Finance teams are under pressure to move beyond data entry and become true business partners. That starts with better reporting.

In “AccountsIQ’s Next Level of Reporting”, Taylor, Senior BDM and financial services lead at AccountsIQ, shows how the latest product enhancements can transform your reporting from manual and reactive to automated and insight-driven.

The session begins with a quick introduction to AccountsIQ – a mid-market cloud accounting platform designed to bridge the gap between entry-level tools (like Xero, QuickBooks, Sage 50) and heavyweight ERPs (like SAP, NetSuite, Oracle). Taylor explains where AccountsIQ fits, how it scales across single and multi-entity organisations, and why everything from implementation to support is delivered in-house.

From there, the focus turns to reporting and analytics:

• How to design an effective finance system that’s accurate, scalable and easy to use
• How AccountsIQ’s three-tier chart of accounts (category, subcategory, GL) and six BI dimensions unlock deeper analysis without bloating the GL
• How to build and compare budgets and reforecasts directly in the system
• How to use the Report Manager and GL Explorer for instant P&L, balance sheet and trial balance views
• How to generate a full management report pack (P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, KPIs, debtors/creditors) in just a few clicks
• How to leverage OData to live-link AccountsIQ with Excel or Power BI

Taylor then demos the brand-new interactive dashboards – including P&L, working capital, AP, AR, purchase commitment and consolidated group dashboards – and shows how they can be sliced by department, region, project, employee, and more.

The webinar finishes by exploring group-level consolidation (including ownership percentages, drilldown to transaction level, and consolidated dashboards) and upcoming features like non-financial KPI imports and bespoke CEO/sector dashboards.

Key topics covered

1. Where AccountsIQ sits in the market

• Born in 2008 as a cloud-native product (never server/desktop)
• Offices in Dublin (HQ) and London, with 20,000+ users in 60+ countries
• Targets the mid-market:
  • More powerful than entry-level tools (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage 50)
  • Less complex and costly than big ERPs (SAP, NetSuite, Oracle, Workday)
• Average implementation 4–6 weeks (can be faster if required)
• All services in-house: implementation, integrations, support, account management
• Fast support response times (minutes rather than days) and very high CSAT

2. Designing an effective finance system

Taylor outlines the principles of a robust finance system:

• Accuracy & reliability – structured data, clear audit trails
• Time-saving automation – bank feeds, AP automation, approvals, less rekeying
• Relevant information only – avoid cluttered, non-finance fields
• Security & compliance – ISO certified, audit-ready, Azure-based
• Interoperability – open API, plug-and-play integrations, custom builds
• Scalability – handle growth, new entities, new reporting requirements
• User-friendliness – ease of adoption across finance and non-finance users
• Audit support – full audit trails, auditor logins, fewer data requests
• Forecasting & analysis – budgets, reforecasts, variance analysis baked in

3. Reporting structure in AccountsIQ

a) Three-tier chart of accounts

• Categories (e.g. Direct Costs)
• Subcategories (e.g. Cost of Sales)
• GL codes underneath

This extra “subcategory” layer makes it easier to:

• Organise the GL
• Build meaningful P&Ls
• Avoid overlong GL lists

b) Six BI dimensions (Business Intelligence codes)

On top of the GL, AccountsIQ supports up to six fully custom dimensions, e.g.:

• Region
• Department
• Project
• Employee
• Revenue stream
• Location / fund / cost centre

Each dimension can have unlimited elements (e.g. 1,000 employees still only uses one dimension). Transactions can be tagged with these, enabling:

• Mini P&Ls by project, department, region, etc.
• Trial balances by dimension
• Budgets and reforecasts down to BI level

4. GL Explorer and Report Manager

GL Explorer

A quick-view workspace combining:

• P&L
• Balance Sheet
• Trial Balance

Key features:

• View actuals vs actuals (e.g. 2022 vs 2021)
• Switch to budget vs actual with one click
• Drill down from summary to transaction level by clicking blue values
• Compare against both original budgets and reforecasts

Report Manager

Over 250 standard reports, including many variants. For any report, you can:

• Select periods (month, quarter, YTD, custom ranges)
• Filter by specific GL accounts
• Filter or pivot by dimensions/BI codes (regions, departments, projects, etc.)
• Add up to 12 columns of comparison data:
  • This year vs budget
  • Reforecast vs budget
  • Last year vs last year’s budget
  • Variances

Output options:

• Export to Excel, CSV, PDF, Word
• Email reports directly from the system (with optional message and attachments)

5. OData Connector – live Excel & Power BI

Because AccountsIQ is hosted on Microsoft Azure, you can use OData to:

• Generate a secure URL for a specific dataset or report
• Plug that URL into Excel or Power BI
• Refresh the external file to pull the latest data automatically

Use cases:

