Simplify Excel reporting in controlling: Explanation and examples

In controlling, Excel is the central and most widely used tool for reporting. Experienced controllers use Excel like a second mother tongue. They use Excel to convert complex amounts of data into clear and concise reports and ensure that the information is presented clearly for all stakeholders in the company.

However, Excel has its limitations, particularly with regard to the automation and visualisation of reports. Software solutions can help to simplify reporting without compromising on quality. This article provides an insight into the working world of Excel and explains how efficient processes can enrich reporting in controlling. It also presents practical examples of companies that have successfully simplified their reporting using AnalyticsGate.

Excel reporting in controlling - what does it involve?

1. Excel reporting in controlling - what does it involve?

The planning and allocation of financial resources for individual business areas and projects is the subject of budgeting in controlling. This involves creating a financial framework based on historical data and future expectations. Forecasting, on the other hand, is concerned with predicting financial results based on current trends, market developments and economic indicators. The tasks include drawing up budget plans, calculating cash flows and assessing the financial impact of various business scenarios.

2. Financial reporting

Financial reporting is the preparation of documents that present the financial position and performance of a company, such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements. These reports are used by internal and external stakeholders to assess the financial health and performance of the company.

3. Cost accounting

Cost accounting is the process of recording, analysing and reporting the costs incurred in the production of goods or the provision of services. The purpose of cost accounting is to understand the cost structure, improve cost efficiency and support pricing, budgeting and investment decisions. The tasks include analysing cost structures, controlling cost allocation and carrying out cost unit accounting.

4. Financial analyses

Financial analysis involves assessing the financial health of a company based on financial data. The main tasks include profitability analyses, liquidity analyses, target/actual comparisons, break-even analyses and risk analyses. The aim is to provide a clear picture of financial performance, stability and profitability.

5. Investment calculation

Investment appraisal is about assessing the profitability and risk of investments. Methods such as calculating the net present value (NPV), the internal rate of return (IRR) and the payback period are used to analyse the profitability and risk of investments. These assessments are essential for making investment decisions and long-term financial planning.

Simplify reporting processes in Excel

Pivot tables for comprehensive reporting

Pivot tables are an essential tool for controllers to efficiently sort, group and analyse large amounts of data. They allow data to be visualised from different angles and facilitate the creation of detailed reports through functions such as automatic sorting, counting and totalling as well as filtering and segmenting.

Advantages of Excel: Excel's intuitive user interface makes it easy to create and customise pivot tables, enabling quick and flexible analysis of financial data. This helps to save time while gaining deep insights into business performance.

Formulas and functions

such as basic functions, totals functions, references, counting functions and present value functions form the foundation of Excel and contribute significantly to the performance of financial analyses and the calculation of key figures. These functions are essential for creating precise and informative financial reports.

Advantages of Excel: Excel offers a wide range of formulas and functions specifically tailored to the needs of controllers. Excel is an indispensable tool for financial reporting due to its ability to easily perform and customise complicated calculations.

Conditional formatting for visual analyses

Conditional formatting is one that allows controllers to present their data in a vivid and easy to understand way. The automatic adjustment of formatting to current data facilitates ongoing analysis and reporting by presenting visual indications of important changes or areas of interest.

Advantages of Excel: Conditional formatting in Excel makes it possible to visually highlight cells based on their values or specific criteria. This is particularly useful for visually analysing financial data as trends, variances and key indicators can be quickly identified.

Dashboards for visualising reports simplify the understanding of data

A dashboard has the function of clearly visualising and presenting company data. It shows the most important key financial figures, charts and performance data from a specific area of the company.

It is possible to create interactive dashboards with Excel, but the programme quickly reaches its limits in controlling. Other tools are better suited to this task, such as Qlik Sense, Power BI.

The advantage of AnalyticsGate is that the Excel add-in integrates the benefits of the BI tool Qlik Sense into Excel. This allows interactive dashboards to be created and continuously updated with current data in Excel.

These options are available to simplify reporting in Excel

1. Simplify templates and standardisation by saving time

The use of standardised templates for reports, budgets, forecasts and other controlling documents can save time and increase consistency. Once created, these templates allow quick customisation to specific requirements without having to create them from scratch.

2. Automation simplifies data management

The automation of recurring and time-consuming tasks in Excel is a key to increasing efficiency in controlling. By using macros, data entry, calculations and the updating of reports and dashboards can be automated, which significantly reduces manual effort.

3. Automatic data preparation avoids errors

Automatic data preparation is particularly useful when data from different sources needs to be consolidated or when large amounts of data are regularly updated and prepared for reports or analyses. It includes removing duplicates, converting data types, filtering relevant information and applying calculations or transformations to make the data ready for analysis.

Use AnalyticsGate and benefit from simplified Excel reporting

AnalyticsGate extends the native capabilities of Excel through integration with Qlik Sense, enabling a seamless experience in data analysis and reporting. The three key elements - standardisation, automation and automated data preparation - are essential to increase efficiency and accuracy in the data-intensive environment of controlling.

Automated Excel reporting - practical report from a company in the logistics sector

Initial situation - manual and time-consuming reporting in Excel

Before implementing AnalyticsGate, a customer in the logistics industry had to manually update their daily cash flow report in Excel. As a company that provides national and international freight forwarding services with approximately 200 employees, it was critical for this customer to utilise efficient and accurate reporting methods. Data entry was done via Excel templates and reports included customised comments such as the status of shipments. The main data sources were Microsoft Dynamics NAV and CARGOBASE. This manual approach to data maintenance was error-prone and made the reporting process time-consuming and complex.

Solution - Implementation of AnalyticsGate in Excel

To improve the efficiency and accuracy of its reporting, this company decided to implement AnalyticsGate. The aim was to use Excel only as a presentation medium and to eliminate the manual, error-prone data maintenance effort. AnalyticsGate enables automated data updating and preparation through direct connection to the data sources Microsoft Dynamics NAV and CARGOBASE via Qlik. The company can now use this function to generate customised Excel reports that are automatically fed with the latest data. At the same time, there is room for user-specific comments and analyses.

AnalyticsGate as an Excel add-in simplifies reporting

The introduction of AnalyticsGate has fundamentally changed the reporting process at the company from the maritime industry.

Improved data visualisation and analysis with AnalyticsGate for a company in the social sector

Initial situation - lack of visualisation and analysis options for reports

Before this social enterprise client implemented AnalyticsGate, creating reports such as multi-year comparisons, percentage of expenditure breakdowns, donation analysis and heat map visualisations was challenging. The organisation used Qlik Sense for data analysis, but this had its limitations due to the training period. The employees, who had been using Excel for reporting purposes for a long time, initially found the new Qlik Sense environment difficult to navigate.

Solution - Implementation of AnalyticsGate in Excel for faster reporting

To enable access to Qlik Sense data directly from Excel and to simplify report creation, this company decided to implement AnalyticsGate. The goal was to utilise the familiar Excel environment to integrate the power of Qlik Sense directly into Excel. This enabled seamless utilisation of Qlik Sense data sources and provided additional design flexibility and accelerated creation of graphs and formulas.

AnalyticsGate as an Excel add-in automates data preparation and simplifies reporting

The introduction of AnalyticsGate has led to significant improvements in this case study: