Excel reporting automation in Dubai
Keep the Excel pack your board and your bank are used to; remove the copy-paste that builds it. Power Query, refreshable models and scheduled distribution from Tally, Zoho Books, Odoo, SAP Business One and the rest. Fixed price.
Not everything should move to Power BI
Some reporting has to be an Excel file. The bank wants the covenant pack as a workbook. The auditors want the VAT working file with formulas they can trace. The group finance manager in another country consolidates from a template that has not changed in six years. Moving those outputs to a dashboard would create a second version of the truth and a new argument.
What should change is how the workbook gets built. If someone exports from the ERP on the first of the month, pastes into a staging sheet, fixes the dates, runs a macro somebody wrote in 2019 and then checks the totals by eye, that is not an Excel problem. It is an input and assembly problem, and it can be automated without changing the output anyone sees.
This is the sibling of the Excel to Power BI migration Dubai service. That page is for teams ready to leave Excel for reporting; this one is for teams that are not, or that have outputs which should stay. It is quoted as a fixed price and delivered remotely on GST hours.
Automate or migrate? A one-minute decision
The two paths overlap at the start and diverge at the end. This table is the version of the conversation we have on the first call.
| Question | Automate in Excel | Migrate to Power BI |
|---|---|---|
| Does the output have to be a workbook (bank, auditor, group template)? | Yes — automate the inputs and assembly | No — the readers want a screen, not a file |
| How many people read it? | A handful, who open the file | Many, on different devices, with different access rights |
| Do readers need to filter, drill or compare on their own? | Rarely; the pack is the pack | Yes; the questions change every meeting |
| Is the logic mostly formulas the finance team understands? | Yes — keep it visible in the sheet | No — it has become macros and hidden tabs |
| Does it need row-level security by entity or branch? | No, or handled by separate files | Yes |
| Is this a step towards Power BI later? | Yes; the same Power Query and model carry over | You are already there |
What we automate
Five things, in roughly the order they remove manual work. Not every project needs all five, and the scope says which.
- Power Query connections to your ERP: a direct connection where the system allows it (SQL, an ODBC driver for Tally, the Zoho Books or Odoo API), or a query that reads the export file from a fixed folder when it does not. Either way, refresh replaces paste.
- A refreshable data model inside Excel using Power Pivot, or a Power BI semantic model that Excel reads through Analyze in Excel. The second is the better shape when several workbooks need the same figures, because the model is defined once and every workbook refreshes from it.
- Scheduled distribution with Power Automate: the monthly pack refreshed and delivered to a Teams channel, a SharePoint library or an email list on a schedule, with the file name carrying the period.
- Validation checks built into the workbook: control totals against the ERP trial balance, a VAT reconciliation line that ties the working file to the ledger, row counts against the source, and a check sheet that goes red before anyone sends the file.
- Retiring macros that replicate ETL. A macro that opens six files and copies ranges is a Power Query in disguise; rebuilding it as a query makes it visible, refreshable and maintainable by someone who is not the person who wrote it.
Typical month-end packs we automate
These are the workbooks a UAE finance team most often builds by hand, and what automation changes for each.
- Management accounts by entity: P&L and balance sheet per entity and consolidated, refreshed from each entity’s ledger with intercompany eliminations as a query step rather than a manual journal in the sheet.
- VAT working file by return period: output and input VAT by supply type — standard-rated, zero-rated, exempt, out of scope, reverse-charge imports — for each entity and each return period, built so the totals reconcile to the return filed with the Federal Tax Authority. We are not tax agents; the file shows what the ledger says, and your adviser confirms what is filed.
- WPS and payroll reconciliation: the SIF file total against the payroll ledger and the bank debit, by entity and month, with differences listed by employee.
- AR and PDC ageing: open invoices by days past due, and post-dated cheques on hand by maturity month, kept as separate schedules and reconciled to the receivables control account.
- Stock ageing: quantity and value on hand by age band, by warehouse and entity, from the inventory system, with slow-moving lines flagged against a threshold the business sets.
- Intercompany matrix: balances each entity says it owes and is owed by every other, in a grid, with the mismatches highlighted before consolidation rather than after.
From these systems
A short note on each of the common UAE finance systems. The full table, with connection method and refresh notes, is on the Power BI Dubai hub.
