Mastering reporting and gaining insights at AccountsIQ

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.

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