Duration 3 days – 21 hrs
Overview
The Advanced Power BI for Finance and Accounting Analytics Training Course is designed to help finance, accounting, audit, budgeting, and reporting professionals build advanced dashboards, automate financial reports, and analyze business performance using Microsoft Power BI.
This course focuses on practical finance and accounting use cases such as management reports, profit and loss analysis, balance sheet reporting, cash flow monitoring, budget versus actual analysis, expense tracking, financial KPIs, and executive dashboards.
Participants will learn how to clean and transform financial data, build strong data models, create advanced DAX measures, design interactive reports, and publish dashboards for business decision-making.
Objectives
- Prepare and transform finance and accounting data using Power Query.
- Build proper data models for financial reporting and analysis.
- Create advanced DAX calculations for finance-related reports.
- Develop Power BI reports for profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, and budget monitoring.
- Analyze financial performance using KPIs, trends, ratios, and variance analysis.
- Design professional dashboards for management and executive reporting.
- Automate recurring financial reports and improve reporting efficiency.
- Apply best practices in report layout, data validation, security, and publishing.
- Share reports using Power BI Service with proper access control.
Target Audience
- Finance Managers
- Accounting Managers
- Accountants
- Financial Analysts
- Budget Officers
- Cost Analysts
- Internal Auditors
- Management Reporting Teams
- FP&A Professionals
- Business Analysts
- Power BI users handling finance, accounting, or management reports
- Professionals responsible for preparing dashboards, reports, and financial analysis
Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of Microsoft Excel
- Basic understanding of financial statements and accounting reports
- Basic Power BI experience is recommended
- Familiarity with data tables, formulas, and reporting concepts
- Laptop with Power BI Desktop installed
- Power BI Service account is recommended for publishing and sharing activities
Course Outline
Day 1: Data Preparation and Finance Data Modeling
Module 1: Review of Power BI for Finance and Accounting
- Overview of Power BI in finance and accounting functions
- Common reporting challenges in finance teams
- Manual Excel reports versus automated Power BI dashboards
- Key Power BI components: Power Query, Data Model, DAX, Reports, and Power BI Service
- Examples of finance dashboards and management reports
Module 2: Preparing Finance and Accounting Data Using Power Query
- Importing data from Excel, CSV, databases, and shared folders
- Cleaning trial balance, general ledger, budget, and expense data
- Removing duplicates, errors, blanks, and unnecessary columns
- Splitting, merging, appending, and transforming financial data
- Creating reusable Power Query steps
- Handling month-end and recurring report files
- Best practices in preparing finance datasets
Module 3: Data Modeling for Financial Reporting
- Understanding fact tables and dimension tables
- Creating relationships between financial data tables
- Designing a model for actual, budget, forecast, and historical data
- Creating a proper Date Table for financial reporting
- Working with chart of accounts, departments, cost centers, and business units
- Star schema concepts for finance dashboards
- Common data modeling mistakes and how to avoid them
Module 4: Building a Financial Reporting Data Model
- Structuring a sample finance data model
- Connecting general ledger, budget, and master data tables
- Creating account categories and reporting groups
- Preparing the model for financial statement reporting
- Validating totals and checking data accuracy
Day 2: Advanced DAX for Finance and Accounting
Module 5: DAX Fundamentals Review
- Difference between calculated columns, measures, and tables
- Understanding row context and filter context
- Creating basic financial measures
- Using SUM, CALCULATE, FILTER, ALL, and RELATED
- Best practices in writing clean and reusable DAX formulas
Module 6: Advanced DAX for Financial Analysis
- Actual amount calculations
- Budget amount calculations
- Forecast amount calculations
- Variance amount and variance percentage
- Year-to-date, quarter-to-date, and month-to-date calculations
- Prior year and same period last year comparison
- Rolling averages and moving totals
- Contribution margin, gross margin, and net margin calculations
Module 7: Profit and Loss Reporting in Power BI
- Creating revenue, cost, expense, and profit measures
- Building a dynamic profit and loss statement
- Creating custom sorting for financial statement lines
- Showing subtotals and financial report sections
- Creating drill-down reports by department, branch, or cost center
- Analyzing profitability trends and performance
Module 8: Budget Versus Actual and Variance Analysis
- Creating budget versus actual reports
- Analyzing favorable and unfavorable variances
- Variance by account, department, project, and period
- Creating visual indicators for budget performance
- Building variance explanation dashboards
- Highlighting major cost drivers and financial gaps
Day 3: Dashboards, Automation, Security, and Publishing
Module 9: Financial Dashboard Design
- Designing dashboards for finance users and executives
- Choosing the right visuals for financial reporting
- KPI cards, trend charts, matrix reports, slicers, and drill-through pages
- Dashboard layout and storytelling techniques
- Creating clean and professional management reports
- Avoiding clutter and misleading visuals
Module 10: Cash Flow, Expense, and KPI Dashboards
- Creating cash inflow and outflow reports
- Monitoring operating expenses
- Tracking financial KPIs
- Creating reports for revenue, expenses, profit, and cash position
- Building executive summary pages
- Creating drill-through details for account-level investigation
Module 11: Power BI Service, Sharing, and Security
- Publishing reports to Power BI Service
- Creating workspaces and managing report access
- Setting up scheduled refresh
- Sharing reports with finance and management users
- Introduction to Row-Level Security
- Controlling report access by department, branch, or business unit
- Exporting and presenting reports
Module 12: Capstone Workshop: Finance and Accounting Dashboard
Participants will create a complete Power BI finance dashboard that may include:
- Financial summary page
- Profit and loss report
- Budget versus actual report
- Expense analysis dashboard
- Cash flow monitoring page
- KPI and variance analysis page
- Drill-through report for transaction details
Module 13: Best Practices and Final Review
- Finance reporting automation best practices
- Data validation and reconciliation tips
- Report governance and version control
- Maintaining dashboards after deployment
- Common Power BI mistakes in finance reporting
- Final Q&A and participant output review
