QuickBooks Online For Dummies, 7th Edition

Chapter 17

Automating QuickBooks Analysis with Power Query

IN THIS CHAPTER

Getting to know Power Query

Connecting Power Query to QuickBooks reports

Using Power Query to create self-updating reports

In Chapter 11, I explain how you can analyze QuickBooks reports in Microsoft Excel. The steps require some manual effort, which can become tedious if you need to perform them frequently or for multiple clients. In this chapter, I show you how you can automate the steps by using the Power Query feature of Excel.

First, I show how to create self-updating reports in Excel. I close the chapter with an explanation of how to unpivot data in a QuickBooks report. Unpivoting means transposing data from columns going across the worksheet into rows that travel down. You can then more easily filter the data and create pivot tables from it, as I discuss in Chapter 11.

Introducing Power Query

Power Query is an Excel feature that allows you to automate report analysis in a similar fashion to what you’d do in Excel. The difference is that Power Query keeps track of the steps that can be applied automatically to future versions of QuickBooks reports and other data. Even better, Power Query is often ...