From 15 Days to 10 Minutes: Financial Report Automation

A leading multi-group corporation that owns and manages several companies across different sectors.
Initially operating around 20 companies, the group expanded to and still expanding more.
Each company operated independently, with its own applications, databases, and reporting systems.

For the finance team, this meant one thing: a monthly reporting nightmare.

Every month, they had to extract financial data from 40 different servers, prepare Excel reports for each company, and then merge everything into one consolidated summary.

The process was fully manual and took 12–15 days — every single month. By the time reports reached management, the data was already outdated.

Challenge:

The core problems were clear:

Financial data spread across 40 separate servers.
No centralized reporting system.
Monthly financial consolidation was done manually in Excel, requiring data extraction and merging from each system.
The entire process took 12–15 days to complete every month.

This repetitive, manual workflow delayed reporting and introduced a high risk of data errors.

The BI Soultion:

To address this, we implemented a Power BI–based automated reporting system that connected all company data into a single, dynamic model.

Step 1: Data Integration

Created Power BI Dataflows for each company, connected directly to their individual SQL servers.
Extracted and standardized the required financial data.
Built a master dataflow to automatically append all company data into a single, consolidated dataset.
Implemented scheduled data refreshes to keep reports always up to date.

Step 2: Data Modeling

Designed a star-schema data model to support efficient calculations and scalability.
Developed key DAX measures, including:
- Actuals
- Budget
- Variance
- Change in Variance

Month-to-Date (MTD) and Year-to-Date (YTD) and Prior-Year-to-Date (PYTD)

This gave management the ability to slice, compare, and analyze performance instantly across all companies.

Step 3: Reporting & Visualization

Designed a management-focused Power BI dashboard for financial analysis.
Used custom visuals to meet Excel-style export requirements.
Created alternate views using default Power BI visuals (Matrix and Table) for flexible reporting options.

Achievements

The results were transformational:

Report preparation time reduced from 15 days to under 10 minutes.
Reports are automated, accurate, and refreshed in real time.
Management gained the ability to make faster, data-driven decisions with confidence.
All 40 companies now feed into one automated, centralized data model.

What once was a slow, error-prone process becoming a smooth, automated reporting ecosystem — powered by BI.

Technical Approach & Tools Used:

The Impact:

This project redefined how the organization handles financial data.
It didn’t just automate reporting — it transformed how decisions are made, giving leadership real-time visibility across all 40 companies.

From weeks of manual effort to minutes of automation — this was a complete shift toward data-driven finance.