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FOR FINANCE TEAMS

Workbook Connect for finance teams

Budgets, actuals, accruals, and the cost-center data behind every report. Your team maintains all of it in Excel, validates it against your own accounts, and commits it straight to the database, every period.

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Your numbers land in the warehouse, not in an inbox

Post an accrual or a reclass in Excel and commit. The figure is written live to the same table your reports read, with nothing to email and nothing to re-import.

EXCELDATA WAREHOUSE

The whole month lives in spreadsheets, not just budget season

Budget season gets all the attention, but it is the other eleven months that quietly drain the team. Accruals at cutoff, a reclass when a cost hit the wrong center, a depreciation true-up, the depot list that needs a new site before the allocation runs. Every one of those starts as an analyst typing into Excel, then turns into an email to whoever owns the load, a manual insert, and a reconciliation the next morning to check the warehouse matches the workbook. The numbers are usually right. It is the round trip that costs you a day of close and leaves no trace of who changed what.

The tables your team touches every period

Most finance work is a fact table keyed to your cost-center and account dimensions. Workbook Connect edits exactly these tables, and the foreign keys are what keep a posting from referencing a center or account that does not exist.

∞1CostCenterID∞1AccountIDDimCostCenterCostCenterIDPKCodeOwnerIsActiveFactActualsEntryIDPKCostCenterIDFKAccountIDFKPeriodEntryTypeAmountDimAccountAccountIDPKNumberNameStatement

An illustrative data model, not your exact schema.

Work the period in Excel, against the live tables

Workbook Connect adds a ribbon tab to Excel and points it straight at FactActuals. An analyst connects, sees only the cost centers they own (filtered on connect), and works in the same grid they already know. When they pick a cost center or an account, a foreign-key lookup offers the real values from DimCostCenter and DimAccount, so CC-410 and 6300 Freight resolve to live rows rather than a code somebody half-remembered. The configuration, the lookups, the filters, the primary-key mapping, the technical columns kept hidden, is set up once by a Configurator and shared to the whole team automatically on connect, so everyone opens an identical, guard-railed sheet.

A period close as you post it

Add accruals and reversals as new rows, edit a reclass in place, and let validation flag anything that does not belong. If any row fails, the commit is blocked and nothing is written until every line passes.

MayClose.xlsx, FactActuals
StatusCost centerAccountPeriodTypeAmount
NewCC-410 Logistics6300 Freight2026-05Accrual€ 18,400
NewCC-410 Logistics6300 Freight2026-04Reversal-€ 17,900
ChangedCC-220 Marketing6100 Agency fees2026-05Reclass€ 9,250
Needs fixCC-105 Sales6000 Travel2026-05Adjustment€ 0
Needs fixCC-700 IT8000 Depreciation2026-03Adjustment€ 4,120
CC-220 Marketing6100 Agency fees2026-05Actual€ 31,600
Commit Validated, then written to dbo.FactActuals
  • Row 4: an Adjustment of € 0 has no effect. The non-zero-amount rule flags it, so the commit is blocked until this row is fixed. Nothing is written until every row passes, then they all commit together.
  • Row 5: period 2026-03 is closed. The open-period rule flags it, so the commit is blocked until this row is fixed. Nothing is written until every row passes, then they all commit together.

An illustrative example of the editing workflow, not a product screenshot.

Validated first, then committed in one transaction

Workbook Connect validates the whole sheet in Excel first. An adjustment of zero has no effect, so it is flagged. A line dated to a closed month is flagged. A cost center that is no longer active fails its lookup. The per-row status column marks each line as new, changed, or flagged for deletion, and if any row fails, the commit is blocked and nothing is written. The failing rows stay in the sheet with their reasons, so the analyst fixes the four lines that need attention instead of hunting through two hundred, and commits again. Then every row is written to FactActuals together in a single transaction, under the permissions finance already holds. Authoring those rules and managing who can do what are Pro features (the Validation Designer and Manage Access); the rules themselves, and the Configurator and User roles, are enforced on every connection, including the free plan.

What finance teams use it for

Works with your database

FAQ

Finance teams, answered

Yes. Each analyst opens their own Excel workbook filtered to the cost centers they own, and roles scope who can change which lines. Workbook Connect uses optimistic concurrency, so if two people touched the same FactActuals row, the conflict is flagged on commit instead of one quietly overwriting the other.

A validation rule. You author a rule (for example, Period must be on or after the open month) in the Validation Designer, and it runs in the sheet before any commit for everyone on the connection. If a row is dated to a locked period, the commit is blocked and nothing is written, with the reason attached, so a stray edit never reopens a month you have already closed.

Straight into the table you point at, for example FactActuals, in your own Azure SQL Database, SQL Server, Fabric SQL Database, or Fabric Warehouse. Once every row passes validation, they are written together in one transaction on commit, live, with no CSV to hand to IT and no second copy to reconcile.

No SQL, and only the access you already grant. People sign in with your existing authentication (Entra ID with MFA, a service principal, Windows Integrated, and more), and every read and write honours the database permissions already on their account.

Yes. You can browse and edit any table you have rights to, so the budget, the prior-year actuals, and the current accruals can sit in the same workbook while you build the variance.

Completely. Workbook Connect makes no server-side schema changes. The database stays the single source of truth, IT keeps the tables and permissions, and the table configuration (lookups, filters, primary-key mapping, hidden columns) is shared to the team automatically on connect.

Give finance a faster, cleaner close

Download Workbook Connect free and connect it to your database. Post your next month-end accruals straight to FactActuals from Excel, with every reclass and correction validated in the sheet first and committed in one transaction to the same table reporting reads.

Download free