Integrating DATABASICS Time & Expense with Microsoft Power BI: Unlocking Deeper Spend Insights for CFOs

Finance chiefs sit on a growing mountain of operational data, yet that information often lives in silos with time sheets in one platform, expense reports in another, project budgets in the ERP. When data stays fragmented, even the most diligent month‑end close can miss emerging risks: a project creeping over budget, travel costs climbing faster than revenue, or policy violations slipping through approvals.

Connecting your Time & Expense system directly to Microsoft Power BI shifts the narrative from lagging compliance to forward‑looking insight. With a live data bridge, CFOs can test assumptions daily, model scenarios in minutes, and turn anecdotal budget “overruns” into quantifiable root causes.

TL;DR—Key Takeaways for Finance Leaders

• Single analytic layer: Merge time, expense, ERP, HR, and CRM data in one Power BI model to create a trusted source of truth 

• Driver‑level visibility: Spot policy exceptions, project burn, and card‑spend leakage before they hit the ledger

• Fast payback potential: Many DATABASICS customers recover integration costs within the first fiscal year by redirecting even modest discretionary spend to priority initiatives

What new questions can CFOs answer once Time & Expense data lives in Power BI?

Organizations typically manage employee time and expenses as separate functions—timesheets in one system, expense reports in another. This separation creates fundamental challenges:

• Incomplete project costing: Labor hours tracked in timesheet systems don't automatically connect with related business expenses, making it difficult to calculate true project ROI.
• Delayed reporting cycles: Finance teams spend excessive time manually combining data from multiple sources.
• Limited visibility: Executives lack real-time insights into spending patterns across departments and projects.
• Missed optimization opportunities: Without connected data, organizations can't identify correlations between time investment and expense outcomes.

By integrating DATABASICS's time and expense solutions with Microsoft Power BI, organizations eliminate these barriers. The integration creates a unified data environment where every timesheet entry and expense report becomes part of a larger analytical framework.

How does the integration work under the hood?

For organizations already leveraging Power BI, DATABASICS offers an integration method that delivers direct access to your time and expense data without heavy custom development. This webinar provides guidance on the required connectors for establishing a secure link between DATABASICS and Power BI, and walks through the setup of a sample analytics dashboard.

Prerequisites

• Licensing

  • Power BI Pro for individual‑level authoring and sharing inside standard capacity, or

  • Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) or Fabric/Premium capacity for larger datasets, higher refresh frequencies, and enterprise features.

• Read‑only service account in DATABASICS to preserve data integrity.

• On‑premises Data Gateway if your DATABASICS instance is self‑hosted or behind a firewall.

• Role‑based access in Power BI to protect salary and other sensitive fields.

DATABASICS's Approach to Power BI Integration

As a leader in time and expense management solutions, DATABASICS offers a comprehensive approach to Power BI integration:

• Pre-built data connectors that simplify the technical implementation
• Standard report templates designed for common business scenarios
• Custom visualization development tailored to specific organizational needs
• Implementation consulting to ensure successful deployment and adoption
• Ongoing support as reporting requirements evolve

Our implementation specialists work closely with finance and operations teams to design an integration strategy that maximizes the value of your time and expense data.

Quick‑win dashboards to deploy

1. Expense Exception Radar – flags top non‑compliant categories by cost and frequency.

2. Project Profitability Trend – plots budget versus actual labor and expense spend daily.

3. Credit‑Card Leak Detector – highlights unsubmitted card transactions above policy thresholds.

All three can be built from the starter template pack; most teams publish the first draft within a week.

Moving Beyond Basic Reporting to Strategic Intelligence 

The real value of bringing timesheet and expense data into Power BI is the shift from descriptive analytics (“what happened”) to predictive and prescriptive insights (“what is likely to happen and what actions should we take”). With DATABASICS’s integrated solution, organisations accelerate their analytics maturity, gaining the spend intelligence needed to optimise resources, control costs, and make data‑driven decisions about how time and money are allocated across the enterprise.

Ready to transform your organization's approach to time and expense management?
Contact DATABASICS today to discover how our Microsoft Power BI integration can provide deeper insights into your business's spending.