Context
In a trading-production group, management reporting aggregates data from operational systems, exchange rates, calculated data marts and BI. For users, all these layers appear as a single report. When zero conversions, stale data or inaccessible records appear, the business sees not a technical failure but a loss of trust in P&L.
The problem was not just in display. When the source of a discrepancy is unclear, the finance team spends time on manual checks, executives debate which numbers are correct, and BI/IT teams must troubleshoot each issue separately.
Challenge
Business challenge: restore management P&L to the status of a working decision-making tool. The report must show current, verifiable data on revenue, costs, margins and deviations, and the team must quickly identify the source of problems: source data, exchange rates, data marts, access rights or BI configuration.
Different roles faced different challenges: executives needed a single P&L version for management discussions; the CFO and finance team needed transparent calculation rules, exchange rates and variance controls; business unit owners needed clear visibility into revenue, expenses and margins; BI/IT administrators needed permissions, runbooks and test checklists to maintain the report without constant escalation to developers.
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Solution
The team moved from business questions to data: what metrics should P&L users see, which sources feed the calculations and which control points indicate the report is ready for use.
This approach eliminates P&L's dependency on manual validation of every report. When a discrepancy appears in BI, the team sees which layer to check first and which role is responsible for fixing it.
- Verified data loading from operational systems into DWH and BI.
- Resolved zero conversions in currency calculations and gaps in exchange rate history.
- Verified calculated data marts and P&L cube so BI reads prepared metrics, not raw tables.
- Fixed record parameters, roles and ownership rights affecting report updates.
- Prepared handover artifacts: diagrams, administrator runbook and test case checklist.
Metrics and business goals
The P&L system should be governed by metrics showing whether the report is ready for decision-making.
The business goal is not to 'fix BI' but to make management reporting a reliable system for regular decision-making: plan-vs-actual, margin analysis, cost control, variance reviews and executive meeting preparation.
- data freshness in DWH and BI: how close the report is to the current management period;
- completeness of exchange rates and absence of zero conversions;
- success rate of data mart and P&L cube updates;
- number of manual adjustments and reconciliations before report use;
- time to diagnose P&L discrepancies;
- coverage of key metrics: revenue, cost of goods sold, margins, receivables and operational KPIs;
- clarity of access rights: who sees the report, who owns the data mart, who is responsible for updates.
Result
The P&L system became clearer for business and more maintainable for the team. Data flows into DWH, visualizes in BI, and update, validation and administration rules are documented in handover artifacts.
For executives, it reduces the risk of decisions based on disputed figures. For the finance team, it minimizes manual reconciliations and makes discrepancies diagnosable. For business unit owners, it provides clear visibility into revenue, expenses and margins. For BI/IT, it transforms reporting from hidden dependencies into a maintainable system.