Financial Data Reporting for a Business Spin-Off

The Challenge

When our client decided to spin off part of their business into a new entity, their finance team faced a daunting challenge: how to deliver clean, reliable balance sheets for each company on a monthly basis. The data they relied on lived in dozens of inconsistent Excel files, often structured differently across regions and departments.

Each reporting cycle meant weeks of manual effort. The team would collect files, reconcile line items manually, and attempt to build entity-level summaries that satisfied auditors. Errors were common, version control was impossible, and last-minute adjustments led to late nights and growing compliance risks.

Our Approach

We redesigned the reporting process from the ground up, guided by three principles: clarity, consistency, and auditability.

• Data Flattening & Cleaning: Standardized messy Excel inputs into clean, tabular datasets.
• SQL Star Schema: Modeled data into a central fact table with supporting dimensions.
• Automated Hierarchies: Encoded roll-ups into dimensions, eliminating manual reconciliations.
• Excel Connectivity: Delivered outputs in familiar pivot tables, powered by a robust SQL backend.

Before vs After

Before

Inconsistent spreadsheets, buried hierarchies, manual reconciliations.

After

Standardized SQL star schema feeding clean, dynamic pivot reports.

The Results

• Speed: Reporting cycle cut from 14 days to under 2 hours.
• Accuracy: Errors dropped to virtually zero; all entities reconciled.
• Clarity: One single source of truth, boosting stakeholder confidence.
• Efficiency: 100+ hours saved per cycle, freeing the team for analysis.

Impact on the Business

The transformation went beyond faster reporting. By eliminating manual processes, the finance team freed up more than 100 hours each cycle. Compliance risks dropped sharply, and leadership gained confidence in the numbers during a sensitive corporate transition.

Finance staff who once dreaded reporting began to view it as a streamlined, almost automated task — boosting morale and positioning the team as trusted advisors.

Why It Matters

Business spin-offs are moments of both opportunity and risk. Reliable financial reporting can mean the difference between a smooth transition and a costly compliance failure. This project shows how thoughtful data design — even using familiar tools like SQL and Excel — can unlock major value.

Future Readiness

The pipeline was built to scale. While Excel pivots serve current needs, the SQL star schema is ready to power business intelligence dashboards in Power BI, Tableau, or Looker. As the spin-off matures, it can extend to forecasting, variance analysis, and cloud data warehouse integration.