- Tally (TallyPrime): ODBC driver on the machine that runs Tally, read by Power Query through the on-premises gateway when scheduled; day books and ledgers export cleanly, but the driver needs Tally open, which shapes the refresh schedule.
- Zoho Books: REST API with an OAuth token, read by Power Query; good for invoices, bills, payments and journals, with paging that the query has to handle.
- Odoo: PostgreSQL database access where you host it, or the XML-RPC and JSON-RPC API where you do not; either gives full ledger detail.
- SAP Business One: direct SQL Server or HANA access to the company database, read-only, which is the cleanest source on this list.
- Dynamics 365 Business Central: OData web services or the standard connector; entities and dimensions come through with their names.
- QuickBooks Online and Xero: APIs with rate limits, well suited to a nightly refresh of the ledger and open items rather than a live query.
How the project runs
The method is the migration method at a smaller scale, and it ends with the same test: the automated workbook and the manual workbook agree for a period, and the manual one is retired.
- Audit: we open the workbook and trace every input to its source, every macro to what it does, and every total to what it should reconcile to. The output is a one-page map of the pack and a list of what will be automated.
- Build: queries, model, validation checks and distribution, built in a copy of the workbook so the live pack is untouched.
- Parallel run: one or two month-ends where both versions are produced. Every difference is traced to its cause, which is almost always a manual adjustment the old process made without recording it.
- Switch: the automated pack becomes the pack, the old process is documented as retired, and the person who used to build it is shown how to refresh, check and send the new one.
- Afterwards, if you want the queries and the model looked after month to month, the Power BI managed services UAE service covers Excel-fed models on the same terms.
The other services
Six services, one pricing method. Most engagements use one or two of them together.
Power BI Consulting Services Dubai
Power BI consulting services in Dubai
Open the service pagePower BI Dashboard Development Dubai
Power BI dashboard development in Dubai
Open the service pageCorporate Power BI Training Dubai
Corporate Power BI training in Dubai, run on your own data
Open the service pagePower BI Managed Services UAE
Power BI managed services for the UAE
Open the service pagePower BI Performance Optimisation
Power BI performance optimisation — and when to rebuild instead
Open the service pageExcel Reporting Automation Dubai — questions people ask
Can we keep Excel?
Can Power Query connect to Tally or Zoho Books?
Can reports be emailed automatically?
How do we know the automated numbers match?
Is this a step towards Power BI?
What does it cost?
Pricing
The method is published alongside the numbers, because what drives a figure matters as much as the figure. The diagnostic is a fixed price; a build is quoted against a written scope.
An automation project is quoted from the audit, and the scope itemises the workbooks, the sources and the checks rather than the hours.
A pack automation starts at AED 15,500, and most fall between AED 15,500 to AED 62,000. A single workbook fed by one export sits at the lower end; a set of entity packs fed by several systems, each with its own reconciliation and a two-cycle parallel run, sits at the upper. The audit is what turns that band into a figure, and the figure is fixed in writing before the build starts.
A short discovery call, no charge
Thirty minutes on GST hours, and a look at your current reports and the systems behind them. We tell you the smallest practical next step, even if it is smaller than you expected.
A written scope
Sources, the model, pages and visuals, users and their security, training and handover, written down. If it is not in the scope, it is not in the quote.
A fixed quote against that scope
One number in writing. The quote is the price; there is no hourly rate underneath it to drift.
Inside scope is our cost; outside scope is quoted first
If we find something worse than expected inside the scope, that is our cost. If you want something outside it, we quote it separately before doing it, and you decide.
Payment stages
Agreed in the scope document, in writing, before work starts.
What it costs
The reporting diagnostic is a fixed AED 4,950. That is the whole amount. Nothing is added at checkout. Builds are quoted rather than sold from a page: they start at AED 15,500, and most land in the AED 15,500 to AED 62,000 range once the sources, the state of the data, the pages and the training are known. The figure in your written quote is the price.
What the scope itemises for this service
If the pack is only one of several reporting problems and the definitions behind it are the real issue, the Power BI consulting services Dubai page describes the larger engagement. Automating board reporting with Power BI covers the moment when the pack is ready to become a screen. When you are ready, Get started — four quick questions books a thirty-minute call at no charge.
Ready to find out what this would take for your business?
Four quick questions tell us the systems you run, the reports you assemble by hand and who reads them. From there, a 30-minute call, no charge, and a written scope if it makes sense to go further.