• Build custom Excel models that always stay up-to-date
• Publish Power BI dashboards that refresh from AccountsIQ without CSV exports
• Give non-finance stakeholders “live” reports without touching the core system

6. Management reporting & board packs

To reduce month-end stress, AccountsIQ includes a Management Report Pack, which:

• Bundles 10–12 key reports into a single board pack, including:
  • Key KPIs (net profit/loss, margins)
  • P&L vs budget
  • P&L vs last year
  • P&L forecast
  • Balance sheet
  • Cash flow statement
  • Overheads vs sales charts
  • Debtors and creditors reports
• Exports to Excel in seconds
• Retains expand/collapse and layout, so no re-formatting needed

The reporting services team can customise this pack free of charge during implementation:

• Add/remove reports
• Reorder sections
• Align layout with your board formatting

7. New interactive dashboards

AccountsIQ’s new UI introduces powerful, filterable dashboards.

P&L dashboard

• Visual KPIs: operating income, gross/net profit, margins
• Charts and widgets by:
  • Category / subcategory / GL
  • Time (month, quarter, YTD)
• Filters for:
  • Period (MTD, YTD)
  • Comparisons (last month, last year, budget, forecast)
  • BI dimensions (region, department, project, employee, etc.)

Users can:

• Drill into individual widgets (e.g. salary & wages, operating income)
• Quickly “slice” the P&L by any dimension (e.g. just Hong Kong, just one department)

Working Capital dashboard

Shows:

• Current assets vs current liabilities
• Working capital, current ratio and quick ratio
• Debtor days & creditor days
• Breakdown of:
  • Cash and bank
  • Stock & WIP
  • Debtors & prepayments

Again, all filterable by entity, dimension, or time period.

Purchase (AP) dashboards

AP overview dashboards include:

• Total payables
• Over credit limit amounts
• Creditors days
• Top 10 suppliers
• Supplier groupings (e.g. overhead suppliers, employees, contractors)
• Drilldown into:
  • Control accounts (e.g. intercompany accounts)
  • Specific suppliers
  • Credit terms (e.g. 30 days only)

Purchase commitment dashboard:

• Combines purchase invoices + purchase orders
• Shows committed spend vs budget / forecast
• Filters by:
  • Category / subcategory / GL
  • BI dimensions (projects, departments, regions, etc.)
  • (Soon) Approver, to see what each approver has authorised

Sales (AR) dashboards

AR dashboards show:

• Total receivables
• Over credit limit customers
• Debtor days
• Customer groupings
• Filters for:
  • Currency
  • Credit terms
  • Payment methods (priority, online, cheque, direct debit)
  • Dimensions (regions, departments, etc.)

8. Group consolidation & group-level dashboards

For multi-entity groups, AccountsIQ includes a full consolidation entity.

Consolidation Manager

• Choose which entities belong to which consolidation groups
• Set ownership percentages and ownership periods
• Run consolidation with one click – takes seconds
• System:
  • Verifies consistency (COA & dimensions)
  • Rolls up budgets to group level automatically
  • Handles multi-currency translation

You can maintain multiple consolidation groups to reflect different structures.

Group-level reporting

At the group level, you get:

• GL Explorer with consolidated actuals vs consolidated budgets
• Expansion by entity to see where group numbers come from
• Drilldown from group figures to underlying transactions
• ~100+ consolidated versions of key reports
• P&L by entity, with:
  • Consolidated totals vs consolidated budget
  • Entity-level breakdown per line

Consolidated dashboards

The same style of dashboards exists at group level:

• Consolidated P&L
• Consolidated purchases (AP)
• Consolidated sales (AR)

You can:

• Filter by entity (see one, some, or all entities)
• Drill down by GL and BI dimensions across the group
• Analyse top 10 suppliers/customers at group level

9. Non-financial KPIs & bespoke dashboards (coming soon)

Taylor previews upcoming features:

• Ability to import non-financial KPI data into dashboards, such as:
  • Transaction volumes
  • Headcount
  • Return on investment
  • Market values of assets
  • Operational metrics from other systems
• Overlay financial and non-financial data in one place, giving a true single source of truth for performance

Reporting services will also:

• Build bespoke dashboards (e.g. CEO dashboard, sector-specific dashboard)
• Combine your chosen KPIs, charts and drilldowns into a single view

10. Q&A highlights

Some of the Q&A points covered:

• Can you download transactions from SAP and report in AccountsIQ?
  Yes – many customers import trial balances or transactional data from other ERPs into AccountsIQ to take advantage of its consolidation and reporting, without changing their underlying system.
• Can reports be shared via Slack/Teams?
  Yes – export the report (e.g. to Excel, PDF) and attach it in Slack, Teams or any collaboration tool.
• What if I don’t see the dashboards in my environment?
  Existing customers should contact their Customer Success Manager; dashboards may need to be enabled for your environment, especially if you’ve just switched to the new UI.

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