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Power BI (and many other reporting tools such as Tableau, Qlik, Spotfire, Cognos, etc) do not provide any out-of-the-box functionality for budgeting. Only SAP Analytics Cloud and Oracle EPM offer built-in reporting + budgeting capabilities on the same platform, but such implementations come with huge consulting and maintenance efforts (and dollars). For this reason, almost all small & medium businesses, and a considerable number of large enterprises, rely only on Excel for budgeting.
Organizations looking to implement a budgeting solution in Power BI have two major options:
If they need a simple, user-friendly, IT-independent solution that does not require a backend infrastructure for running a database, server or service, they can use Inforiver Matrix (standalone) on Power BI. The budgets created in this case are stored as part of the .pbix file itself. The solution is 100% Power BI Certified.
Companies looking to implement a budgeting solution with writeback capability need backend infrastructure (mainly, a database, along writeback & other services). They have three options:
Note that the last two options (PowerApps or other third-party visuals) are IT-centric implementations in nature. They require you to work with IT to create database schema and tables. These solutions are rigid given that changes to the budget templates (e.g., adding a new column) are effort intensive – mandating changes at all layers. Any changes will also require the reports to be republished.
The first option - Inforiver Enterprise on Power BI – does not come with these constraints. You can deploy a business-friendly, robust, and yet flexible writeback solution that has minimal dependencies on IT. Changes to budget templates such as adding a new measure or column can be done at run time (reading view), and Inforiver will automatically detect the change and update the backend schema. You can create new budget templates from Power BI without even having to create a corresponding backend table – Inforiver will create a database table for you automatically.
Start with a blank template and input your budget (Zero-based budgeting)
Use prior period data to create a budget, and make further enhancements
Enter budgets at the top level and distribute them across descendants (departments, teams, geographies, months etc.)
Add comment, dropdown, date & user fields to your budget template
Allocate budgets and projections based on past performance or value drivers
Capture budgets from multiple users in reading view
Add cell, row & column-level comments; Initiate cell-level threaded conversations with notifications
Lock forecasts or budgets for specific categories (years, geographies, months) and disable editing; supports locking specific cells and entire hierarchy branches
Write data back to a destination of your choice; supports Fabric Lakehouse/ Datawarehouse, DataVerse, Azure, Snowflake, OneDrive, SharePoint and more
About Inforiver!
Inforiver is the fastest way to do everything in Power BI. It enables citizen developer productivity and unleashes true self-service with our intuitive and interactive no-code data app suite for Microsoft Power BI. The product is developed by Lumel Technologies Inc, who are #1 Power BI Visuals AppSource Partner serving over 3,000+ customers worldwide with their xViz, Inforiver, and ValQ offerings.
Join this webinar to explore the significant upgrades in Inforiver Enterprise 2.9, highlighting new capabilities such as enhanced writeback options, dynamic data inputs, and advanced forecasting controls.