Ad hoc reporting and analysis

The Cube Spreadsheet App enables drag-and-drop report building directly in your spreadsheet, making reporting easy whether you are answering specific business questions, exploring data trends, supporting decision-making, or performing quick analysis without predefined report structures.

Ad hoc reporting with Cube is straightforward and flexible. Use the Spreadsheet App to quickly generate and customize ad hoc reports for any use case or set of data. The following instructions will focus on building a Budget vs. Actuals (BvA) report as an example of how to do ad hoc reporting with Cube.

Create an ad hoc BvA report

1. Open a blank spreadsheet

Start by opening a blank spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets. Make sure you have the Cube Spreadsheet App installed and open.

This is where you’ll manage your data connections and build your reports.

2. Build a new range

Click the New button under Build in the Spreadsheet App. This will allow you to build a range by dragging and dropping your Cube dimensions to configure the report structure. It is essentially a simple pivot table-like architecture with columns, rows, and filters.

Below is an example of how to build a BvA P&L report:

• Rows: Drag the Account dimension to the rows and select your Income Statement accounts from the dropdown. Make sure that the Selection Type is set to Include All.
  
• Columns:
  • Drag Time to the columns and set the Selection Type option to Individual. Select the period you wish to analyze, whether it’s a year or a single month.
     
  • Drag Scenario to the columns and select Budget and Actuals from the dropdown.
    
• Filters: Any other dimensions can be set as filters by dragging them into the filter area or clicking Add Remaining Dimensions. Make selections in these filters to narrow down the data fetched.
  

You also have the option to toggle on or off zero or blank rows. This excludes rows without data when you fetch. 

3. Fetch data

Click the Fetch Data button. Cube will populate your spreadsheet with the structure you created when you built your range and then fetch data to your sheet based on your selections.

Customize your report

Because you're building your report right in your spreadsheet, you can edit it however you like. Format cells to highlight important numbers, call out headers, and hide gridlines to clean things up.

To build your BvA variance formulas for this report, you can build them as you would any other spreadsheet formula. In this example, we have created the following formulas within the spreadsheet:

• $ Variance: Actuals in Column C - Budget in Column D
  
• % Variance: $ Variance in Column F / Actuals in Column C
  

You may also consider adding a BvA formula to Cube to minimize the number of formulas you need to maintain in your spreadsheet. To do this, you can create a new Scenario in Cube with a formula set on its properties, subtracting the Budget Scenario from the Actuals Scenario. 

When you have set a variance formula on a Scenario, fetching that Scenario in a spreadsheet will render a value, not a spreadsheet-driven calculation. You will just need to ensure that this new Scenario is part of your Cube range, and that the column headers have a time reference matching the time period of the Actuals and Budget columns. See below:

If you need more data, you can adjust and re-fetch it by changing the filters or adjusting the dimensions selected in your rows and columns and clicking Fetch Data.  

Do you regularly run the same ad hoc report? Save it so you and your stakeholders to open it quickly from the spreadsheet or in the Workspace. Want to learn more about incorporating an ad hoc or saved report into your reporting deck? Check out our guide here.