FrancodesystemsFran<code>systems
BI / AnalyticsCustom integration

Holded Power BI integration

Power BI financial dashboards fed directly from Holded, with no manual exports.

HoldedHolded
Power BIPower BI

Implementation time · 8-15 días laborables

Diagnosis

The problem

Holded has built-in reports, but they are basic: standard views with no real way to cross data, no cashflow projection based on history, no free segmentation. For companies with 20+ employees and a CFO who needs executive reporting, Holded falls short. Power BI is the natural tool in Microsoft ecosystems (M365), but without a clean data pipeline it ends up being fed by monthly CSV exports that the CFO or controller literally spends days cleaning up. The result: a dashboard that shows reality from three weeks ago, not from yesterday.

Proposal

The solution

Executive dashboards with real Holded data refreshed hourly or daily. An ETL pipeline extracts invoices, payments, expenses and accounting entries from Holded, normalizes them into a data warehouse (Postgres, BigQuery or Azure SQL) and exposes them to Power BI via DirectQuery or import. Ready-made dashboard templates: projected cashflow, monthly P&L, customer ageing, margins by category, year-over-year comparison.

Scope

What we automate

  • Hourly/daily extraction of Holded invoices, payments, expenses and entries into a data warehouse
  • Dimensional (star schema) modeling for efficient multidimensional analysis
  • Projected cashflow dashboard at 30/60/90 days using payment history
  • Monthly P&L with drill-down by category, customer and cost center
  • Customer ageing with a risk scale (green/yellow/red)
  • Margins by product/service with year-over-year history
  • CEO scorecard with key KPIs and deviation alerts
  • Power BI connector via DirectQuery or import depending on frequency and volume
Who uses it

Real use cases

These are the profiles that most ask us for the HoldedPower BI integration and what they get in the end.

Case 01

B2B services company with a part-time CFO

Before: The CFO spent 2 days a month preparing reports from Holded by hand.

After: Reports updated daily. The CFO goes from 2 days to 1 hour reviewing.

Case 02

Group with 3 legal entities, holding consolidating

Before: Monthly consolidation done with Excel and separate exports.

After: Each Holded connected to Power BI with a consolidated group view in real time.

Case 03

Ecommerce that needs to control margin per product

Before: Knowing the real margin per product meant crossing Holded with a purchasing Excel.

After: Margin per product/category visible on a dashboard with drill-down by order.

Before / After

What changes exactly

Without the integration

  • The CFO loses 2 days/month preparing manual reports
  • Data always 2 to 4 weeks behind
  • No cashflow projection based on history
  • Multi-entity consolidation in Excel

With the integration

  • Dashboards refreshed every hour
  • Yesterday's data, not data from three weeks ago
  • Cashflow projected at 90 days with history
  • Consolidated multi-entity view in real time
Architecture

How we build it

Holded REST API to an ETL pipeline in Python or Node (depending on your stack) to Postgres / BigQuery / Azure SQL, then a Power BI semantic model with hierarchies and optimized DAX measures. Incremental refresh so we do not reprocess everything each time. For companies on M365, we prefer Azure SQL plus Power BI Service. For open stacks, BigQuery or Postgres. Dashboard templates delivered as a versioned .pbix.

flow.ts
webhook power bi.event
queue.enqueue(jobId)
worker.handle() // idempotent
holded.api.call() // retries with backoff
log.emit({ status: 'ok' })
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How long does a refresh take?

Configurable to your needs. The usual setup: a nightly daily refresh for executive reports, an hourly refresh for operational ones. Power BI Premium even allows real-time refresh with DirectQuery.

Which data warehouse do you recommend?

It depends on your stack. M365 plus Power BI Service points to Azure SQL. An open stack points to Postgres. If you expect very large volumes (hundreds of thousands of invoices per year), BigQuery wins on cost.

Ready-made templates or fully custom?

Both options. We have base templates (cashflow, P&L, ageing) ready to deliver and personalize. If you need very specific reports, we build them on the data warehouse we have already set up.

Does it support multiple entities?

Yes. Each Holded in the group feeds the same data warehouse with an entity dimension. Power BI consolidates automatically, with row-level security per user if needed.

Does it work with Power BI Pro or do I need Premium?

Pro is enough for most cases. Premium is only needed if you require DirectQuery with many concurrent users or very large datasets.

Tableau or Looker instead of Power BI?

Yes, the data warehouse is BI-tool agnostic. If you prefer Tableau, Looker, Metabase or Superset, we connect it just the same.

Shall we talk about your Power BI integration?

A 30-minute call, no strings. You leave with scope and a price.