Consolidated financial dashboard for 4 entities from Exact Online

The challenge

The group runs four entities, each with its own administration in Exact Online and its own general ledger. Producing a consolidated picture meant exporting each ledger separately and stitching the numbers together in spreadsheets - slow to assemble, hard to audit and out of date the moment it was finished.

The statutory chart of accounts also didn’t answer the questions management actually asked. The books are structured for compliance; the business thinks in terms of operations. Both views were needed, from the same underlying data, without maintaining two sets of numbers.

That created the real problem: an operational view only works if the mapping behind it stays current, which is no small task for an organisation with over 3,000 unique accounts. New accounts get opened and existing ones get reclassified as the business evolves. Any solution that required a developer to touch the model every time an account moved would be obsolete within a quarter.

Our approach

1. Listen - We reviewed the four administrations, the differences between their charts of accounts, and how management and the accounting team each use the numbers today.
2. Explore - We set up the extraction from Exact Online into a Microsoft Fabric data warehouse, landing raw accounting data on a daily sync.
3. Shape - We built a Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion structure, applying transformations layer by layer up to a consolidated reporting layer, and designed the operational mapping as data rather than as hard-coded logic.
4. Build - We delivered the consolidated Power BI dashboard and the Excel connection for month-end close.

What we built

• A daily sync pulling raw general ledger data out of the four Exact Online administrations into a Microsoft Fabric data warehouse.
• A Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion architecture, transforming raw entries step by step into a single consolidated reporting layer.
• An operational mapping layer that sits alongside the statutory chart of accounts, so the same figures can be read either way - compliance or management - by switching the view.
• A custom app that lets finance manage the mappings for 3,000+ accounts across the four entities, with changes flowing through to the dashboard in real time.
• A consolidated Power BI dashboard for managers to ground decisions on the latest numbers, and a native Excel connection for accountants to speed up month-end close with live consolidated data.

Key outcomes

• One consolidated picture, refreshed daily - four general ledgers roll up automatically, replacing the manual export-and-stitch cycle.
• Statutory and operational views from one source - the business switches perspective without maintaining a second set of books.
• Mappings owned by finance - the people who know the accounts maintain them directly in the app, so the operational view stays accurate as the chart of accounts evolves.
• Month-end close in Excel, on live data - the accounting team keeps the tool it knows, backed by up-to-date consolidated numbers.

From four separate ledgers and a spreadsheet consolidation to one daily-refreshed financial dashboard the business maintains itself.