Is excel or access best for financial reports?

[AaronDP]

Hi,

I am asking foradvice on how to build a financialreporting programme and I am not sure if I need to use Excel, Access, VBA or VBand hope you can direct me?

I have four datatable. The first is daily revenue in around 30 different codes, the second iswages across 10 department, thirdly, a stock table listing purchases and lastlya table of weekly overheads.

I want to buildreports that can select different date ranges and different periods of summary.Ultimately it would be useful to compare one period to another. The reportsneed to be in a profit loss format. Each report 'pulls' data from the fourtables and allocated different amounts depending upon other variables inthe tables. So only 40% of onedepartment wages go into a particular report.

Is the maths bestdone in Excel? In excel it ends up as around 30 sheets and becomes difficult to manage.

Is there a commercial program that already does this?

Thanks

Aaron

 

[tweedle]

Hi AaronDP;

Welcome to MrExcel.

From the subject, 'best' is a really subjective term. It will really depend on what is build-able, scale-able, maintainable and produces the necessary results with the skill-sets available.

As you appear to be in pre-design phase, and from the information presented, I'd say Access would easily accommodate your needs.
There are tons of financial systems & report-writers available. Having the requirements and performing product:requirement-fulfillment:cost analysis is the general path for vetting such packages.

Some design considerations:
Will the data be stored in a core system or replicated to the reporting system?
Does the data have everything needed to produce desired reports or will data elements need to be propagated?
What types of interfaces do users need? (App based, web-based, automation/delivery methods)

 

[AaronDP]

Thanks for the reply. I intend to keep the data on a shared folder on a server so upto ten people can access it all be only one at a time. The data will be inputed into the database with a form or imported from excel.

The key bit is being able to allocate different amounts to different reports. Would I need VBA to do this?

 

[BengalMagic]

Thanks for the reply. I intend to keep the data on a shared folder on a server so upto ten people can access it all be only one at a time. The data will be inputed into the database with a form or imported from excel.

The key bit is being able to allocate different amounts to different reports. Would I need VBA to do this?

Access is better suited for what you're trying to achieve.

 

[RonB1111]

Have you looked at products such as Quickbooks? These types of products are inexpensive for small businesses, already developed, and easy to learn. They have existing financial reports and transaction analysis which can be downloaded into excel for further analysis.

 

[BengalMagic]

Behave.