Team Power Solutions Creates Manufacturing Revenue Reports in Minutes With Spreadsheet Server

• Calculating the manufacturing group’s percentage of completion for revenue recognition dropped from two to three days to 10 minutes per month-end close.

• The financial planning and analysis self-service reporting model eliminated operational bottlenecks.

• Monthly financial statements became fully automated with direct general ledger connections to SAP Business One.

• The accounting manager built custom reports independently within weeks of receiving developer license training.

Team Power Solutions repeatedly faced a frustrating month-end bottleneck with its manufacturing group’s revenue reports. The finance team spent up to three days each month preparing revenue reports based on percentage of completion for 50+ active manufacturing projects. By connecting their data and automating their reports with Spreadsheet Server from insightsoftware, they cut that time down to 10 minutes. Besides streamlining manufacturing reporting, Spreadsheet Server put self-service reporting into the accounting team’s hands. Now, the accounting manager can build custom reports directly from SAP Business One (B1) without having to reach out to internal teams for help. The manager started creating reports independently within weeks, even fielding requests from other departments that previously required FP&A intervention. Team Power Solutions is a power, automation, and controls business serving critical infrastructure across Western Canada. The diversified company operates electrical services, manufacturing, engineering, and automation divisions, keeping pipelines, mining operations, and agricultural systems running for their clients. Based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the medium-sized enterprise manages complex, custom manufacturing and engineering projects alongside field services operations.

Before implementing Spreadsheet Server, Team Power Solutions faced a revenue recognition problem that consumed days of every month-end close. The manufacturing group builds custom products over multi-month periods, creating a complex accounting challenge: how do you assess revenue completion over one- or two-month periods when projects span multiple quarters? Previously, they relied on subjective estimates. The accounting department would send a spreadsheet listing all active projects to the manufacturing manager, asking for percentage completion on each one. But manufacturing managers don't think in accounting terms. The manufacturing manager’s perspective is that a great deal of the project work has been done already because they’ve ordered most of the project materials and shipped them to the customer’s site. “In our manager's head, he's probably 50% done,” Keenan Davreux, FP&A Manager at Team Power Solutions, explained. “It’s a big lift, getting the materials shipped and dropped off at the site. In reality, if nothing's assembled, if nothing's actually complete, you can't recognize revenue.” This created serious problems, requiring multiple conversations between the accounting team and the manufacturing manager to understand what portion of the revenue could properly be recognized. With 50+ projects running simultaneously, the back-and-forth meetings stretched across two to three days, delaying month-end close, billing processes, and other critical activities. The team needed a more standard and consistent way to assess completion from a finance and accounting perspective directly.

Team Power Solutions discovered that Spreadsheet Server could query multiple data sources to solve their revenue recognition challenge. The solution connected the company’s SAP B1 ERP with Eralis, the customized project management software the organization uses. The breakthrough came from recognizing that manufacturing employees were already submitting relevant data. Manufacturing team members submit timesheets by project to allocate costs properly. Since each project has a budgeted total number of hours, the FP&A team can calculate percentage completion by comparing actual hours submitted to date against the total budget. “With Spreadsheet Server, I was able to query four different queries from our database and create this manufacturing report,” Davreux said. “Because Spreadsheet Server's all automated, it just takes two clicks to essentially query a bunch of data, copy and paste a couple things, and I've essentially turned a two- to three-day process into a 10-minute process.” [customer_testimonial] The automated approach eliminated most of the back and forth. The team occasionally still needs to verify whether a project that came in significantly under budget has already closed.

The FP&A team was already using Spreadsheet Server when Davreux joined a year ago. But he immediately recognized its value from his prior experience with time-consuming report processes. “When I'm putting together the monthly financials for month-end close, it doesn't take me any time at all. It's all automated,” Davreux said. “I'm connected directly to the GLs in our accounting software, which is SAP B1, and I go straight to the checks and balances.” Davreux initially held the only developer license, creating a bottleneck. Questions requiring SAP B1 knowledge flowed to him, even though the accounting manager owned the day-to-day operations and understood the data structures far better. The solution was obvious: deploy a self-service model. In December, the accounting manager received his own developer license, and Davreux saw impressive results right away. “It is intuitive to use because he's already started building out his own reports. He’s already started going into the queries and looking at, ‘OK, what's been built from predecessors before us? How can I make this better? Where can I go to get this data?’” Davreux noted. “It's so simple. You just click and drag to connect tables together and pull your queries together.” The accounting manager leveraged insightsoftware's training videos and webinars to get up to speed, rarely needing to ask Davreux for additional help. Within a few weeks, he was handling requests independently. When a department outside finance asked for materials data, Davreux replied that he wasn’t sure how to build the report. The accounting manager jumped in and delivered it directly from SAP B1 using his developer license.

From the FP&A perspective, Davreux has built a budget model using Spreadsheet Server queries, along with fully automated monthly financial statements. The manufacturing completion reports run monthly to assess project progression across the 50+ active jobs. Additional reports include productivity analysis that pulls employee hours and sorts them into chargeable versus non-chargeable categories to calculate overall productivity numbers. Headcount reports track staffing metrics, while various dashboards serve decision-makers looking at key performance indicators across the business. The accounting team uses Spreadsheet Server extensively for month-end close and reconciliation processes, although Davreux isn't directly involved in those workflows. The quick reconciliation process stands out. “Because it's all automated and you just click and drag your formulas over to load the new data in, it's very quick and easy to scroll down and check whether or not you're in balance,” Davreux noted.

Team Power Solutions aims to become faster and nimbler at sharing data across the organization. Power BI will fuel much of that transformation, creating a dashboarding environment that delivers real-time performance insights. The team aims to add more developer licenses to continue building self-service capability. They're exploring integration with HubSpot, their CRM software, and Dayforce, their HR solution. The push toward real-time dashboards addresses a practical problem: month-end close takes time, holding up reporting to business units. Rather than sending Excel workbooks via email 12 times per year—creating version control nightmares—business unit managers could access historical information through dashboards whenever needed.

When asked what he'd tell a peer at another company considering Spreadsheet Server, Davreux focused on the core value for FP&A professionals. “It's going to streamline a lot of the manual stuff,” Davreux said. “The value add with FP&A is not building spreadsheets or models in Excel. If you don't have this tool, that's what a lot of your time is being used for. If you have the tool, you're actually getting to the root of what FP&A is for. That's assessing financial performance and coming up with solutions to problems in a more timely, efficient manner. Bringing solutions to your managers, to your leadership group in a much quicker, nimble way.” Within his first three months at Team Power Solutions, Davreux built monthly financial statements the company didn't have before, created a basic forecast model, and delivered several other reports—accomplishments he attributes directly to Spreadsheet Server. “I've never been able to do that, and that's because of Spreadsheet Server,” Davreux said. “It truly made my job a lot easier.” Beyond the efficiency, Davreux is enthusiastic about the strategic value. When financial results reveal something isn't working, he can discuss the concerns with other leaders right away. No more waiting weeks to have financial results ready to share. “It allows me to have conversations a lot faster with our key decision makers,” he said.   Ready to Stop Building Spreadsheets and Start Analyzing Data? Discover how Spreadsheet Server from insightsoftware can automate your financial reporting and free your team to focus on strategic analysis instead of manual data manipulation.