Despite all the attempts of domestic companies to switch from 1C, which has Russian roots, to other financial and operational accounting systems, 1C remains the most popular system used by companies in Ukraine.
In this article, we will not consider why this is the case, we will simply record this fact.
On the one hand, the use of 1C fully meets the needs of accounting and tax accounting, but as for management reporting, which is of the greatest interest to management and owners, because it really reflects the state of the business, here the specialists of the financial department begin to face certain difficulties. In this article, we'll look at the top 5 problems that companies face when preparing and analyzing management reporting based on 1C data, and how these problems can be solved with Power BI
1.Management reporting forms differ from those available in 1C
This is due to the different management policies of companies, peculiarities of operational accounting, as well as the approach to data analysis and methods used.
Each company has its own individual peculiarities of management accounting and, as a result, specifics in the forms of management reporting. Even similar companies in the same industry may have quite different analytical sections and reporting structures.
Unfortunately, typical 1C configurations such as Accounting, UT, UTP, UPP, and others do not have a flexible designer that would allow you to customize financial reports in a way that meets the needs of the company.
In practice, this problem is solved with the help of Excel. They download the data and manually build reports in the required forms and sections.
This is usually a rather labor-intensive process, which also increases the risk of making a mistake when preparing reports (human factor).
With Power BI, we can create reporting forms of any complexity!
We connect directly to 1C, automatically receive all the necessary data and generate reports in one click from any mobile gadget in the forms defined by the company's accounting policy.
2. Building plan-fact reporting and analyzing deviations
In typical 1C configurations, there is no Budgeting block. Most companies implement this process in Excel. It turns out that the data sources for building plan-fact reporting are in different places, the fact is in 1C, and the plan is in Excel spreadsheets.
Consolidation is usually done manually in the same Excel format, which is a rather painstaking and time-consuming task.
With Power BI, such consolidation can be set up automatically. Using connectors, we connect to 1C and Excel budget files. We take the necessary data in Power BI, combine them into a single, holistic model, and automatically get Plan-to-fact reporting in automatic mode.
3. Consolidation of data from different systems
No matter how you slice it, 1C is still a financial system. It often happens that a company uses other specialized systems in addition to 1C that cover certain business processes. As a rule, these are CRM, WMS, TMS, and other cloud and stationary solutions.
Thus, the company's data is scattered in different places. But for analysis, a manager needs to have all the necessary data in one place, and it needs to be linked to each other in a single model.
Power BI completely covers this need. With a large number of built-in connectors, we connect to all the necessary sources, take data into BI, set up connections, and build analytical reporting. Thus, a manager using one report has consolidated reporting built from different sources without wasting time switching to different interfaces of different systems that are not related to each other.
4. Speed and flexibility in working with large amounts of data
Large companies work with a huge amount of information and, as a result, have very heavy and sluggish 1C databases.
In some projects, we dealt with 1C databases that exceeded 1 terabyte in size, and financial and analytical reports take a long time to generate.
For operational management, waiting 5 minutes for a report to load is a very long time, and in real life it can be much longer.
Power BI solves this problem. The system's architecture allows you to process huge amounts of information very quickly, which reduces the time for building reports by 10 times!
5.Convenient form of data visualization (graphs and charts)
Classic tabular reports in 1C hide a lot of valuable information from the user.
Try to quickly analyze the dynamics of profit changes over the past 5 years on a monthly basis and identify peak periods. And what if you also need to track the profit with the dynamics of changes in accounts receivable?
It is extremely difficult to do this with tabular reports, but if this information is displayed in the form of a periodic graph, this information is disclosed to the user at a glance.
Visualization plays a very important role in data analysis. Charts, graphs, and histograms will tell you much more about your business than boring classic tabular reports in 1C.
If your company has any difficulties in working with 1C when preparing and analyzing reports, fill out the feedback form and our consultant will tell you in more detail how we can solve your problem with Power BI in 20 minutes!
