This is a post about a feature request, that definitely would make my life easier (and I guess others’ too):
Evaluation context and its transition is one of the hardest concepts in DAX and I would find it extremely helpful, if syntax highlighting would assist us here. Let the colour of the table name show whether the expression will be evaluated:
Edit 14-Dec-2017: Now that we can right-align text measures in PowerBI, a SWITCH-measure like here: http://www.thebiccountant.com/2017/04/24/kpis-in-easy-profit-and-loss-for-powerbi/#comment-719 is the best alternative in my eyes. No need to read on 🙂
As shown in my last part of the Easy P&L-series, Power BI unfortunately still lacks some fundamental formatting options like:
So for the moment I choose between the following workaround-options:
For both options the preparations are the same:
Welcome to the last part of my Easy Profit & Loss series where I will cover KPIs in rows & columns:
Show all your figures as a percent of turnover for example: Nice & easy: Divide current figure by the total sum of turnover:
Turnover% =
ABS (
DIVIDE (
[ActSign],
CALCULATE (
[ActSign],
FILTER (
ALL ( IndividualAccountsLayout ),
IndividualAccountsLayout[Description in Report] = “Income”
)
)
)
)
We need to leave the current row context to retrieve the turnover-value in each row, therefore the ALL.
In finance & accounting, you very rarely report the figures with the signs of their source systems, but switch (certain) signs according to different needs. Instead of using unary operators for it, I’ll present an easy and dynamic way for it in Power BI and Power Pivot using DAX. It will cover the following 3 main scenarios:
Switching signs in Power BI and Power Pivot without unary operators
I’m using the sample data from this article but changed the source-data to a double-bookkeeping structure. There signs are used and the transaction entries in your ledger table always add up to zero. This is a method that prevents errors when posting and can also be used to prevent errors in reporting. If you keep the signs in your reporting system, all you have to do is add up the relevant figures and the returned (absolute) figures will always be correct. If you have read my previous articles on Easy P&L, you have seen this method in action: No minus-operation there, just a simple stupid adding of all accounts who fall into several (sub-) total categories via the bridge-table.
The Account-table also contains of (sub-) totals and the column “AccountType” shows if the positions are regarded as Turnover (Revenue) or Expenses:
Table “Accounts”
My values on “1_SwitchAll” corresponds to “FinalValue” in the article above. The revenues come from consultancy and coursed provided. But the revenue for courses don’t just consist of attendee rates, but the costs for catering and paid instructors shall be deducted (highlighted in yellow). So the “good” numbers that contribute to cash in your pocket shall be reported without a sign and the “bad” numbers that result in an outflow of cash shall be reported with a minus. Within the expenses category, the costs carry a minus and the travel refunds (highlighted in orange), which are cash positive, are reported as positives.
Another requirement that is often used for balance-sheet-reporting or reports that only report on cost-situations, require that the costs or liabilities are reported without signs. … Principally, because the reimbursements/cost deductions shall be reported with an opposite sign (to show the adverse effect to the cashflow). This is what “2_SwitchExpLiab” shows (not covered in the article).
Last but not least comes a typical “BossWantsThat”-requirement: Basically some strange stuff that you just have to deliver. Here the main categories “Revenues” and “Expenses” shall be shown with the signs that reflect the cash-direction, but all specifications that follow below shall be reported without signs (again: Principally, because positions with opposite cash-effects than the main category shall carry inverted signs).
Here comes some long awaited comfort functions for part 2 of my easy P&L series. In the first section I’ve presented the general principle on how to work with a structure using an accounts-group-table. Today I will present 2 alternatives to define the reports without specifying single accounts. So if a new accounts are added to the chart of accounts, you don’t have to adjust your report definitions: Just make sure that to fill in all the fields in your account-group-table and you’re ready to go 🙂
So you only need to adjust your report definitions if you add new group items. If that’s still too much, take the 2nd solution, which will even eliminate that requirement:
No more specification of individual accounts
How to use it:
How to use Individual Report Layout
2. Ultrashort Account Layout: Further simplification of just defining the groups (hierarchy) that shall be shown (with option to filter on one of them)
No need to define individual group items
How to use it:
How to use Ultrashort Layout
So these 2 different layouts will both produce the same reports incl. all accounts – just like in the first example. So you can choose which layout-style suits you best – actually, you can use all 3 in parallel. You just have to make sure to grab your pivot-rows from the correct tables and in Excel to grab the matching measures, as they all have their own bridge-tables (which need to be used in the measures):
Welcome to part 2 of my series of easy Profit & Loss and other account statements in Power BI and Excel. In the first part I introduced the general principle of creating asymmetric shaped reports who use just one measure per column (you should have read this article in order to understand this post here).
This technique capitalises the aggregation power of the Vertipaq engine and creates a bridge-table between your DimAccount-table and the ReportsAccountsLayout-table. In there for every line of your report, all accounts that belong to the (sub-)totals are matched (“AccountsAllocation”). This table can get very long, but the engine can handle this easily:
In the first example we’ve worked with a chart of accounts, which had a parent-chield-hierarchy defining all the subtotals of the report. In this example we’re working with a different setup, using the good old DimAccountsGroups-table. Just one row per account and the columns are coming in pairs, containing the group-criteria and the sort-order for the report:
We also need a second table (ReportsAccountsLayout) that holds the definitions of the report-layouts like this:
