Learnings › Power BI for CA Offices: Office and Client Dashboards › First lesson
First lesson · Start here · Free
What Power BI does for a CA office
12 min read · Print this lesson
It is the first Monday of October. Anil, the senior partner, asks three questions: which jobs are overdue, how much of September's billing has come in, and who is overloaded. Priya opens four Excel files, filters, copies and adds. Forty minutes later she has answers, and they are already a little out of date.
Power BI is a free Microsoft tool that reads your office files, links them together and shows the answers on a page. Next month you drop in the new files, press Refresh, and the pages are up to date. This course builds five pages for your own office and one for a business client who wants a monthly picture of their numbers.
A dashboard is not a prettier report. It is the same five questions, answered the same way, every month, in one click.
When Excel is enough
Excel is enough when:
- the data sits in one file and is a few thousand rows;
- one person makes the report and one person reads it;
- a pivot table and a chart already answer the question.
If that is you, the lesson "Your office dashboards" in Excel for Tax Practice builds a good office dashboard in Excel, and it is quicker to learn.
When Power BI helps
| Sign | Office example | Client example |
|---|---|---|
| Data comes from several files that must be linked | Client list + work tracker + bills + receipts + timesheets | Sales, receipts, expenses and a trial balance export |
| A new file arrives every month | One timesheet file per month | One sales file per month |
| Comparisons over time matter | This month's billing against last month | Sales against the same month last year, year to date |
| People want to click and filter | The partner wants only his clients | The owner wants one customer's dues |
| Data is too big for comfortable Excel | Several years of timesheets | Two years of invoices |
Two or more signs: Power BI will pay back. One sign: stay in Excel.
The three parts of Power BI
- Power BI Desktop: a free Windows app. You build everything here: load data, link tables, write measures, design pages. This whole course works in Desktop on your own computer.
- The Power BI service: the online part, for publishing and sharing. It needs a work or school Microsoft account, and sharing usually needs a paid licence. We explain it in the lesson on sharing safely, and nothing in this course requires you to buy it.
Windows only, and on a Mac
Power BI Desktop is a Windows application. There is no Mac version. Microsoft fully supports Desktop on its own cloud Windows (Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365); its page says Citrix and other virtual desktops are not supported, and it does not cover running Windows inside a virtual machine app on a Mac. So use a Windows 10 or 11 computer for this course. If you only have a Mac, check Microsoft's current page before relying on any other set-up.
What you will build
Every hands-on lesson ends with something built and a "done when" check: exact numbers your page must show.
| # | Page | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Work status | Where every job stands, what is past its internal deadline, and who has it |
| 2 | Due dates and workload | What falls due in the next 7 and 30 days, per person, and who is above 100% load |
| 3 | Fees outstanding and collection | Billed against collected by month, and how late the unpaid bills are |
| 4 | Client and service profitability | Fees less a notional cost of time, by service and client: an internal estimate for partners |
| 5 | Monthly partner review | This month against last month, the problem list, and the decisions |
| 6 | A client's owner view | For a made-up trading company: sales against last year, top customers, receivables ageing, expense mix, gross margin |
The jobs carry labels like "ITR filing" or "GST return (monthly)", but only as job names with an internal deadline and an owner. This course never teaches the tax work itself. Your existing Excel tracker stays the one live record; Power BI only reads it.
Everything is built first on made-up practice data. Real client data comes in only after the lesson "Before you touch client data", which sets out independence, confidentiality, written instructions and privacy checks. Please do not skip it.
How each lesson works
There are no videos. Each hands-on lesson gives you five things instead:
- Numbered clicks for Power BI Desktop, each followed by "What you should see", so you know you are on the right screen.
- Practice files with made-up data, in one zip.
- Ready code to paste (DAX measures and Power Query steps), with a Copy button, if the clicks go wrong.
- Check your answer: exact counts and rupee totals your file must show, and what a common wrong number means.
- Do this today: one real step for your office.
Why no finished Power BI file to download? Every Power BI file (.pbix) in this course is created and tested in the current Power BI Desktop as part of our release check, so none is supplied for download. Every number was worked out separately from the practice data. So you get exact steps and exact numbers instead: if your page shows the same numbers, your file is right.
What you need before the next lesson
- A Windows 10 or 11 computer you are allowed to install software on (or one your office manager can install on).
- Comfort with Excel tables and pivot tables. Power Query is explained in depth in Excel Automation for CA Offices: Power Query & Macros; here we use it only to load data.
Our promise on the steps
Before the course opens, a staff member works every lesson on a clean Windows computer with the current Power BI Desktop: each click, each piece of code and each number checked. Power BI changes every month, so if a button has moved, look nearby and tell us.
Do this today
- Write down the five questions your partners ask most often about work, fees and staff.
- Mark which ones need data from more than one file. Those are your Power BI candidates.
- Find the Windows computer you will use for this course and check you can install software on it.
Sources (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- What is Power BI (Desktop is the Windows app for report development; service for sharing; mobile apps): learn.microsoft.com
- Get started with Power BI Desktop ("a free Windows application"): learn.microsoft.com
- Download Power BI Desktop (virtualized environments supported and not supported): learn.microsoft.com
- Power BI service features by licence type: learn.microsoft.com
Build the dashboards: unlock the other 13 lessons
Load office data, build a simple model and measures, then five office dashboards and a monthly partner review page, a client MIS owner view from registers and a TB export, a monthly refresh routine and safe sharing, with practice files and check numbers for every build. Rs. 999 + GST, one time · or the Office Subscription Plan from Rs. 1,499 / year for every course, for you and your staff.