QuickBooks Online For Dummies, 8th Edition

Chapter 19

Automating QuickBooks Analysis with Power Query

IN THIS CHAPTER

Introducing Power Query

Connecting to QuickBooks reports

Creating Self-Updating reports

In Chapter 15, 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.

I also show you how to create self-updating reports in Excel, and I give 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 15.

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 referred to as a code-free solution, which means ...