Better Business Reporting in Excel - XLReportGrids beta released

In my last Blog entry, I talked about reporting in Excel, some of the reasons I choose to make heavy use of  them, and some of the issues that stop me using them even more. (see Better Business Reporting in Excel)

• Pivot-tables can only show you data (although lots of it)
• Pivot-charts show you a chart, but only 1 per pivot-table
• If you want the same report for multiple grouping (e.g months, years, brands or locations) you add these groups to your pivot-table and select them one at a time to print.

XLReportGrids is a free Excel add-in, now available in beta test, that builds grids of reports with multiple copies of a template sized to fit the page.   Templates are just a range of cells in a worksheet that are driven by a pivot-table.  Build templates with: charts, formulas, images, pivot-tables, text boxes, anything that can be added to a worksheet.

Features 

• Lightweight, Microsoft-Excel add-in (2007, 2010) 
• Easy to install and easy to use.
• Templates are just a range of cells in a worksheet.  
• Build templates with:  charts, formulas, images, pivot-tables, text boxes, anything that can be added to a worksheet.
• Layout tools make it easy to build clean, professional templates.
• Select the number of rows and columns for your
• Automatically scale to fit the page-size and orientation.
• Generate multiple 'Grids in the same workbook
• Work with multiple page-fields so the rows and columns have meaning
• Optionally add outlines, border gaps and shadows
• Refreshes in seconds, on demand.
• Write the chart legend to a header section, printed on each page
• Lock value axes so they all show the same range
• Easy to automate

Download the beta test version now from our site:  tools.crabtreeanalytics.com 

and help us build a better tool.  The beta version is intended for testing, you will find bugs and usability issues that we have not.  Please report them to us in as much detail as you can so  we can fix them.

The beta version will be active though the end of October.  We will probably make frequent updates to it during the next 3 months so be sure to check back here often.

Have fun and when you build something you like, please send us a copy to include in our gallery.