Stop rebuilding the same report every month.
If someone in your team exports the same data, pastes it into the same workbook and repeats the same fifteen steps every period, that is not a reporting process — it is an unpaid subscription. I turn it into a model that refreshes from the raw export.
From £225 · quoted per build · you own the file outright
The tell-tale signs
- A monthly ritual of export, paste, fix, repeat
- Formulas that break whenever the export gains a column
- Hardcoded numbers typed over formulas to force a total to agree
- A tab called Sheet1 (2) that nobody dares delete
- Only one person who understands how it works
- Numbers that disagree depending on who produced them
What replaces it
A Power Query model that reads the raw export in whatever shape your system produces it, applies the transformation steps once, and refreshes on a button. The logic lives in named, readable steps instead of a chain of nested formulas.
New month, same file: drop in the export, hit refresh, and the outputs update. When the source format changes, one step needs editing rather than the whole workbook needing rebuilding.
Things I have built this way
Practice internal reporting
WIP and recovery, fee analysis by client and job, deadline and compliance tracking — refreshed from the practice management export rather than rekeyed each month.
Management information packs
The monthly pack, built from the trial balance export: P&L against budget, variance commentary scaffolding, rolling cash position, all on one refresh.
Transaction categorisation
A maintainable rules table that codes the bulk of a transaction export automatically and quarantines whatever it cannot match, instead of a thousand-branch nested IF.
Reconciliation engines
Statement against ledger, platform settlement against sales, stock movements against invoices — matched automatically, with the unmatched items surfaced as the actual output.
Sector cost models
Food and labour cost against sales for hospitality, delivery platform commission reconciliation, job-level costing for trades, settlement bridges for e-commerce.
Schedules and registers
Accruals and prepayments with automatic release, fixed asset registers with depreciation runs, aged listings — each producing the journal lines as an output.
How it is built
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I watch the current process
Screen share, or just send me the workbook and a raw export. I need to see the manual steps, especially the ones considered too obvious to mention.
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Fixed quote and a spec
What it will do, what it will not, what the inputs must look like. Agreed before any building starts.
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Build and parallel run
The new model runs alongside the old process for a period, and the outputs are reconciled to each other. If they disagree, I find out why before handover — that reconciliation is part of the job.
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Handover
A walkthrough recording, written documentation of each step, and the file itself. No dependency on me afterwards.
The conditions I work to
- Zero formula errors. Nothing leaves with a
#REF!,#VALUE!or#N/Ain it. Every workbook is checked before handover. - No hidden hardcoding. If a number has to be entered manually, it lives in a clearly marked input cell, never typed over a formula.
- You own it. Standard Excel and Power Query. No add-ins, no subscription, no licence to me, no phone-home.
- It has to survive me. If your team cannot maintain it after the walkthrough, I have built the wrong thing.
Power Query ships with Excel and is not an extra purchase. If your team already uses Excel, they already have everything this needs.
What does your team rebuild every month?
Describe the report and roughly how long it currently takes. That is usually enough for me to say whether it is worth automating and what it would cost.