If you're running a UK SME, you're almost certainly using Xero, Sage, or FreeAgent for your accounts. Good choice—they're solid, reliable tools that handle the essentials well.
But you're probably also exporting data to Excel every month to build the reports your board actually wants to see. The P&L breakdown by product line. The cash flow forecast. The departmental cost analysis. None of that comes out of your accounting software the way you need it.
There's a better way. Power BI connects directly to your accounting software, pulls the data automatically, and updates your dashboards without any manual effort. No exports. No copy-paste. No version confusion.
What You Can Build
Once your accounting data flows into Power BI, reports that used to take days take seconds:
Profit and loss trends. Not just this month versus last month—trailing twelve months, broken down by product line, customer segment, or cost centre. Click on any number to drill into the transactions behind it. Spot patterns your static management accounts would never reveal.
Cash flow forecasting. Based on your receivables ageing, payables schedule, and historical payment patterns, see where your cash position will be in 30, 60, 90 days. No more month-end surprises. No more emergency calls to the bank.
Aged receivables with customer detail. Visual breakdown of who owes what and for how long. Click on the 60+ days overdue band and see exactly which invoices are at risk. One more click for customer contact details. Chase debt before it becomes a write-off.
VAT and Making Tax Digital. Real-time view of your VAT position, with data structured for MTD submission. Quarterly returns become a five-minute formality instead of a stressful deadline.
Gross margin analysis. See margin by product, by customer, by month. Identify which parts of your business make money and which quietly drain it. One retailer we worked with discovered 30% of their SKUs had negative margin once all costs were allocated properly.
The Technical Bit
Xero has a native Power BI connector built into the Microsoft ecosystem. Setup takes about fifteen minutes if you know what you're doing. Connect, authenticate, and your chart of accounts starts flowing through.
Sage is slightly more involved. Sage 50 and Sage 200 both support data extraction, but you'll typically work through their API or use an ODBC connection. It's entirely doable—just needs a bit more configuration.
FreeAgent works through third-party connectors or direct API integration. The data model is simpler than Sage, which actually makes it easier to work with in many cases.
The key to all of these is proper data modelling. Your accounting system stores individual transactions. Power BI needs to understand how those transactions relate to each other—customers to invoices, invoices to payments, payments to bank reconciliations, nominal codes to reporting categories.
A good Power BI consultancy or data agency will get the data model right first time. Get it wrong and you'll spend forever fighting the numbers. Get it right and everything else becomes easy.
What It Costs
Power BI Pro is £7.50 per user per month. If you're already on Microsoft 365 E5, it's included in your subscription. For most SMEs, three to five licences covers everyone who needs dashboard access—finance team, directors, maybe department heads.
The setup cost depends on complexity. A straightforward Xero integration with standard financial dashboards—P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, aged debtors—typically runs £5,000-£8,000 as a one-time project when working with a Power BI agency in London or elsewhere in the UK.
More complex requirements scale from there. Multiple legal entities with consolidated reporting. Integration with CRM and operational systems. Custom KPIs specific to your industry. Advanced forecasting models. Each adds to the scope, but each adds real value too.
Is It Worth It?
Ask yourself two questions:
How much time does your finance team spend on monthly reporting? If it's more than a day, the ROI on automation is usually under six months. We've seen businesses reclaim 40+ hours per month—time their finance people now spend on analysis rather than data entry.
Have you ever made a decision based on data that turned out to be wrong? Wrong because the spreadsheet had an error. Wrong because the numbers were three weeks out of date. Wrong because you couldn't see the full picture. What did that decision cost you?
The real value isn't just the time saved—it's the decisions improved. When you can see your business clearly, in real time, you run it better. You spot problems earlier. You find opportunities faster. You stop flying blind.
Whether you build capability in-house or work with a business intelligence agency, your accounting data is already there. You're already paying for it. You might as well use it properly.