Tracking operational profits through dynamic dashboards in Power BI

The challenge

The client’s timesheet reporting for 200+ consultants ran through deprecated timesheet tooling, a legacy on-premise SQL database, and a deprecated reporting interface. That chain reached a hard cut-off: multiple licences critical to extracting and processing raw time-entry data were set to expire in 2026. Without action, the entire reporting chain would go dark.

Rebuilding the model from the ground up also opened a bigger prize: an operational P&L for the company derived directly from timesheet entries. Every logged hour carries a cost rate and, where it is billable, a revenue rate - so once time entries are modelled cleanly against projects, clients and departments, the same data can produce margin by project, utilisation by consultant and contribution by department, not just hours worked. Instead of finance reconstructing profitability weeks later in spreadsheets, the business gets a near-real-time view of where it is making and losing money, refreshed daily alongside the rest of the reporting.

Our approach

1. Listen - We reviewed the existing timesheet tooling, SQL database and ETL/BI chain end to end, examined the underlying data and mapped out the target cloud architecture before writing a line of code.
2. Explore - We stood up the target Azure and Microsoft Fabric environments, built the ingestion pipelines from the on-premise database, and implemented a Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion structure to replace the retiring ETL jobs.
3. Shape - We modelled the data - relationships, measures in a single semantic layer - then built the Power BI dashboards according to management’s requirements.
4. Build - We connected and tested against live data, ran go-live and monitoring, and handed over training and documentation to the teams.

What we built

• An Azure SQL replica synchronising raw timesheet data from the source timesheet tooling to the cloud.
• A Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion data architecture in Microsoft Fabric, replacing the retired ETL pipeline.
• A semantic model that turns raw, inconsistent tables - time entries, users, organisation - into clear, reusable definitions for people, projects and departments.
• Power BI dashboards that replicate and modernise the existing BI reporting, with mobile access and centralised governance.

Key outcomes

• Daily data refresh - timesheet data flows from source to dashboards automatically every day, replacing manual, fragile cube processing and Excel exports.
• Dynamic dashboards on web and mobile - interactive reporting that people can filter and drill into from a browser or a phone, wherever they work.
• Row-level security (RLS) - every person only sees the data they are entitled to. RLS enforces access rules inside the semantic model, so users only see their corresponding data.

From retired timesheet tooling to dynamic profit dashboard available on web and mobile