7 Reasons Why Accountants should be using Microsoft Power BI

So you are an accountant. You are aware you need some analytics software to help visualise client data. But which one should you choose? There are so many choices.

Spotlight, Futrli and Fathom will likely be options you have heard about. They are advertising directly to Accountants. They are connected with Xero and inside the Xero HQ suite. Have a read of our direct comparison on another article here Power BI Vs Spotlight/Futrli/Fathom

But I’m going to share with you why your answer should be Microsoft Power BI.

7 REASONS WHY ACCOUNTANTS SHOULD BE USING MICROSOFT POWER BI 

Consolidate

Consolidate data in one central hub. There is data everywhere on multiple platforms. Enterprise data, cloud based platforms (Xero, Quickbooks, Facebook) and Excel spreadsheets to name a few. Power BI lets you bring it all together in the one place to visualise.

Sharing

Sharing of reports and dashboards to your clients. When you build visualisations for your clients, you need to be able to share. Historically it would be printing to PDF and emailing. Power BI lets you share the same PDF but now its with live data and interactive, to drilldown into the things that matter most.

Price

Power BI is so inexpensive for what it delivers. $12.70 per accountant per month for 10GB of storage on the Power BI Cloud is just insane. To be able to gain all this enterprise level software for your clients. Historically this would have cost $1000s just for one client.

Easy Learning Curve

Anyone can get started on Power BI. It’s just like using Excel with formulas. Just like there are some things you need to understand with Microsoft Excel (SUM the column, open a new Tab, etc). The interface is so intuitive and with a few lessons you will be right up to speed.

Microsoft Are Leaders

Microsoft have seriously got their act together. Predictive analytics, machine learning, automation of processes. In the future you likely will not need to build many insights for your client because the machine learning will run over the datasets for you and tell you what is appropriate. Our point is, stay and swim with winners who are pushing this space.

Game Changing Insights

The cloud is the real deal. You are going to get 10x the insights you previously got for your clients.  Power BI have more data connections to bring data into Power BI than anybody else.

Business Continuity

Microsoft Excel is such a widely used tool. Everybody just knows how to use Excel. Power BI will be just like Excel is now.  Hiring staff will be so much easier. Your future staff will carry the skillset to use it. You will not need to train each new staff member.

Here at Etani we are working extremely hard to bridge the gap. I.e. It’s our aim to bring enterprise insights to your Small / Medium and Small Corporate clients.