
    • Viewing and exporting all transactions, with drill-down to attachments
    • Using edit flags as a mini internal control/reporting tool
  • Dashboards
    • Accounts payable dashboard with ageing by due date or period, filtered by supplier groups (e.g. contractors, employees)
    • Financial overview (income YTD, GP YTD, key metrics, period comparisons)
    • P&L dashboard with net profit split by project, department or location
    • How to give specific teams access only to the dashboards they need

3. Non-financial KPIs & SaaS-style metrics

  • How to load non-financial data (e.g. headcount, new logos, churn, units) into AccountsIQ
  • Building non-financial KPI dashboards and comparing against budgets
  • Example SaaS metrics dashboard: new logos, MRR, churn, and how they relate to turnover
  • Using dimensions to analyse non-financial KPIs by department, project or region

4. Standard reports & management packs

A guided tour of key Reports Manager staples, including:

  • Extended Business Analysis
    • Side-by-side revenue and costs
    • Analysis by business unit, project, department or other BI codes
    • Tracking performance against budget
  • Profit & Loss Extended (configurable columns)
    • Build your own P&L layout with chosen columns (e.g. Actual, Budget, Last Year, variances)
    • Add your brand logo for presentation-ready output
    • Exportable with drill-down preserved in Excel
  • Aged Debtors by Analysis Code
    • Ageing by project, department, region or other BI codes
    • How to get this report added if you don’t see it yet
  • Budget Holder & Purchase Commitment reports
    • Reporting for budget holders on commitments, actuals and unposted items
    • Using budget holder security to restrict views to their own budgets
  • Management Report Pack
    • A full board pack in one export: KPIs, P&Ls, balance sheet, cash flow, sales & overhead charts, aged debtors/creditors
    • How the AccountsIQ bespoke reporting team can tweak or extend this pack for your organisation

5. OData, Excel and live reporting for non-finance users

Helen shows how to use OData to connect AccountsIQ directly to Excel:

  • Creating an OData connection from Company Details & Settings → Integrations
  • Pulling live datasets (e.g. P&L, aged debtors, aged creditors) into Excel
  • Using Power Query to:
    • Filter to specific GL codes, departments, projects or revenue streams
    • Restrict data for budget holders or specific managers
  • Building pivot-based reports such as:
    • P&L by project/department
    • Departmental cost analysis with charts
    • Live aged debtors and creditors with slicers
  • Demonstration: posting a receipt in AccountsIQ and refreshing Excel to see instant updated balances

These Excel workbooks can be stored in SharePoint or a secure location, shared with managers who don’t have AccountsIQ access, and refreshed by them on demand – giving them live numbers without logging into the finance system.

6. Power BI & multi-system analytics (with Accord)

Stephen explains how Accord and Envoy use Power BI to:

  • Provide visual, mobile-friendly dashboards (via the Power BI mobile app)
  • Refresh automatically from AccountsIQ and other systems
  • Combine finance data from AccountsIQ, Flow (project/job costing) and other operational tools (e.g. Autodesk Construction Cloud)
  • Give chunked business units and P&L owners real-time performance views
  • Empower decision-makers across the organisation with live, consistent data

AccountsIQ provides a Power BI template (P&L, balance sheet, trial balance views), which your team or partners like Accord can extend into a full management pack or multi-system dashboard.